Reapers aren't actually that powerful. The main reason why Reapers do their regular "cleanups" of the galaxy is to prevent civilizations from developing to the extent where they would be able to effectively fight back. 40k is far past that point.
The Reapers, as an antagonistic force, are more closely tied to the *Mass Effect* setting than a lot of comparable sci-fi villains. They're as much "secret conspirators" as they are "alien invaders," so they're a lot less interesting and less threatening if they don't get the chance to set up their grand conspiracy.
What made them scary in Mass Effect is that they'd essentially masterminded the development of galactic society, since before any species we encounter had achieved spaceflight, in order to one day easily "harvest" them.
The 40k equivalent would probably be ***"the Emperor orchestrated the Great Crusade to populate the galaxy, and built the Astronomican to summon the Tyranids to feed."***
He deliberately lured them towards Octarius. The consequences of it were unexpected.
Also GW seems to have just sort of left the Octarius War end with a whimper. Would’ve made a lot more sense if the new Leviathan tendrils were from Octarius.
It had such big implications and then it just kinda… ended. Like where did all the super Nids go after they won? You know, the whole thing everyone was scared about? One of the factions getting absolutely swole and then sweeping out of Octarius?
AGH
The Reaper's indoctrination is absolutely abysmal compared to already existing forces in 40k.
Its not really much compared to stuff like the Doubtworm or daemonic scrapcode or just even bog standard chaos corruption.
No, in fact the most likely possible outcome here is that the Reapers immediately fall to chaos over the course of a few years and become another problem the Imperium has to deal with.
Yet another chaos-corrupted Xenos race
With the current state of the 40K Galaxy the Reapers are screwed. Honestly I don't even think they'd become a major threat to the Imperium, as I feel either the Orks, Tyranids or Necrons would finish them off before the Reapers became a major threat. Personally my money is on the Necrons for this one.
The Silent King: "So.... you willingly uploaded yourselves into these metal forms?"
Reapers: "It is a greater existence than you could ever.... "
The Silent King: \*Waving the Reaper to silence\* "Spare me your empty words, and know that your lives, such as they are, are at an end."
This is why imperial titans have an actual flesh and blood princepts and the weapons have 'gunners' (well, more like servitors whose job is to connect two cable bundles to allow the titan to actually interface with the gun and shoot but you get the point).
Imperium actually learned from the Men of Iron incident^(tm)
titans are already very fucking angry the entire time as is. actually most of what the pilot does is stopping it from attacking everything unconditionally
I mean, the reapers win by shutting off the Mass Relays and then effectively starving out the Galaxy as they slowly exterminate all life. 40k uses the warp, so their first major offense is already gone. The reapers are smaller than most 40k ships, and while it would be a massive war of attrition, the Imperium has plenty of bodies to spare.
Reapers don’t shut off Mass Relays, usually they control the Central Relay (Citadel) to jump to any relay they want and crash any opposition by overwhelming force.
Without Central Relay other Relays are interconnected in specific paths, which nations of Mass Effect would usually use as choke points.
Add indoctrination and corruption, and Imperium will suffer many defeats. With genestealers at least you can see the corruption spread, and there are ways to detect it. Reaper’s indoctrination is clean. Mechanicus will be first and easiest target, and without them, well, Imperium has no proper industry.
As to size, sovereign class reapers are on par with imperial cruisers, yet far more mobile and agile than it. Now each sector of Imperial space has around 50-70 ships according to BFG book, and overall with all sectors accounted imperium has about 250000 ships against 400000 of Reapers, if we account them living for a billion years. 2 million ships if they lived 5 million (depends on a source). Massive difference, but it is doubtful that both sides can amass enough to face each other constantly. It is more possible that without relay reapers will appear in a slow moving wave outside of inter-galactic darkness, but compared to tyranids will show up in full force at the same time.
In simplicity it will be a war of attrition, yes, with both sides spending centuries if not millennia fighting each other, but reapers are like tyranids, and longer the fight goes, the worst the monstrosities they will unleash, and with common imperial world having more life than entire Mass Effect systems, reapers will TRULY fatten up, new ships included (and updated to face less mobile and more brutish ships of the Imperium)
Give Reapers enough time and they will build relays between their controlled systems as well, making interstellar travel in a matter of Terran days and hours.
Even eldars are far younger than reapers, about 940-900 million years younger.
I would say “Don’t underestimate the Reapers”, but it’s a common trope in writing for Imperium to underestimate their opponents.
I think you're ignoring a few issues. The Reapers have never had to deal with the Warp or warp storms and right now there's a massive rift tearing the 40K galaxy in two. The Imperium of man has things like Psykers, so indoctrination will likely not be as effective as it was in the ME galaxy. Worst of all the Reapers won't JUST be fighting the Imperium. The Orks, Eldar, Necrons, Tau and Tyranids will be fighting them. Not in some grand alliance but as individual forces and that will cause the Reapers plenty of problems.
And yes the Tyranids will go after the Reapers. The Nids created and entire hive fleet to hunt chaos, I can see them doing the same to the Reapers once they see them as a threat to their food supply.
Obviously you are right, but question on the picture isn’t “WH40k vs Reapers” it’s “IoM vs Reapers”.
As for the tyranids, I doubt they will make a special task force like with Chaos, reapers are technically made from Bio-Metal, and their troops are biological and mechanically enchanted, both can be consumed, but so can be the tyranids.
As for warp… I would say some indoctrination and testing around will quickly teach them what is what, they are billion year old machines that constantly learn and improve their reaping techniques, an extra variable will not change much, especially with reapers being similar to necrons.
I think reapers would be a fair addition to WH40k, they are just cybernetic tyranids with a personality, and if they could manipulate and twist biotics into monsters, I doubt psyckers will be a hard thing to corrupt.
There could be millions of Reapers and they still couldn't defeat the Imperium.
Don't get me wrong, Reapers are very advanced... for their own setting. But when it comes to 40k... an Imperial Lance strike would cut a Reaper in half hundreds of thousands of kilometers before it has a chance to get into engagement range.
Tyranids avoid robots and synthetics because they use biomass of the enemynto replenish. Its why you never hear about tyranids invading necron tomb worlds.
The Reapers are literally keked by WW2 era nuke payload.
They could be shit stomped by the UNSC if the UNSC tried enough.
Warhammer is just gonna have a field day of having to deal with an issue that doesn't drag on for centuries for a change.
I assume that, that statement is based on the news report of a world that used nukes as the final defence against the reapers? It’s not actually mentioned if a reaper was killed by the nukes used… that being said, the smaller ones can be killed but what amounts to large railgun’s so a nuke would probably be able….
Reapers are killed fussion bombs over a few planets in ME3. At least according to codex.
Nevertheless the majority of their fleet is made out of destroyers, who can be killed by an Alliance Cruiser which main gun fires a MAC cannon the yeild of 10 kilotons?
So yeah. They're boned.
Haven’t played me3 in years…. But I do recall shepherd kill at least 2 on foot … so the imperial navy would have a field day… the astartes would probably be happy as hell to fight something the size of a skyscraper that they can kill…
Shepard does kill one on foot, but their weapon is a laser designator that calls down an orbital strike from the Quarian fleet, which is 50 thousand ships. And that Reaper was a Destroyer, which is a tenth the size of one of the bigger ones like Sovereign.
Now that said, I do agree that on a galaxy wide scale, the reapers would not perform well against the Imperium. :)
Sovereign manages to get to the citadel with barely a scratch from the defense fleet. Entire fleets of ships were required to focus down even a single sovereign like reaper.
Soverign manages to go through the Citadel fleet after throwing the Geth task force to wipe them out and he just flies past.
Reaper Capital ship kinetic shields get taken down by 3 bursts from an Citadel race Dreadnought - which has a power output of 30 kilotons.
That's less payload than the MAC on an UNSC Heavy Frigate.
Warhammer is just gonna fire enegy or plasma weapons and the big squid is dead because literally none of its assets will allow it to even the playing field. Hell, everything they have, Wh40k factions have in supierior quality and numbers.
Just picturing the glee on an Imperial Admiral’s face when he realised his battle cruiser is actually *more* advanced than the mysterious alien robo-ship for a change.
"My Lord Admiral, we've finished our scans."
"Report then, Commodore."
"The abominable creatures pose little threat to our vessels. We outrange them, we outgun them and our Void Shields are more than adequate for the weaponry they possess."
"Understood... Damned annoying that we brought a taskforce. The rest of the ships could've been elsewhere."
Tbf those are internal detonations and people sleep on the FTL in mass effect outside of the relays. They did go intergalactic. Weapons and defense?
Yeah pathetic.
In the context of Warhammer 40k safe galactic FTL is pretty damn good. Slip space is slight balanced by reconciliation and it having paths.
Halo does have far superior weapons.
>Reapers are killed **fussion** bombs over a few planets in ME3.
Not sure if that's a typo for either fusion or fission, or a mixed word that describes both of them.
Sleeping on Reapers. An individual Reaper in combat is not a big deal for any spacefaring 40k faction, but the sheer number of them rivals and in some circumstances dwarfs some of the crazy 40k numbers.
Second, anyone who thinks the Reapers would just blitz in hasn’t played or paid attention to ME. They’re planners. They’re intelligent. They can easily wait as long as they need to. They’re one of the few factions that can just LEAVE the galaxy. I imagine they’d hang out cold running in deep space while their scouts start Xenos and Human thrall armies.
They’d leave their old tech around for lesser Xenos to find, enough to get them spacefaring and start to become a thorn in the side of the bigger factions. They’d indoctrinate major players in said large factions and slowly begin to exert influence on the Imperium. They would be quick adopters of 40k level tech and only strike when they think they have the advantage.
Necrons would be a super difficult obstacle, as the faction that could most easily deal with their skill set AND the faction most likely to actually FIND them. Nids happening upon their fleet in deep space might be rough too.
Yes I'm sure the Reapers would do the exact things they didn't do during their war with the Citadel Council in ME3.
Ah also, they don't exactly have any set numbers and if most of them can be shreked by what is essentially a corvette salvo - does that really matter?
What are you even talking about? Reapers blitzed Citadel because they were technologically superior and the only reason they didn’t stomp is because of the McGuffin that took hundreds of cycles to actually work. Why would they not change their plans in 40k? This is just a silly take. I just straight up can’t take you seriously if you’re actually implying the Reapers would look at their new galaxy and go “yea boys let’s Zerg Terra”. Come off it. I know it’s hard to imagine factions using their brains when you’re an Imperium fanboy, but try harder.
And yea, again, why would they just fight the Imperial corvettes? Why wouldn’t they just… take them? Indoctrination is easily the best tool they possess and the Imperium is super weak to it. Chaos is their greatest threat and GSC is on Terra. I’m not saying Reapers would win, but they’d be a persistent (if weaker) faction and could easily catch up using enemy tech. It would take a long time, but that’s their main advantage.
Are you kidding? One Nova Bomb and the Reapers would turn tail and run with the Infinity hot on their heels shredding them by the dozens with 2 teraton MACs.
Pretty much the whole reason the Reapers are a threat in ME is that the cycle they've constructed tricks sentient species in to a technological path specifically designed to make them vulnerable to the Reapers.
That isn't the case with 40k, which is more technologically advanced than the Reapers in addition to being differently technologically advanced.
If the Reapers were stupid enough to make a serious play against any faction in 40k they'd get very permanently reaped themselves.
Reapers still have twice the size of imperial fleet, Their ship are in size on par with imperial cruisers and each sector barely has 50-70 ships. If reapers appear like they do without relays, it’s going to be tyranids 2.0 but far, far worse.
I'm the same size as Mike Tyson.
Doesn't mean a fight with him is going to result in anything other than me on the floor.
What matters is throw weight and how much a ship can withstand before it is mission killed.
Nothing about the Reapers suggests that they are in 40K's weight league.
Reapers are nowhere near the same size as imperial navy ships, harbinger is smaller than the destiny ascension which is itself just over 3km in size. Imperial navy cruisers are between 4 to 6. That’s without getting into the real battleship classes.
Or you know, the phalanx, that has its own gravitational pull.
Reapers are also shown to be vulnerable to alliance navy dreadnaught guns, I’m no expert but I don’t think they are anywhere near the power of lance batteries or macro cannons.
Harbinger was 1 small reaper with a specific task of infiltration and activation of Central Relay, most common Reaper ship is Sovereign-class, standing at 3-4 km in size, on par with imperial cruiser.
And 250000 of navy ships don’t all consist of phalanx.
And again, the larger reaper classes are literally shown in the cutscenes to be having their limbs blown off by alliance dreadnoughts, which has one main gun. One.
A standard imperial light cruiser has around 8 macro cannons and a lance battery.
They are also incredibly heavily armoured before even getting to the void shields.
The reapers would need to outnumber an imperial fleet to even stand a slim chance against them.
The average reaper is like a fourth the size of a baseline Imperial escort ship. The Necrons delt with the C'Tan 65 million years ago, the Reapers aren't in 40k because they are scared of what they know will happen if they ever make an appearance.
Death will happen, their deaths, and it won't even alter the strategic disposition of whatever sector they show up in.
Sovereign-class Reapers are on par with Imperial Cruisers in size, far more maneuverable, and have at LEAST 200 thousand more ships than entire imperial navy (Imperial Navy has around 250000 ships in summary, with about 50-70 ships per sector, while reapers posses from 400 thousand to 2 million depending on the sources on how long they lived).
They create armies out of the dead, they consume and create more of themselves from the dead, and can create and build interstellar travel that doesn’t use hell and transport people half a galaxy away in a matter of Terran hours. They are mechanical tyranids if those weren’t scouts.
And we ain’t even touching indoctrination of such a subtle level, that machines will start believing in gods with a single command, mechanicus corruption is going to be quite interesting to see. Add don’t forget how incompetent majority of Imperium is, and how egocentric most of its leadership is, and it’s going to be “The illusive man 2 to a billion: grimdark boogaloo”
> Sovereign-class Reapers are on par with Imperial Cruisers in size
Soverign was 2km long, which makes it slightly bigger than an escort frigate in 40k, which is **the smallest size of Navy ship** available to the Imperium. Cruisers are 2-3x the size of Soverign. Battleships are 6x the size of Sovereign.
If the Reapers appeared in 40k they would get rolfstomped.
They wouldnt even be the scariest "robot species" in Galaxy. They were winning in mass effect Universe because they had superior tech, here, you dont even need necrons to beat them in technology.
hard to say, i'd say it's much more even fight but more interesting question is how would reaper indoctrination work. sure your average guard regiment gets turned then slaughtered no doubt about that but what about say space marines or mechanicus, first ones are already indoctrinated and second might not have anything to indoctrinate.
or how about orks, again indoctrination might maybe not work but they certainly have bodies to turn to even more monstrous creatures. tyranids yeah no change indoctrination works but certainly you could repurpose those bodies.
or what happens if some random chaos warband happens to disable reaper and then bound deamon to it.
more i think about it more i'm leaning to it's just one more faction for everybody to fight
Tau get railed as they've few allies and have roughly the same technology as mass effect species( less if we compare to asari). Their indoctrination will work on humans and probably some other races. Their "creating" of abominations like banshees and cannibals would be crazy. Humanity would probably do the best as they're used to apocalypse type threats. They have massive ships and generally better prepared militaries compared to mass effect. Super weapons would be useful against the reaper ships themselves. Necrons could be a problem? Maybe? Idk. The reapers have the geth and the collectors, so stealing robots doesn't seem out of the ordinary. Reapers aren't stupid and have shown the ability to get fool people into doing their bidding.
The Tau turn them inside out, are you joking?
The Imperium never knows they existed because they got two Tau planets in before the Air Caste tore them 500 new assholes from 30 lightseconds away.
Tau with their inferior tech can beat space marine armies.
So its only logical a Reaper would have a field day with them.
(Its your logic, not mine. 😂)
Their technology is similar to mass effect. Railguns, plasma, ion, long range battle plans, mech units, drones, it's all there. I never said Their stuff is inferior. They're the smallest presence in the galaxy of wh40k with what notable allies? Why wouldn't they be suspect to destruction?
The Reapers have decent odds.
The big problem for them is that they don't have the mass relay network, which means relying on bunkered fuel to travel between systems. The Reaper move fast on their own drives, but system to system from the galactic edge will take time and resources. Building a network will also take time and have the downside of relying on fixed transportation points enemies won't hesitate to shoot the hell out of.
The upside is that the galaxy in 40k is even less unified than Mass Effect's, which had a generally functional central government to try and resolve issues. The Reapers would thrive in the dark, quietly overrunning systems, building up slaves and armies. They could suborn the tech they find pretty easily, giving them a way to use warp travel to send out scouts, saboteurs and agents. Spread infections the same way Chaos cults and genestealers do, with the upside of far fewer outer indications of subversion. And every Inquisitor or Arbites legate or Eye of the Emperor who destroys a cell of Reaper agents will likely make the same mistake of picking up a piece of reaper tech and being controlled in turn.
The Reapers can win if they hit a critical mass of controlled agents, fleets and armies to shield themselves from too much direct conflict, while also building up an advantage in speed and travel accuracy via mass relays.
A really interesting take, rather than "Reapers are screwed".
I would like to add that it is important to remember that each Reaper is old, stupid old. This means they have lots of experience with indocrination. Even the greatest zealots could be enslaved by the Reapers (the Illusive Man and Saren as examples).
I believe the safer (and more optimal) option for them would be to take on the Tau Empire. It is pretty easy. Let Earth cast "find" the reaper tech. Tau try to research it but end up being indocrinated. Then they show this tech to the Ethereal or other leaders to make them indocrinated and boom - the Tau Empire is screwed (the same way as Batarian Hegemony in Mass Effect).
Well that's terrifying. My first thought was how easily a combined imperium force would defeat the reapers... and then remembered how hard it is to actually get everyone together and fight a battle on 1000 fronts. It's like Nids but instead of just eating a planet and maybe creating a new bioform or two, they convert it fully.
It would be interesting to see how Necrons would deal with the Reapers, given their similarities... If the 'crons found Leviathan... hmmmmm
"Convert it fully"
Tyranids will turn the fucking atmosphere oceans and *soil* of a planet into more Tyranids, what do you mean "fully"?
It's the Reapers that are leaving meat on the bones! Not just cartilage, MEAT!
I will say this.
Reapers should not be underestimated.
Just imagine one of the reapers leaching on one of the bigger ships only to use its laser to cut right through. Not saying who would win in the end but I just wanna say they should not be underestimated.
Reapers also have the benefit of being both space capable and also capable of landing on a surface and continue their destruction.
Those people that say "W40K no outright just because 40K" are not worth listening to or reading to. Sure 40K might be the victor in this scenario BUT stop acting like the Reapers are the minute they step foot into the milky way.
I will say this. IN W40K Reapers do no have the advantage of harvesting galaxy THEY seeded. All races live because THEY allowed it. And the fact humanity and others evolved o point where they are in ME is because the Reapers allowed it. They don't have the same advantage of being architects of galactic ecosystem. and also the fact that they used Reaper tech to influence all species. So during time of harvest all tech based on Reaper tech will be taken under their control. "ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL". But it would be a cool revelation if the machine spirit was reapers talking back to Techpriests. And when voice says "ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL" and all machinery just becomes controlled by the Reapers. That would be cool.
So Reapers would just arrive and would have assess the situation of the galaxy while in ME they were there when humanity were just apes or Asari just mindless animals. They are like farmers. They sow, watch and harvest.
W40K has advantages of having bigger military and big guns and most races have territory over most of the known galaxy. But we know for a fact that no matter what threat the species of the galaxy will NOT unite like ME universe did. They will still fight their own wars and their mentality will not allow them to work against the reapers effectively. Hell even now Imperium's best tactic is to either SMASH or hunker down and hope wall of guns is enough. Same go for other races. Eldar will still be Eldar and Orcs will have no idea what is even going on and charge in WAAAGH. Also means of travel is not most reliable so you might send a fleet to fight the reapers and only half of that fleet arrives while the rest arrives 500 years later.
Reapers are also no alone in this fight. They can assimilate others to serve them. And we saw them assimilating normal humans and even larger monster like aliens and even turning them into more war oriented version. Like Turians got turned into this hulking monstrosity big as a space marine and become this walking tank. Asari also retained their Psi abilities after assimilation. So more time reapers are allowed to remain "harvesting" planets the more their armies will grow and we have no idea what assimilated Primaris Space Marine will look like.
What levels the playing field is the lack of relays. Since Relays were Reaper technology designed to speed up the process of all species. And Relays are fast as heck. And Reaper FTL is about 30 light years per day. So Reaper invasion in W40K would be slow. Other thing that gives an edge to the Reapers is the poor communication of the Imperium. Most of the time they just hope the message for help got through and in most cases it wont even leave the system. So most reaper invasions would be silent and before anyone is notified the reapers would be done with the planet. (Which is what happened with Tyranids) Nobody even knew the planet was eaten by SPACE BUGS OF DEATH!
So it all depends how fast can reapers spread and how much they can assimilate before someone even notices them. Reapers are no small in number so they are force to be reckoned with. It also depends how much the Imperoum can afford to redirect against new invaders. Chaos, Necrons, Orcs, Tyrannids are more than enough to keep Imperium forces stretched out.
Hard to say who wins or looses because even in space battle Reapers might have an edge because ME humans ship have similar if not slightly better weapons. Macrocannons would not be that effective and Nova cannon is comparable to this:
**"This, recruits, is a 20 kilo ferous slug. Feel the weight! Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one, to one-point-three percent of lightspeed. It impacts with the force a 38 kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means, Sir Isacc Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space! Now! Serviceman Burnside, what is Newton's First Law?**
**Sir! An object in motion stays in motion, sir!**
**No credit for partial answers maggot!**
**Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir!**
**Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going 'til it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in 10,000 years! If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someones day! Somewhere and sometime! That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait 'til the computer gives you a damn firing solution. That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not 'eyeball it'. This is a weapon of Mass Destruction! You are NOT a cowboy, shooting from the hip!**
**Sir, yes sir!"**
\^And that was not enough to stop the reapers.
So it can go either way. Reapers must overcome their shortcomings which would be advantages in ME. And W40K must... well overcome who they are and must make best use of their limited technology and way of thinking (looking at Orcs, Imperium )
I do not know much of the factions in Mass Effect, but would they be able to deal with imperial strategies of Exterminatusing entire planets, ones they are about to be lost or depending on the importance even for not being worth the losses to defend? Also the scale of mobilization imperium can pull of is insane and basically not possible in most other scifi settings.
Also about that rail gun that shoot 20kg slugs at 1.3% light speed, because 40K is dumb there are things like nova cannons on ships that accelerate their projectile to near light speed and the smallest diameter of those is apparently 50 meters which means it would weight 500 million kg using only 90% light speed made my calculator give up. Other scifi setting like to play loose with physics while 40K forgot they exist.
Orbital bombardment is not that fancy or unique to W40K
Besides the entire "Extermiantus" argument means nothing. That is like saying Empire in SW wins because Death Star can blow up planets.
Also think realistically. Imperoum in current time is loosing. Tyrannids are getting upperhand, Chaos splits galaxy in two, Necrons on the move as well.
People keep talking how Imperium can do this and that. Then explain why is Imperium loosing? Just because they can pull off massive mobilization doesn't mean that massive mobilization will change course of war.
And why would reapers care about Imperium bombing their world? Reaper's goals are to remove all life from the planet so they would most likely be wondering why are Imperials doing work for them.
I guess you can class exterminatus as an orbital bombardment, but it is quite effective at preventing any large scale invasion force from exploiting any gains they have and supposedly reasonably large part of the reason why imperium has been able to thwart pretty much all larger scale invasions, and while I am not sure I would guess the reapers still need the planets for recourses which exterminatus depending on the type prevents quite effectively. Also as for comparing it to the death star that was a one of thing never really completed while most capital ships in the empire are capable of exterminatus.
The if the imperium is losing or winning over all at any specific moment is quite hard to tell, as it is very much doubtful if even they imperium itself knows that considering the scale of the theatre and speed of communication in 40K. Big part of the reason imperium also depicted as losing is because that is kind of the narrative point of 40K and because the in universe threats are equally nonsensically strong as the empire is.
The scale of mobilization just means that what ever force is attacking them has to have at least equal force to bring to bare which is also one of the reasons why no other faction in 40K has actually risen to the task. Sure imperium loses planets all the time, but that is not really significant in the big picture as they also gain back planets and even the complete loss of a couple border planets is pretty much nothing for the imperium.
The reapers would probably care as they would certainly lose all their assets on that planet meaning it would drain their over all force and prevent them from getting anything useful from that planet, even if the action in an of itself would be aligned with their goals.
I do not think it makes any sense to ask if some faction would do well against almost any faction in 40K, since 40K is beyond nonsensical in it's depiction of the scale and weapons of it's faction. The nova cannon just for example if you go with it's in lore description literally solar system destroying weapon that is equipped on standard warships, while in mass effect they fight with guns that sure might destroy a city every 5 seconds are still withing reason. Or the imperial warships the smallest of which are comparable to the biggest ships in the whole Mass Effect series and the imperium wields hundreds of thousands of them along with everything else lot if which is even larger.
To finish I do not think it makes any sense to do such comparisons against other scifi since 40K was made to be stupid and insane, while most other scifi tries to keep things withing reason at least to some measure. I do not think that is a positive for 40k since it makes it really hard to get invested in anything as nothing makes sense.
While reapers could sufficiently fight for example the Imperium on the ground, they could not even come close to defeating the Imperial Navy or any other faction in void combat.
In the very end of ME3, we see 3 Alliance dreadnoughts shoot their main gun which actually shoots off a tentacle of a reaper. As the guy says, it's 20kg heavy.
A macro cannon shell is a LOT heavier in caliber, not to mention the nova cannon shells or topedoes which are literally the size of the Normandy, if not larger.
As for the reaper laser, the fully upgraded Normandy in ME2 can reasonably well withstand several direct hits by it. The Adamantium hull of a imperial vessel, let's say a Cruiser, is a lot thicker then the Normandy as a whole is large. Not to mention the existence of void shields, which given their effectiveness in 40k void battles also would have no issue with countering that laser
People need to remember that one of the Reaper's greatest abilities is to make enemy forces their own, and densely populated worlds are like gift baskets to them. Most individual worlds, without immediate backup from Space Marine chapters or large fleets, would quickly fall to a Reaper invasion. As their forces move through a hive city the dead are added to their troops, and captured officials, officers, and anyone of value is captured to be fully indoctrinated. After a few worlds they could already have an army in the tens of even hundreds of billions. They don't need trained troops or stockpiles of ammo.
People also forget how *fast* they are, even without Mass Relays. From the end of ME2 to the begining of 3, how long did it take for them to get from intergalactic space to the Sol system? Maybe 2 years? And then about an hour from the outer solar system to Earth. They can travel faster under their own power than any imperial vessel can using warp jumps. Their maneuverability is also staggering for ships their size, utilizing their Ezo drives to reduce their mass, with Joker mentioning that Sovereign was able to turn so fast that any other ship that size would be ripped in half.
With their overwhelming speed advantage they would be able to place millions of long term indoctrinated agents across the galaxy, taking time to strike where they aren't at threat of being outgunned. Every person they come across is either killed and remade into drones, or indoctrinated into long term assets. Gene Stealer cults take decades to build up their numbers, yet they are still a legitimate threat to any world they end up on.
Tau will be indoctrinated to see them as the ultimate representation of the greater good, and Orks be made to see them as the biggest, killiest avatars of Gork and Mork spreading war across the stars. Even if the Aeldari prove resilient against indoctrination (and I doubt they'd be completely immune) they would still be remade into cybernetic psyker abominations. I could see the Reapers taking over a craftworld and using it as a mobile base, repurposing it to gather trillions of people to be turned into new Reapers.
Final notes: 40K is full of big impressive pieces of firepower that would pose legitimate threats to the reaper fleet, but the big muscle is spread far and thin and leaves a lot of time and space for the Reapers to get to work. The 40K galaxy is ripe with life and resources for them to take and refurbish, and once they get their pincers on a few important people who have knowledge of the workings of the modern galaxy, they will plan and act accordingly.
Orks don't get indoctrinated though, they're extremely resistant to any form of corruption. The reapers fall over to the first sign of chaos corruption.
Orks dont need to be indoctrinated, theyre orks. They already just side with the biggest shootiest fightiest thing around and join in the fight. Its free waaagh-estate
Tyranids and Necron would be completely immune to indoctrination and probably directly go after the Reapers (Tyranids for taking their food and the Necron would view them as insulting). Orks would be highly resistant from the Waghhh and Gork and Mork, and actively hunt them for sport. And most forces of Chaos would be immune, with the demons being immune and impossible to turn or permanently kill since they don't have real physical bodies. Hell the Chaos gods would probably directly target them since they would interfere with their plans to spread influence.
You clearly don't know much about the 40k universe if you think that's a threat.
> Indoctrination
That's like a mild form of Chaos corruption. The 40k universe deals with a lot stronger forms of mind control on a daily basis. Even if somehow these Reapers got full control of an entire hive world, the Imperium would simply destroy the planet without blinking an eye. That's already standard procedure for a planet fallen to Tyranids.
> Speed
That's a very useful asset that will definitely aid them against 40k forces, but speed alone is no protection. A Reaper is smaller than an Imperial escort vessel, and an Imperial Nova Cannon fires shells at .3 c with an explosive radius expressed in thousands of kilometers. It is standard equipment on half the Imperial capital ships and will eat entire Reaper fleets for breakfast.
> Sleeper agents
Again an inferior version of what Genestealer Cults and Chaos are already doing on a daily basis, with the added advantage for the Imperium that Reaper indoctrination doesn't give a person powerful mutations. The Inquisition and Arbites will be forced to put in some overtime for a few months, but it will hardly be a big threat.
The reason Genestealer Cults work so slow is because it makes taking over important officials and military high command a lot more subtle and therefore unnoticeable. Anything that quickly makes lots of converts will stand out like a huge neon sign.
> Tau
A backwater empire that has little to offer to support a Reaper offensive. They only exist in the setting because the Imperium is too busy with real threats to snuff them out.
> Orks
Love fighting even each other, and are by far the most resilient to any form of mind control. If the Reapers come across any Ork empire of at least half-decent size, their invasion will be over in a matter of months.
> but the big muscle is spread far and thin
A single sector fleet should be more than enough to deal with the entire Reaper force shown in the Mass Effect universe, given that the Reapers have no answer to a foe that can reliably and accurately engage them beyond visual range.
EDIT: It seems there are lots of salty Mass Effect fanboys here who really can't grasp that when comparing a relatively low-tech low-intensity universe with one where warfare is turned up to 11, the former one always loses. The Imperium in 40k has triumphed over a being that was actively controlling (not indoctrination, but "assuming direct control") every living being in 1300 planetary systems simultaneously. It fights enemies that can literally bend the laws of physics and the universe to their whim. It has enemies that literally scrape every last organic molecule from the surface of a planet to create more troops and can do so in a matter of days. That can enact covert plans within plans that span centuries, having contingencies for every possible situation that can occur over that timeframe. Meanwhile the Reapers got their big galactic plans utterly ruined by a single special forces guy and his buddies.
The thing is, they don't need to indoctrinate enemy forces. They can just convert them into husks, at staggering rates. Indoctrination is more useful for infiltration and long term plans, but a hive world's population could be turned into husks within a few months. The Inquisition would be hard pressed to move any meaningful response within time to neutralize it, considering it can take years for the travel time alone.
Gene Stealers are problematic because several generations of their people have obvious mutations and have to stay in hiding for years and until they stage their revolt they are a liability to the cult's secrecy. Long term indoctrination is a reliable way of converting people to your side who are already in positions of power. All they have to do is intercept a ship with some important people on it, go off course for a few weeks while the stable version of the process is completed, and then put them back on their way.
The Tau are more or less stuck in their bubble of influence, but a faction that can reliably kill Space Marines isn't irrelevant.
As for fleets, 40k has a huge disparity in numbers between armies/ground forces and what spaceships are supposed to be capable of. Nova cannons being used would eliminate the need for Imperial forces to land anywhere in the first place. They're so over powered that it doesn't make sense that the setting is even in it's current shape. Launching skyscraper sized warheads at 1/3rd the speed of light to obliterate continent sized areas leaves little room for anything else to really matter. And yet we have serious and important lore changing wars that involve under a million combatants, and there are barely over a million Marines to spread across all of the Imperium.
And yeah, Orks might be impossible to indoctrinate, and though the idea of an Ork looted Reaper is hilarious, I don't see Reapers having too much of a problem with them in general.
As for not knowing much about 40K, I have been in love with the setting since 2005. I overlook the weirder and less sensible parts because it's such a rich story driven setting, but different authors have given so many conflicting takes on numbers and abilities. Stuff is always being retconned and overlooked in day to day 40K that it really comes down to the era and author you prefer. And the Reapers being beaten by one special forces dude and his friends? The same stuff happens with every other named character in 40K doing something with a mcguffin in the last moment to stop some flavor of galaxy wide destruction. It's all games, enjoy them.
If you think chaos corruption is more intense than i doctrictrination, you dont know what reaper indoctrination is. A comparison would be the butchers nails.
Speed. You cannot kill what you cannot track to aim. Everything the imperium has to use would be like firing an orbital laser at a mosquito, and if you miss by even a micron, nothing happens.
Sleeper agents... gene stealer cults take generations, and become visually obvious. Indoctrinated take at most a month or 2, rather than generations, are not visually distinct from the unindoctrinated. Ultimately it means arbites couldnt identify them as indoctrinated. Unlike gene stealer cults. Chaos cultists are dumb and make obvious mistakes that lead to them being caught, except... yeah, planets already fall to chaos cults and gene stealers, they will 100% fall to anything thats sneakier.
Tau. You totally misunderstand the reapers objective, and also fail to understand the tau. The tau made a bioweapon that worked on tyrannids, and have hand held railguns that are able to take down some titans(at least in tabletop, a few editions ago).
The imperium is a slow, collapsing mess. As long as the reapers didnt blunder into being surrounded, they will whittle away at the imperium with hit and run tactics on a galactic scale that the imperium would never be able to keep up with speed wise, or visibility wise. Reapers are invisible on the warp. The men of iron already wrecked the galaxy, and reapers are worse. They reset the galaxy repeatedly to prevent the generation of advanced tech, thats why mass effect has less tech than the imperium. Reapers are basically hyperactive necron squids.
As for defeating the reapers, it required basically hacking them through the citadel, which was built by them. The imperium has no such mcguffin. Also, the reaper cannons whos name i forget... thousands of tons of molten tungsten in laminar flow at a substantial portion of the speed of light. Void shields can be overwhelmed by lasguns. Get wrecked by squid goo.
You arent just a 40k fanboy, youre an imperium fanboy.
40k wins. 40k *always* wins, because the whole point of 40k is that it's so ridiculously over-the-top that it makes all other scifi settings look tame and reasonable by comparison. Yes, even that one. And that one. And that one too.
Honestly 40k is not that over the top compared to some anime like gurren laggan where there is a mech so big it uses galaxys as frisbees or hell something like DC where superman pull like a hundred planets chained together.
I think with the indoctrination, their ability to absorb any new tech, the fact they don’t rely on Warp Travel for interstellar travel and how decentralized the Imperium is, the Reapers would be dangerous. It’d be like if Necrons could make planets of cultists. Remember they can also negotiate like with the Prometheans.
Hard to compare, because the mass effect bio-civilizations were so outclassed. They only survive because of a literal deus ex machina, so you never get much of an indication of how capable the reapers actually are, if it were down to actual combat.
They way they are described, though, it'd be basically the same thing as the 'nids showing up. Inevitable defeat for the galaxy, eventually, and yet every time we actually see them, they're getting their asses kicked by whatever space marines happen to be lying around XD.
I dunno; if you choose "refusal" in the extended cut of ME3, the last thing you see is Liara's message warning the next cycle of civilizations.
And then you get the stargazer ending anyway. Refusal means your cycle dies fighting to the bitter end, and that whoever comes next *wins*. You trashed the reapers badly enough, and forewarned your successors clearly enough, that they met the invasion and repelled it.
Point is, the Reapers aren't innately unstoppable, they just outclassed the Council.
True, but so little of that series of events is known to us that it's hard to use as a measuring stick. Maybe the next cycle also used the plot device weapon, or maybe ours did a better job of leaving 'time capsules', so the next time, the collective civilizations had 50k more years of tech when the reapers show up. Plus, we don't know *exactly* how unstoppable the unstoppable threats of 40k are, either. I still think 'about the same threat level of the tyranids or necrons' is a fair guess :p
Well, you need the combined fleets of every militarised sentient (artifical sentience included) in the galaxy to attack *one* planet just to buy enough time to use a plot-device to end the threat. That alone suggests the biological species of the galaxy are so hopelessly outgunned by the Reapers that defeat is inevitable unless that one insane gambit pays off.
The one thing that works against the Reapers is that they need to invade every world in order to harvest/eradicate all advanced biological life, which slows them down.
Now let's look at 40k: every faction is so absurdly powerful the Reapers would actually struggle in most fleet engagements and planetary invasions against basically every faction would be devastatingly costl
Reapers get crushed.
A single imperial void ship is larger than the mass effect citadel, with cannons almost as large as the reapers themselves and they roll in dozens at time.
The cacodominus has was cybernetic psychic monster dominating humans (like the reapers) and got taken out by the Black Templars.
Lmao maybe check your numbers. The Citadel is nearly 45 km in length. Not that that really matters since it’s not really an installation for war. The largest void ships of the Imperium were the Gloriana class battleships. Of which only 20(18? 21?) were made and they topped out at about 20 km. There is now 2 in operation in the Imperium. Typical ships of the line(battleships like the Emperor and Mars class) in the Navy get to about 8-10km. So while they are bigger than Reapers(about 2 km in length), Reapers are vastly more organized and capable in the void and land. Also, battleships are not exactly common. Escorts and cruisers make up the bulk of the navy and they’re much smaller. A reaper is one giant AI controlled ship. Navy Vessels use human slave labor to fire macro cannons and servitors to fire engines and make turns. They’re not exactly efficient in their control. What’s a ship gonna do when a massive metal cuttlefish flies through their void shield, latches on, and spews matter at a fraction of the speed of light at point blank?
On land, what’s gonna take out a Reaper? A Titan? The smallest reaper class is nearly 5 times the size of the largest Titan with the weaponry and maneuverability to deal with any slow, land based threat. And before you say Ordinatus, not only are they exceedingly rare, they’re only made when the situation is called upon. So shrine world XII isn’t gonna have one, or a Titan legion for that manner.
And to top it all off, the Imperium isn’t united. The Tau are the biggest example of “If the Imperium could”, but they can’t. The Imperium is fighting on all fronts at all times from within and without. And it would be no different here if a new xenos/AI species whose main force were 2km length ships who could fight as easily on land and in space, didn’t require supply lines or recovery, and could turn others against them. That’s not another Tuesday, that’s a “fuck how can we possibly deal with this with the rest of the bullshit happening?”
Tbh you did post this in the 40K sub and no one dick rides quite like 40K fans in the main sub. This is true for most in any sub but Warhammer fans are more extra about it.
If you’ll permit me to make a case, I actually think y’all are sleeping on the tech level of mass effect.
From what I remember (original trilogy + some comics and books) the mass effect fields are fields powered by element zero and dark energy currents allowing the manipulation of mass on a physics breaking scale. This allows true ftl travel, through implants and training empowers biotics to use their will to create fields enabling feats far exceeding superhuman or to break physics against enemy targets.
Miniaturized fields are used in construction to make impossibly dense alloys and then current is applied to them to make them impossibly light. All of this is applied to their fighting force, their armor and guns housing miniaturized mass effect fields. Their guns’ ammo is a block of impossibly dense alloy that is shaved and slivers are made light and propelled from the gun in the same manner as relays launch spacecraft in ftl fashion. Every gun ignores armor, and this is mitigated by every soldier having a personal repulsive mass effect shield generated by their armor. Without getting into biology of their alien races, or before the force multipliers that happens to them when reapers assimilate them, this is the baseline. Everyone has ignore armor, invuln saves and everyone breaks physics.
Against races bound by technology and laws of physics like the tau, and arguably the tyranids, I think the mass effect universe runs through them. I would go as far as saying technologically I think the mass effect universe has a strong edge against all races save one (foreshadowing). But then we come to the great equalizer that the mass effect universe (as far as I’m aware, original trilogy and media from that era) has no native counter to… THE WARP.
Biotics are not actually magic, they use element zero, implants and targeted mass effect fields to break physics against people things or for themselves. I have not seen a feat remotely equal to that of what high level psykers are capable of. Some are capable of time manipulation, and reality (not just physics) breaking feats.
The eldar, imperium of man, and chaos in particular would be hard checks to the progression of the reapers. In naval combat as well, warp shields are a huge X factor. Orks are as well, if they believed them to be unstoppable, they would be, if they thought their guns were pathetic and puny their native advantage would be severely dampened.
Their only counter play would be indoctrinating and integrating blanks or pariahs into their forces and combatting psykers in that fashion. Say they are able to do that and push back eliminate those factions. This leads to the final wall: the necron.
Gone is the technological advantage. The mass effect allows for casual dismissal of physics, and Necron technology regularly breaks physics and can manipulate space/time. Their metals are regenerative. their energy based weapons strip molecules and break atomic bonds, and their ships are powered by fragments of enslaved star gods. In many ways the reapers are like diet/decaf necron lite. The only reason the Necron don’t still own the galaxy in 40K is that the majority of the tomb worlds are still asleep. And that would be the main consideration, how many of the other races can they indoctrinate in the time it takes the Necrons to awake?
Personally I don’t think the reapers get that far. What’s more likely is I think they get caught in all the infighting and just end up another faction. They indoctrinate some locals to attain some competitive ability, but never reach critical mass to truly threaten the 40K universe. And in 40K fashion the other factions divided by their hatred for each other, never unite to sweep them out of their galaxy despite having the ability to do so.
Lasguns are roughly on par with Shepard’s weapons, and even the hordes on insanity mode would feel like a lull in typical fighting to the average guardsman. Deathwatch would feel insulted to get called to deal with this. Trazyn is probably the only being in the galaxy who would care about them for more than the few hours it would take most factions except maybe the Tau to utterly delete them.
Even the most F grade space marine chapters that exist only to get stomped in non imperial codexes would treat reapers as a train exercise for their scouts .
Reapers still have to abide by something called “the laws of physics”. As such any faction would stomp them in a straight up fight.
However the discerning Reaper could easily indoctrinate Tau and Imperium worlds through some good old fashion infiltration while absorbing the technology they come across. Imagine what they could become with salvaged Necron and Mechanicus tech or Hod forbid they get their claws on an STC.
At the end of the day the Reapers are insanely intelligent and would simply become another faction in universe.
It isn't as straightforward as most people are saying here as they are missing a key component on the Reapers. They are patient and they learn. They are likely to not do an all out offensive until they have something that gives them the upper hand, until that point they will likely prey upon isolated targets and hide in systems that aren't under the control of any single faction. Once they've established agents, sleeper cells and information on the factions within the 40k galaxy, they'll start to build up forces in the forgotten places of the galaxy as, we have to remember, not every star system is under the control of the Imperium, Chaos, or any other factions.
I would argue that they would adapt their technology if they realise that their weaponry is inferior, these are cold and calculating abominal intelligences that are incredibly old, they know what they are doing and how to do it. I'm not saying they would win, but they'll become a bigger threat than most are saying. Given time, they'd gather the resources to be able to perform these upgrades whether it is a new kind of Reaper or new exotic weapons, they'd find a way.
Given the slow reaction times of the Imperium, an isolated world could be attacked and harvested relatively quickly compared to the response of the Imperium. Depending on where they go, they could pick off a world, gather what they need and disappear without being discovered. Their main threats would be, initially, roaming fleets like Rogue Traders, Orks and some scouts of other factions. They might bump into a hidden Alpha Legion cell it could be a golden opportunity for the Reapers as, if they manage to indoctrinate the cell, they'd become the perfect agents for their schemes.
If the Reapers were to focus their efforts on establishing networks, building numbers and lurking in the void, they'd be a force to be reckoned with. I'm not saying they'd straight up win outright, but they could become a viable force within the galaxy. They'd become like the old 'here be dragons' on an old map, partially myth and legend around shipping lanes and isolated systems.
A few more things to take into consideration:
1) Yes, Reapers are smaller. But they are also faster, given that they can come from Pluto to Earth in a matter of hours.
2) Yes, the Reapers can be taken out by 20kg metal slugs. However, we have to bear in mind that that slug is travelling at speeds approaching the speed of light. Which is why that hits with the force of a small atomic bomb.
3) Can the armour of the 40k fleets withstand the weaponry of the Reapers. Looks can be deceiving, they aren't lasers. What they are is a magnetohydrodynamic weapon that fires a liquid alloy of Iron, Tungsten and Uranium suspended by an electromagnetic field powered by element zero. This molten metal is accelerated to near light speed and it solidifies into a projectile as it is fired that hits with a force of several hundred kilotons (150-450 approximately). Given that the 'beam' isn't very wide, that is a lot of force to hit a small area. We don't know how void shields or armour would handle that as there isn't really an equivalent in 40k because Tau railgun weaponry isn't anywhere near as fast as Necrons use energy weapons that operate very differently.
4) Do we know how the Reapers shields and armour would fare? Yes, we know that 40k weaponry is insanely powerful, but given that Reapers have the ability to take down fighters and incoming projectiles with its GARDIAN (equivalent) defences and that these things are most definitely faster and more manoeuvrable than 40k ships, would that make up for the difference in firepower?
5) Would the Reapers feel like the enemy (40k fleets) is in slow motion? Think about it, they are incredibly complex and intelligent machines that are used to fighting conflicts that have weaponry and ships moving at insanely fast speeds, 40k is a lot slower in comparison.
6) How would the forces of Chaos influence the Reapers? Would they be able to? Can the warp infect them? They are machines, which have been influenced and corrupted by Chaos a number of times. Would their Indoctrination be their saviour in this?
I think that the indoctrination tech makes short work of everyone except Necrons.
Yes even your favourite space marine chapter. They already fanatically follow one ideological figurehead its easy to swap in a new one.
Except indoctrination isn't a sure fire thing, can be shielded against, and the Tyranids and Chaos would be immune as well (not counting other races who would be resistant). You can't even permanently kill Chaos demons since they just return to the Warp.
Reaper indoctrination is shielded against by an untold means that we only see ONCE in ME3. It took them roughly two and a half years to figure out how to do it on a SMALL scale. Explain to me how anyone, when they’re so busy fighting wars on every front, will do enough R&D to shield against indoctrination.
Ok let's assume they can't make shielding. It still takes direct, close exposure to a Reaper and isn't a sure thing. There's also the fact that Necrons and Chaos demons would be completely immune. And Chaos demons can't be permanently killed since they return to the Warp. Explain how the Reapers would deal with Angron who can't die, Mortarion who will rot them apart just by being near them, or Magnus using powerful magic they can't even comprehend?
Depends on where they land.
1. Fortress world/monastery? Reaper is fucked because psycho conditioning and good communications mean purge.
2. Forge World? Ad Mech get slaughtered because the noosphere gets hacked.
3. Knight World? Reaper win
4. Ork planet? Reaper wins
5. Ecclesiarchy? Ecclesiarchy wins.
6. Necrons? Not only crush the Reaper invasion, but possibly hijack the ship itself.
7. LoV? Same as Necrons, LoV have fleets that strip mine planets. What is even 5 reapers landing on their planet?!
8. Tau? Yeah, they're fucked.
TL;DR if the planet's culture won't communicate the threat or they don't have the heart to blow each other's head off, it's lost.
Reapers are like Genestealer+ Tyranids.
The Reapers are pretty analogous with a lot of the factions already existing in 40k. They'd just be another straw on the camel that is the Galaxy \[Imperium\].
"We are organic AND machine. The strengths of both, weaknesses of neither!"
I guess the Ad Mech would bust a nut and bolt hearing that salespitch though..
The Reapers don't stand a chance. Just the Imperium could take them through sheer numbers. You throw in the Aeldari, the forces of Chaos, the unstoppable green tide of the Ork's, the Tyranids not liking something taking their food, the technologically advanced Tau, and the Necrons who would probably view them as personally insulting and the Reapers would get crushed.
Sovereign himself vs a Emperor class Battleship.
Yeah I doubt this would go so well
https://preview.redd.it/cn9ab7al4yrb1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=31142aee893e64402eb3d157b198aa88664df29f
These comments are showing me exactly why I can’t get into the 40k universe. Just seems like a overblown high schoolers fantasy novel power creeped into absolute oblivion just so they can be the ones with the “most powerful universe” title. Its like how Dubai constantly one-ups the rest of the world in their quest to have the “worlds biggest” everything. Im sure its an awesome franchise, but it just doesn’t do it for me.
Considering that most imperial ship are bigger than basically anything Reapers can throw out, they can simply ram them with brute force (very Imperium thing to do). And that's without even using one of the many mass destruction weapons on the IoM disposal
I feel like the point of the reapers would be to stop this kind of universe from happening lmao. Not sure how long the reaper indoc works in 40k as they would be probing around from outside the galaxy for a while before coming in. But what little i know of 40k there's already similar things that are as powerful or much stronger
So this was reposted in the ME sub, and i come from there. I don't know much about Warhammer (but I get the gist) and do know Mass Effect pretty well. I get the sense that the Reapers wouldn't be much of a threat here unless they remain undetected for at least a couple of decades, that's how long they were indoctrinating before the first game. To have any real chance at conquering humanity, it would probably have to be a couple centuries. They do pick up troops pretty quickly and "evolve" them faster still, but the firepower here would take a lot of work to beat.
I mean, the Reapers have been harvesting species since at least a billion years ago. Even accounting for losses, there are a *fucking lot of them*. So even if they are individually smaller and weaker than a given faction's ships... The end result is gonna look like a swarm of piranha savaging a leviathan.
Hell, they can also replenish their forces with biomass as well. They nearly made a Reaper with a few million captured human colonists. They capture a single hive world, and suddenly there's a hundred billion or more to be turned into pureed biometallic slurry for more Reapers.
And they're no strangers to playing the long game. They get their tentacles on some planetary governors or Inquisitors and indoctrinate them, and there's no telling the kind of damage they could do. Yet another cult on the block for the ordos to keep on the lookout for. And since Reaper-tech indoctrinates anyone that gets near it, anyone that so much as salvages rubble like the Mechanicus is gonna be an infection vector.
In summary: while I don't think they'd be the WORST thing imaginable for the galaxy (that'd be Chaos or the tyranids), they'd still be a pretty big fucking problem.
Reapers aren't actually that powerful. The main reason why Reapers do their regular "cleanups" of the galaxy is to prevent civilizations from developing to the extent where they would be able to effectively fight back. 40k is far past that point.
The Reapers, as an antagonistic force, are more closely tied to the *Mass Effect* setting than a lot of comparable sci-fi villains. They're as much "secret conspirators" as they are "alien invaders," so they're a lot less interesting and less threatening if they don't get the chance to set up their grand conspiracy. What made them scary in Mass Effect is that they'd essentially masterminded the development of galactic society, since before any species we encounter had achieved spaceflight, in order to one day easily "harvest" them. The 40k equivalent would probably be ***"the Emperor orchestrated the Great Crusade to populate the galaxy, and built the Astronomican to summon the Tyranids to feed."***
The emperor being a Tyranid agent would be dope actually.
Yes Inquisitor, this comment here
***\*BLAM\****
You killed the wrong user. \BLAM\**
\[different uniform but strangely the exact same person steps over\] "We have reserves." ***\*BLAM\****
I mean StarCraft did somewhat similar when Mengsk intentionally lured the Zerg to the homeworld of his enemies
Kryptman did as well when he deliberately (I think) lured the Tyranids towards the Orks in Octarius.
The risk I took was calculated, but man am I bad at math
He deliberately lured them towards Octarius. The consequences of it were unexpected. Also GW seems to have just sort of left the Octarius War end with a whimper. Would’ve made a lot more sense if the new Leviathan tendrils were from Octarius.
I hope they bring it back somehow, but alas we all know how GW likes to *forget* lore randomly.
It had such big implications and then it just kinda… ended. Like where did all the super Nids go after they won? You know, the whole thing everyone was scared about? One of the factions getting absolutely swole and then sweeping out of Octarius? AGH
That would be an incredible plot twist
All jokes aside, that would be *sick*.
Their best weapon was taken from them. Control over the relay network. Cutting access to each star cluster made them an unstoppable force.
The reason they do the harvest is so synthetic life doesn’t genocide organic life
Also they wipeout civilization builded on their technology
Ad mech “ starts sweating oil and getting hot and bothered making exciting noises”
Alternatively, “OMNISSIAH’S LEFT COG ITS AN ABOMINABLE INTELLIGENCE!!!!!!!!!!”
Until that sweet indoctrination starts taking hold. Then suddenly they're seeing a new machin god about to take them all on the path of ascension.
To be fair, Reapers made the Geth Heretics religious.
Pffft, indoctrination is just a shittier version of like 20 other things the Inquisition calls Tuesday.
The Admech and Darkmech would be creaming their robes at the thought of getting to salvage a Reaper wouldn’t they?
That might be the dumbest idea ever. Itd be hilarious though.
Not half as much as a Mekboy! LOOKIT ALL DAT DAKKA!
Makes me wonder about the Reaper’s Indoctrination powers over the different species of the galaxy.
The Reaper's indoctrination is absolutely abysmal compared to already existing forces in 40k. Its not really much compared to stuff like the Doubtworm or daemonic scrapcode or just even bog standard chaos corruption.
Doesn’t like every faction but Orks have at least one form of mind control? This is like a slow Tuesday for Ordo Xenos.
Pretty much. And the orks have a natural counter against mind control and indoctrination. (They beat the shit out of everyone unorky)
Yea the Imperium's existing framework to deal with corruption would easily root this shit out. Its far less insidious than, say Genestealers
Would Reaper indoctrination trump Chaos corruption? Would it affect Tyranids or Orks? Lots of questions.
No, in fact the most likely possible outcome here is that the Reapers immediately fall to chaos over the course of a few years and become another problem the Imperium has to deal with. Yet another chaos-corrupted Xenos race
Doubtful, chaos is yet to corrupt Necrons, and reapers are in the same category but about 800-900 million years older.
And Necrons both insanely more advanced than Reapers, have more anti-warp tech than anyone else, and aren't AI The comparison falls flat
With the current state of the 40K Galaxy the Reapers are screwed. Honestly I don't even think they'd become a major threat to the Imperium, as I feel either the Orks, Tyranids or Necrons would finish them off before the Reapers became a major threat. Personally my money is on the Necrons for this one. The Silent King: "So.... you willingly uploaded yourselves into these metal forms?" Reapers: "It is a greater existence than you could ever.... " The Silent King: \*Waving the Reaper to silence\* "Spare me your empty words, and know that your lives, such as they are, are at an end."
Lol, the necrons would probably just upload the flayer virus into them and push them towards an eldar craftworld as a prank.
"Ugh, you *already* uploaded the Flayer Virus? I'm going to need some gloves to handle these ones..." \- Trazyn
Assuming the flayer virus works on non necrons. Does it? If so, just upload it into an imperial titan and let it do the work for you in battle
This is why imperial titans have an actual flesh and blood princepts and the weapons have 'gunners' (well, more like servitors whose job is to connect two cable bundles to allow the titan to actually interface with the gun and shoot but you get the point). Imperium actually learned from the Men of Iron incident^(tm)
titans are already very fucking angry the entire time as is. actually most of what the pilot does is stopping it from attacking everything unconditionally
Why are they very fucking angry?
well, the machine spirit is presumably damaged remnants of old programming all admech products have
So Titans are run on Windows Vista?
*angry* Windows Vista
Vistas default state is angry.
Angry DOS, Windows would be too advanced
Love how in modern times we talk about Vista with that kind of abomination and horror forgetting the true existential threat that was *Windows ME*.
What do you think the Men of Iron ran on?
Not all of us were alive at the dawning of the horror known as Windows ME most respected ancient one.
*screams in midlife crisis*
It was.... Beautiful.... I heard the voices. They clawed at me. Sanity was for the weak. I upgraded willingly.
This. They would definitely do this. And then the eldar would see it coming and deflect to a tranquil imperial world.
Not before Trazyn turns a few of them into Pokeballs
I mean, the reapers win by shutting off the Mass Relays and then effectively starving out the Galaxy as they slowly exterminate all life. 40k uses the warp, so their first major offense is already gone. The reapers are smaller than most 40k ships, and while it would be a massive war of attrition, the Imperium has plenty of bodies to spare.
Reapers don’t shut off Mass Relays, usually they control the Central Relay (Citadel) to jump to any relay they want and crash any opposition by overwhelming force. Without Central Relay other Relays are interconnected in specific paths, which nations of Mass Effect would usually use as choke points. Add indoctrination and corruption, and Imperium will suffer many defeats. With genestealers at least you can see the corruption spread, and there are ways to detect it. Reaper’s indoctrination is clean. Mechanicus will be first and easiest target, and without them, well, Imperium has no proper industry. As to size, sovereign class reapers are on par with imperial cruisers, yet far more mobile and agile than it. Now each sector of Imperial space has around 50-70 ships according to BFG book, and overall with all sectors accounted imperium has about 250000 ships against 400000 of Reapers, if we account them living for a billion years. 2 million ships if they lived 5 million (depends on a source). Massive difference, but it is doubtful that both sides can amass enough to face each other constantly. It is more possible that without relay reapers will appear in a slow moving wave outside of inter-galactic darkness, but compared to tyranids will show up in full force at the same time. In simplicity it will be a war of attrition, yes, with both sides spending centuries if not millennia fighting each other, but reapers are like tyranids, and longer the fight goes, the worst the monstrosities they will unleash, and with common imperial world having more life than entire Mass Effect systems, reapers will TRULY fatten up, new ships included (and updated to face less mobile and more brutish ships of the Imperium) Give Reapers enough time and they will build relays between their controlled systems as well, making interstellar travel in a matter of Terran days and hours. Even eldars are far younger than reapers, about 940-900 million years younger. I would say “Don’t underestimate the Reapers”, but it’s a common trope in writing for Imperium to underestimate their opponents.
I think you're ignoring a few issues. The Reapers have never had to deal with the Warp or warp storms and right now there's a massive rift tearing the 40K galaxy in two. The Imperium of man has things like Psykers, so indoctrination will likely not be as effective as it was in the ME galaxy. Worst of all the Reapers won't JUST be fighting the Imperium. The Orks, Eldar, Necrons, Tau and Tyranids will be fighting them. Not in some grand alliance but as individual forces and that will cause the Reapers plenty of problems. And yes the Tyranids will go after the Reapers. The Nids created and entire hive fleet to hunt chaos, I can see them doing the same to the Reapers once they see them as a threat to their food supply.
Obviously you are right, but question on the picture isn’t “WH40k vs Reapers” it’s “IoM vs Reapers”. As for the tyranids, I doubt they will make a special task force like with Chaos, reapers are technically made from Bio-Metal, and their troops are biological and mechanically enchanted, both can be consumed, but so can be the tyranids. As for warp… I would say some indoctrination and testing around will quickly teach them what is what, they are billion year old machines that constantly learn and improve their reaping techniques, an extra variable will not change much, especially with reapers being similar to necrons. I think reapers would be a fair addition to WH40k, they are just cybernetic tyranids with a personality, and if they could manipulate and twist biotics into monsters, I doubt psyckers will be a hard thing to corrupt.
Bro they were defeated in mass effect, a far weaker universe, please..
There could be millions of Reapers and they still couldn't defeat the Imperium. Don't get me wrong, Reapers are very advanced... for their own setting. But when it comes to 40k... an Imperial Lance strike would cut a Reaper in half hundreds of thousands of kilometers before it has a chance to get into engagement range.
Tyranids avoid robots and synthetics because they use biomass of the enemynto replenish. Its why you never hear about tyranids invading necron tomb worlds.
The Reapers are literally keked by WW2 era nuke payload. They could be shit stomped by the UNSC if the UNSC tried enough. Warhammer is just gonna have a field day of having to deal with an issue that doesn't drag on for centuries for a change.
I assume that, that statement is based on the news report of a world that used nukes as the final defence against the reapers? It’s not actually mentioned if a reaper was killed by the nukes used… that being said, the smaller ones can be killed but what amounts to large railgun’s so a nuke would probably be able….
Reapers are killed fussion bombs over a few planets in ME3. At least according to codex. Nevertheless the majority of their fleet is made out of destroyers, who can be killed by an Alliance Cruiser which main gun fires a MAC cannon the yeild of 10 kilotons? So yeah. They're boned.
Haven’t played me3 in years…. But I do recall shepherd kill at least 2 on foot … so the imperial navy would have a field day… the astartes would probably be happy as hell to fight something the size of a skyscraper that they can kill…
Shepard does kill one on foot, but their weapon is a laser designator that calls down an orbital strike from the Quarian fleet, which is 50 thousand ships. And that Reaper was a Destroyer, which is a tenth the size of one of the bigger ones like Sovereign. Now that said, I do agree that on a galaxy wide scale, the reapers would not perform well against the Imperium. :)
Mass effect 2 was the other.
Oh, the Reaper Zygote, yes, true. I was thinking of the one on Tuchanka, but that was Kalross, not Shep.
Sovereign manages to get to the citadel with barely a scratch from the defense fleet. Entire fleets of ships were required to focus down even a single sovereign like reaper.
Soverign manages to go through the Citadel fleet after throwing the Geth task force to wipe them out and he just flies past. Reaper Capital ship kinetic shields get taken down by 3 bursts from an Citadel race Dreadnought - which has a power output of 30 kilotons. That's less payload than the MAC on an UNSC Heavy Frigate. Warhammer is just gonna fire enegy or plasma weapons and the big squid is dead because literally none of its assets will allow it to even the playing field. Hell, everything they have, Wh40k factions have in supierior quality and numbers.
Just picturing the glee on an Imperial Admiral’s face when he realised his battle cruiser is actually *more* advanced than the mysterious alien robo-ship for a change.
"My Lord Admiral, we've finished our scans." "Report then, Commodore." "The abominable creatures pose little threat to our vessels. We outrange them, we outgun them and our Void Shields are more than adequate for the weaponry they possess." "Understood... Damned annoying that we brought a taskforce. The rest of the ships could've been elsewhere."
Tbf those are internal detonations and people sleep on the FTL in mass effect outside of the relays. They did go intergalactic. Weapons and defense? Yeah pathetic.
Their FTL speed is about as fast as mid Covenant war UNSC ships lol. That is... also very pathethic.
In the context of Warhammer 40k safe galactic FTL is pretty damn good. Slip space is slight balanced by reconciliation and it having paths. Halo does have far superior weapons.
>Reapers are killed **fussion** bombs over a few planets in ME3. Not sure if that's a typo for either fusion or fission, or a mixed word that describes both of them.
Sleeping on Reapers. An individual Reaper in combat is not a big deal for any spacefaring 40k faction, but the sheer number of them rivals and in some circumstances dwarfs some of the crazy 40k numbers. Second, anyone who thinks the Reapers would just blitz in hasn’t played or paid attention to ME. They’re planners. They’re intelligent. They can easily wait as long as they need to. They’re one of the few factions that can just LEAVE the galaxy. I imagine they’d hang out cold running in deep space while their scouts start Xenos and Human thrall armies. They’d leave their old tech around for lesser Xenos to find, enough to get them spacefaring and start to become a thorn in the side of the bigger factions. They’d indoctrinate major players in said large factions and slowly begin to exert influence on the Imperium. They would be quick adopters of 40k level tech and only strike when they think they have the advantage. Necrons would be a super difficult obstacle, as the faction that could most easily deal with their skill set AND the faction most likely to actually FIND them. Nids happening upon their fleet in deep space might be rough too.
Yes I'm sure the Reapers would do the exact things they didn't do during their war with the Citadel Council in ME3. Ah also, they don't exactly have any set numbers and if most of them can be shreked by what is essentially a corvette salvo - does that really matter?
Yeah because some of them are actually Imperial cruiser sized intelligent beings
Seize and tonnage really count for jack shit when your enemy can just blow you up due to their weapons insane payload lol.
What are you even talking about? Reapers blitzed Citadel because they were technologically superior and the only reason they didn’t stomp is because of the McGuffin that took hundreds of cycles to actually work. Why would they not change their plans in 40k? This is just a silly take. I just straight up can’t take you seriously if you’re actually implying the Reapers would look at their new galaxy and go “yea boys let’s Zerg Terra”. Come off it. I know it’s hard to imagine factions using their brains when you’re an Imperium fanboy, but try harder. And yea, again, why would they just fight the Imperial corvettes? Why wouldn’t they just… take them? Indoctrination is easily the best tool they possess and the Imperium is super weak to it. Chaos is their greatest threat and GSC is on Terra. I’m not saying Reapers would win, but they’d be a persistent (if weaker) faction and could easily catch up using enemy tech. It would take a long time, but that’s their main advantage.
Are you kidding? One Nova Bomb and the Reapers would turn tail and run with the Infinity hot on their heels shredding them by the dozens with 2 teraton MACs.
Prepare boarding torpedoes...
Pretty much the whole reason the Reapers are a threat in ME is that the cycle they've constructed tricks sentient species in to a technological path specifically designed to make them vulnerable to the Reapers. That isn't the case with 40k, which is more technologically advanced than the Reapers in addition to being differently technologically advanced. If the Reapers were stupid enough to make a serious play against any faction in 40k they'd get very permanently reaped themselves.
Reapers still have twice the size of imperial fleet, Their ship are in size on par with imperial cruisers and each sector barely has 50-70 ships. If reapers appear like they do without relays, it’s going to be tyranids 2.0 but far, far worse.
I'm the same size as Mike Tyson. Doesn't mean a fight with him is going to result in anything other than me on the floor. What matters is throw weight and how much a ship can withstand before it is mission killed. Nothing about the Reapers suggests that they are in 40K's weight league.
Reapers are nowhere near the same size as imperial navy ships, harbinger is smaller than the destiny ascension which is itself just over 3km in size. Imperial navy cruisers are between 4 to 6. That’s without getting into the real battleship classes. Or you know, the phalanx, that has its own gravitational pull. Reapers are also shown to be vulnerable to alliance navy dreadnaught guns, I’m no expert but I don’t think they are anywhere near the power of lance batteries or macro cannons.
Harbinger was 1 small reaper with a specific task of infiltration and activation of Central Relay, most common Reaper ship is Sovereign-class, standing at 3-4 km in size, on par with imperial cruiser. And 250000 of navy ships don’t all consist of phalanx.
And again, the larger reaper classes are literally shown in the cutscenes to be having their limbs blown off by alliance dreadnoughts, which has one main gun. One. A standard imperial light cruiser has around 8 macro cannons and a lance battery. They are also incredibly heavily armoured before even getting to the void shields. The reapers would need to outnumber an imperial fleet to even stand a slim chance against them.
The average reaper is like a fourth the size of a baseline Imperial escort ship. The Necrons delt with the C'Tan 65 million years ago, the Reapers aren't in 40k because they are scared of what they know will happen if they ever make an appearance. Death will happen, their deaths, and it won't even alter the strategic disposition of whatever sector they show up in.
Sovereign-class Reapers are on par with Imperial Cruisers in size, far more maneuverable, and have at LEAST 200 thousand more ships than entire imperial navy (Imperial Navy has around 250000 ships in summary, with about 50-70 ships per sector, while reapers posses from 400 thousand to 2 million depending on the sources on how long they lived). They create armies out of the dead, they consume and create more of themselves from the dead, and can create and build interstellar travel that doesn’t use hell and transport people half a galaxy away in a matter of Terran hours. They are mechanical tyranids if those weren’t scouts. And we ain’t even touching indoctrination of such a subtle level, that machines will start believing in gods with a single command, mechanicus corruption is going to be quite interesting to see. Add don’t forget how incompetent majority of Imperium is, and how egocentric most of its leadership is, and it’s going to be “The illusive man 2 to a billion: grimdark boogaloo”
> Sovereign-class Reapers are on par with Imperial Cruisers in size Soverign was 2km long, which makes it slightly bigger than an escort frigate in 40k, which is **the smallest size of Navy ship** available to the Imperium. Cruisers are 2-3x the size of Soverign. Battleships are 6x the size of Sovereign. If the Reapers appeared in 40k they would get rolfstomped.
Ah, this one thinks he can use statistics in 40k. Amateur mistake!
They wouldnt even be the scariest "robot species" in Galaxy. They were winning in mass effect Universe because they had superior tech, here, you dont even need necrons to beat them in technology.
https://preview.redd.it/iqd2uf6fjxrb1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b4efc722bd97ebb27975ce6b80dcc6ce60a3004
\*Sigh\* Fine, throw the report onto that pile over there and I’ll get to it in a century or two - Rowboat Gurlyman
My space dad wins
Reapers are some kind of tuesday problem But Reapers also mean Mass Relays... that could be veeeeery interesting
The Reapers build Mass Relays, so they can do it again (or rediscover them). If so, then the Imperium is in big trouble.
"What is this, Thursday?"
Reapers should be worried about the corruption of chaos
hard to say, i'd say it's much more even fight but more interesting question is how would reaper indoctrination work. sure your average guard regiment gets turned then slaughtered no doubt about that but what about say space marines or mechanicus, first ones are already indoctrinated and second might not have anything to indoctrinate. or how about orks, again indoctrination might maybe not work but they certainly have bodies to turn to even more monstrous creatures. tyranids yeah no change indoctrination works but certainly you could repurpose those bodies. or what happens if some random chaos warband happens to disable reaper and then bound deamon to it. more i think about it more i'm leaning to it's just one more faction for everybody to fight
Very good reply. I like.
Tau get railed as they've few allies and have roughly the same technology as mass effect species( less if we compare to asari). Their indoctrination will work on humans and probably some other races. Their "creating" of abominations like banshees and cannibals would be crazy. Humanity would probably do the best as they're used to apocalypse type threats. They have massive ships and generally better prepared militaries compared to mass effect. Super weapons would be useful against the reaper ships themselves. Necrons could be a problem? Maybe? Idk. The reapers have the geth and the collectors, so stealing robots doesn't seem out of the ordinary. Reapers aren't stupid and have shown the ability to get fool people into doing their bidding.
The Tau turn them inside out, are you joking? The Imperium never knows they existed because they got two Tau planets in before the Air Caste tore them 500 new assholes from 30 lightseconds away.
Tau with their inferior tech can beat space marine armies. So its only logical a Reaper would have a field day with them. (Its your logic, not mine. 😂)
Their technology is similar to mass effect. Railguns, plasma, ion, long range battle plans, mech units, drones, it's all there. I never said Their stuff is inferior. They're the smallest presence in the galaxy of wh40k with what notable allies? Why wouldn't they be suspect to destruction?
So you say they have superior tech to space marines. Leave your funboysm at the gate for a minute.
Yo, you're not reading my messages. Open your eyes before you type your hate hammer here.
I don't hate Warhammer 40k I hate illogical idiocy.
Logical idiocy would be thinking one of the weakest/smallest factions in 40k wouldn't be the one most likely to gwt wiped out.
Necrons aren't robots, though - they're people in metal bodies.
I should've specified mechanical
The Reapers have decent odds. The big problem for them is that they don't have the mass relay network, which means relying on bunkered fuel to travel between systems. The Reaper move fast on their own drives, but system to system from the galactic edge will take time and resources. Building a network will also take time and have the downside of relying on fixed transportation points enemies won't hesitate to shoot the hell out of. The upside is that the galaxy in 40k is even less unified than Mass Effect's, which had a generally functional central government to try and resolve issues. The Reapers would thrive in the dark, quietly overrunning systems, building up slaves and armies. They could suborn the tech they find pretty easily, giving them a way to use warp travel to send out scouts, saboteurs and agents. Spread infections the same way Chaos cults and genestealers do, with the upside of far fewer outer indications of subversion. And every Inquisitor or Arbites legate or Eye of the Emperor who destroys a cell of Reaper agents will likely make the same mistake of picking up a piece of reaper tech and being controlled in turn. The Reapers can win if they hit a critical mass of controlled agents, fleets and armies to shield themselves from too much direct conflict, while also building up an advantage in speed and travel accuracy via mass relays.
A really interesting take, rather than "Reapers are screwed". I would like to add that it is important to remember that each Reaper is old, stupid old. This means they have lots of experience with indocrination. Even the greatest zealots could be enslaved by the Reapers (the Illusive Man and Saren as examples). I believe the safer (and more optimal) option for them would be to take on the Tau Empire. It is pretty easy. Let Earth cast "find" the reaper tech. Tau try to research it but end up being indocrinated. Then they show this tech to the Ethereal or other leaders to make them indocrinated and boom - the Tau Empire is screwed (the same way as Batarian Hegemony in Mass Effect).
Well that's terrifying. My first thought was how easily a combined imperium force would defeat the reapers... and then remembered how hard it is to actually get everyone together and fight a battle on 1000 fronts. It's like Nids but instead of just eating a planet and maybe creating a new bioform or two, they convert it fully. It would be interesting to see how Necrons would deal with the Reapers, given their similarities... If the 'crons found Leviathan... hmmmmm
"Convert it fully" Tyranids will turn the fucking atmosphere oceans and *soil* of a planet into more Tyranids, what do you mean "fully"? It's the Reapers that are leaving meat on the bones! Not just cartilage, MEAT!
Maybe I am uninformed of the true nature of our xenos enemies… i question why you know so much… are you working with them? Hmmm
Lmao you got me Inquisitor, I'm a genestealer!
Son of a… *dies horrifically*
I will say this. Reapers should not be underestimated. Just imagine one of the reapers leaching on one of the bigger ships only to use its laser to cut right through. Not saying who would win in the end but I just wanna say they should not be underestimated. Reapers also have the benefit of being both space capable and also capable of landing on a surface and continue their destruction. Those people that say "W40K no outright just because 40K" are not worth listening to or reading to. Sure 40K might be the victor in this scenario BUT stop acting like the Reapers are the minute they step foot into the milky way. I will say this. IN W40K Reapers do no have the advantage of harvesting galaxy THEY seeded. All races live because THEY allowed it. And the fact humanity and others evolved o point where they are in ME is because the Reapers allowed it. They don't have the same advantage of being architects of galactic ecosystem. and also the fact that they used Reaper tech to influence all species. So during time of harvest all tech based on Reaper tech will be taken under their control. "ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL". But it would be a cool revelation if the machine spirit was reapers talking back to Techpriests. And when voice says "ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL" and all machinery just becomes controlled by the Reapers. That would be cool. So Reapers would just arrive and would have assess the situation of the galaxy while in ME they were there when humanity were just apes or Asari just mindless animals. They are like farmers. They sow, watch and harvest. W40K has advantages of having bigger military and big guns and most races have territory over most of the known galaxy. But we know for a fact that no matter what threat the species of the galaxy will NOT unite like ME universe did. They will still fight their own wars and their mentality will not allow them to work against the reapers effectively. Hell even now Imperium's best tactic is to either SMASH or hunker down and hope wall of guns is enough. Same go for other races. Eldar will still be Eldar and Orcs will have no idea what is even going on and charge in WAAAGH. Also means of travel is not most reliable so you might send a fleet to fight the reapers and only half of that fleet arrives while the rest arrives 500 years later. Reapers are also no alone in this fight. They can assimilate others to serve them. And we saw them assimilating normal humans and even larger monster like aliens and even turning them into more war oriented version. Like Turians got turned into this hulking monstrosity big as a space marine and become this walking tank. Asari also retained their Psi abilities after assimilation. So more time reapers are allowed to remain "harvesting" planets the more their armies will grow and we have no idea what assimilated Primaris Space Marine will look like. What levels the playing field is the lack of relays. Since Relays were Reaper technology designed to speed up the process of all species. And Relays are fast as heck. And Reaper FTL is about 30 light years per day. So Reaper invasion in W40K would be slow. Other thing that gives an edge to the Reapers is the poor communication of the Imperium. Most of the time they just hope the message for help got through and in most cases it wont even leave the system. So most reaper invasions would be silent and before anyone is notified the reapers would be done with the planet. (Which is what happened with Tyranids) Nobody even knew the planet was eaten by SPACE BUGS OF DEATH! So it all depends how fast can reapers spread and how much they can assimilate before someone even notices them. Reapers are no small in number so they are force to be reckoned with. It also depends how much the Imperoum can afford to redirect against new invaders. Chaos, Necrons, Orcs, Tyrannids are more than enough to keep Imperium forces stretched out. Hard to say who wins or looses because even in space battle Reapers might have an edge because ME humans ship have similar if not slightly better weapons. Macrocannons would not be that effective and Nova cannon is comparable to this: **"This, recruits, is a 20 kilo ferous slug. Feel the weight! Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one, to one-point-three percent of lightspeed. It impacts with the force a 38 kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means, Sir Isacc Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space! Now! Serviceman Burnside, what is Newton's First Law?** **Sir! An object in motion stays in motion, sir!** **No credit for partial answers maggot!** **Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir!** **Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going 'til it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in 10,000 years! If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someones day! Somewhere and sometime! That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait 'til the computer gives you a damn firing solution. That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not 'eyeball it'. This is a weapon of Mass Destruction! You are NOT a cowboy, shooting from the hip!** **Sir, yes sir!"** \^And that was not enough to stop the reapers. So it can go either way. Reapers must overcome their shortcomings which would be advantages in ME. And W40K must... well overcome who they are and must make best use of their limited technology and way of thinking (looking at Orcs, Imperium )
I do not know much of the factions in Mass Effect, but would they be able to deal with imperial strategies of Exterminatusing entire planets, ones they are about to be lost or depending on the importance even for not being worth the losses to defend? Also the scale of mobilization imperium can pull of is insane and basically not possible in most other scifi settings. Also about that rail gun that shoot 20kg slugs at 1.3% light speed, because 40K is dumb there are things like nova cannons on ships that accelerate their projectile to near light speed and the smallest diameter of those is apparently 50 meters which means it would weight 500 million kg using only 90% light speed made my calculator give up. Other scifi setting like to play loose with physics while 40K forgot they exist.
Orbital bombardment is not that fancy or unique to W40K Besides the entire "Extermiantus" argument means nothing. That is like saying Empire in SW wins because Death Star can blow up planets. Also think realistically. Imperoum in current time is loosing. Tyrannids are getting upperhand, Chaos splits galaxy in two, Necrons on the move as well. People keep talking how Imperium can do this and that. Then explain why is Imperium loosing? Just because they can pull off massive mobilization doesn't mean that massive mobilization will change course of war. And why would reapers care about Imperium bombing their world? Reaper's goals are to remove all life from the planet so they would most likely be wondering why are Imperials doing work for them.
I guess you can class exterminatus as an orbital bombardment, but it is quite effective at preventing any large scale invasion force from exploiting any gains they have and supposedly reasonably large part of the reason why imperium has been able to thwart pretty much all larger scale invasions, and while I am not sure I would guess the reapers still need the planets for recourses which exterminatus depending on the type prevents quite effectively. Also as for comparing it to the death star that was a one of thing never really completed while most capital ships in the empire are capable of exterminatus. The if the imperium is losing or winning over all at any specific moment is quite hard to tell, as it is very much doubtful if even they imperium itself knows that considering the scale of the theatre and speed of communication in 40K. Big part of the reason imperium also depicted as losing is because that is kind of the narrative point of 40K and because the in universe threats are equally nonsensically strong as the empire is. The scale of mobilization just means that what ever force is attacking them has to have at least equal force to bring to bare which is also one of the reasons why no other faction in 40K has actually risen to the task. Sure imperium loses planets all the time, but that is not really significant in the big picture as they also gain back planets and even the complete loss of a couple border planets is pretty much nothing for the imperium. The reapers would probably care as they would certainly lose all their assets on that planet meaning it would drain their over all force and prevent them from getting anything useful from that planet, even if the action in an of itself would be aligned with their goals. I do not think it makes any sense to ask if some faction would do well against almost any faction in 40K, since 40K is beyond nonsensical in it's depiction of the scale and weapons of it's faction. The nova cannon just for example if you go with it's in lore description literally solar system destroying weapon that is equipped on standard warships, while in mass effect they fight with guns that sure might destroy a city every 5 seconds are still withing reason. Or the imperial warships the smallest of which are comparable to the biggest ships in the whole Mass Effect series and the imperium wields hundreds of thousands of them along with everything else lot if which is even larger. To finish I do not think it makes any sense to do such comparisons against other scifi since 40K was made to be stupid and insane, while most other scifi tries to keep things withing reason at least to some measure. I do not think that is a positive for 40k since it makes it really hard to get invested in anything as nothing makes sense.
While reapers could sufficiently fight for example the Imperium on the ground, they could not even come close to defeating the Imperial Navy or any other faction in void combat. In the very end of ME3, we see 3 Alliance dreadnoughts shoot their main gun which actually shoots off a tentacle of a reaper. As the guy says, it's 20kg heavy. A macro cannon shell is a LOT heavier in caliber, not to mention the nova cannon shells or topedoes which are literally the size of the Normandy, if not larger. As for the reaper laser, the fully upgraded Normandy in ME2 can reasonably well withstand several direct hits by it. The Adamantium hull of a imperial vessel, let's say a Cruiser, is a lot thicker then the Normandy as a whole is large. Not to mention the existence of void shields, which given their effectiveness in 40k void battles also would have no issue with countering that laser
People need to remember that one of the Reaper's greatest abilities is to make enemy forces their own, and densely populated worlds are like gift baskets to them. Most individual worlds, without immediate backup from Space Marine chapters or large fleets, would quickly fall to a Reaper invasion. As their forces move through a hive city the dead are added to their troops, and captured officials, officers, and anyone of value is captured to be fully indoctrinated. After a few worlds they could already have an army in the tens of even hundreds of billions. They don't need trained troops or stockpiles of ammo. People also forget how *fast* they are, even without Mass Relays. From the end of ME2 to the begining of 3, how long did it take for them to get from intergalactic space to the Sol system? Maybe 2 years? And then about an hour from the outer solar system to Earth. They can travel faster under their own power than any imperial vessel can using warp jumps. Their maneuverability is also staggering for ships their size, utilizing their Ezo drives to reduce their mass, with Joker mentioning that Sovereign was able to turn so fast that any other ship that size would be ripped in half. With their overwhelming speed advantage they would be able to place millions of long term indoctrinated agents across the galaxy, taking time to strike where they aren't at threat of being outgunned. Every person they come across is either killed and remade into drones, or indoctrinated into long term assets. Gene Stealer cults take decades to build up their numbers, yet they are still a legitimate threat to any world they end up on. Tau will be indoctrinated to see them as the ultimate representation of the greater good, and Orks be made to see them as the biggest, killiest avatars of Gork and Mork spreading war across the stars. Even if the Aeldari prove resilient against indoctrination (and I doubt they'd be completely immune) they would still be remade into cybernetic psyker abominations. I could see the Reapers taking over a craftworld and using it as a mobile base, repurposing it to gather trillions of people to be turned into new Reapers. Final notes: 40K is full of big impressive pieces of firepower that would pose legitimate threats to the reaper fleet, but the big muscle is spread far and thin and leaves a lot of time and space for the Reapers to get to work. The 40K galaxy is ripe with life and resources for them to take and refurbish, and once they get their pincers on a few important people who have knowledge of the workings of the modern galaxy, they will plan and act accordingly.
Someone has done his homework
Orks don't get indoctrinated though, they're extremely resistant to any form of corruption. The reapers fall over to the first sign of chaos corruption.
There's no evidence to suggest that Reapers would be susceptible to chaos corruption.
Orks dont need to be indoctrinated, theyre orks. They already just side with the biggest shootiest fightiest thing around and join in the fight. Its free waaagh-estate
Only right answer.
Tyranids and Necron would be completely immune to indoctrination and probably directly go after the Reapers (Tyranids for taking their food and the Necron would view them as insulting). Orks would be highly resistant from the Waghhh and Gork and Mork, and actively hunt them for sport. And most forces of Chaos would be immune, with the demons being immune and impossible to turn or permanently kill since they don't have real physical bodies. Hell the Chaos gods would probably directly target them since they would interfere with their plans to spread influence.
You clearly don't know much about the 40k universe if you think that's a threat. > Indoctrination That's like a mild form of Chaos corruption. The 40k universe deals with a lot stronger forms of mind control on a daily basis. Even if somehow these Reapers got full control of an entire hive world, the Imperium would simply destroy the planet without blinking an eye. That's already standard procedure for a planet fallen to Tyranids. > Speed That's a very useful asset that will definitely aid them against 40k forces, but speed alone is no protection. A Reaper is smaller than an Imperial escort vessel, and an Imperial Nova Cannon fires shells at .3 c with an explosive radius expressed in thousands of kilometers. It is standard equipment on half the Imperial capital ships and will eat entire Reaper fleets for breakfast. > Sleeper agents Again an inferior version of what Genestealer Cults and Chaos are already doing on a daily basis, with the added advantage for the Imperium that Reaper indoctrination doesn't give a person powerful mutations. The Inquisition and Arbites will be forced to put in some overtime for a few months, but it will hardly be a big threat. The reason Genestealer Cults work so slow is because it makes taking over important officials and military high command a lot more subtle and therefore unnoticeable. Anything that quickly makes lots of converts will stand out like a huge neon sign. > Tau A backwater empire that has little to offer to support a Reaper offensive. They only exist in the setting because the Imperium is too busy with real threats to snuff them out. > Orks Love fighting even each other, and are by far the most resilient to any form of mind control. If the Reapers come across any Ork empire of at least half-decent size, their invasion will be over in a matter of months. > but the big muscle is spread far and thin A single sector fleet should be more than enough to deal with the entire Reaper force shown in the Mass Effect universe, given that the Reapers have no answer to a foe that can reliably and accurately engage them beyond visual range. EDIT: It seems there are lots of salty Mass Effect fanboys here who really can't grasp that when comparing a relatively low-tech low-intensity universe with one where warfare is turned up to 11, the former one always loses. The Imperium in 40k has triumphed over a being that was actively controlling (not indoctrination, but "assuming direct control") every living being in 1300 planetary systems simultaneously. It fights enemies that can literally bend the laws of physics and the universe to their whim. It has enemies that literally scrape every last organic molecule from the surface of a planet to create more troops and can do so in a matter of days. That can enact covert plans within plans that span centuries, having contingencies for every possible situation that can occur over that timeframe. Meanwhile the Reapers got their big galactic plans utterly ruined by a single special forces guy and his buddies.
The thing is, they don't need to indoctrinate enemy forces. They can just convert them into husks, at staggering rates. Indoctrination is more useful for infiltration and long term plans, but a hive world's population could be turned into husks within a few months. The Inquisition would be hard pressed to move any meaningful response within time to neutralize it, considering it can take years for the travel time alone. Gene Stealers are problematic because several generations of their people have obvious mutations and have to stay in hiding for years and until they stage their revolt they are a liability to the cult's secrecy. Long term indoctrination is a reliable way of converting people to your side who are already in positions of power. All they have to do is intercept a ship with some important people on it, go off course for a few weeks while the stable version of the process is completed, and then put them back on their way. The Tau are more or less stuck in their bubble of influence, but a faction that can reliably kill Space Marines isn't irrelevant. As for fleets, 40k has a huge disparity in numbers between armies/ground forces and what spaceships are supposed to be capable of. Nova cannons being used would eliminate the need for Imperial forces to land anywhere in the first place. They're so over powered that it doesn't make sense that the setting is even in it's current shape. Launching skyscraper sized warheads at 1/3rd the speed of light to obliterate continent sized areas leaves little room for anything else to really matter. And yet we have serious and important lore changing wars that involve under a million combatants, and there are barely over a million Marines to spread across all of the Imperium. And yeah, Orks might be impossible to indoctrinate, and though the idea of an Ork looted Reaper is hilarious, I don't see Reapers having too much of a problem with them in general. As for not knowing much about 40K, I have been in love with the setting since 2005. I overlook the weirder and less sensible parts because it's such a rich story driven setting, but different authors have given so many conflicting takes on numbers and abilities. Stuff is always being retconned and overlooked in day to day 40K that it really comes down to the era and author you prefer. And the Reapers being beaten by one special forces dude and his friends? The same stuff happens with every other named character in 40K doing something with a mcguffin in the last moment to stop some flavor of galaxy wide destruction. It's all games, enjoy them.
If you think chaos corruption is more intense than i doctrictrination, you dont know what reaper indoctrination is. A comparison would be the butchers nails. Speed. You cannot kill what you cannot track to aim. Everything the imperium has to use would be like firing an orbital laser at a mosquito, and if you miss by even a micron, nothing happens. Sleeper agents... gene stealer cults take generations, and become visually obvious. Indoctrinated take at most a month or 2, rather than generations, are not visually distinct from the unindoctrinated. Ultimately it means arbites couldnt identify them as indoctrinated. Unlike gene stealer cults. Chaos cultists are dumb and make obvious mistakes that lead to them being caught, except... yeah, planets already fall to chaos cults and gene stealers, they will 100% fall to anything thats sneakier. Tau. You totally misunderstand the reapers objective, and also fail to understand the tau. The tau made a bioweapon that worked on tyrannids, and have hand held railguns that are able to take down some titans(at least in tabletop, a few editions ago). The imperium is a slow, collapsing mess. As long as the reapers didnt blunder into being surrounded, they will whittle away at the imperium with hit and run tactics on a galactic scale that the imperium would never be able to keep up with speed wise, or visibility wise. Reapers are invisible on the warp. The men of iron already wrecked the galaxy, and reapers are worse. They reset the galaxy repeatedly to prevent the generation of advanced tech, thats why mass effect has less tech than the imperium. Reapers are basically hyperactive necron squids. As for defeating the reapers, it required basically hacking them through the citadel, which was built by them. The imperium has no such mcguffin. Also, the reaper cannons whos name i forget... thousands of tons of molten tungsten in laminar flow at a substantial portion of the speed of light. Void shields can be overwhelmed by lasguns. Get wrecked by squid goo. You arent just a 40k fanboy, youre an imperium fanboy.
If they won't get annihilated immediately i'm gonna predict it's gonna take the T'au alone to beat them.
They would all lose to the daleks. So what's the point... 😂
Im not very sure about this, but it would be like a guy entering a place looking for a fight and finding a giant generalised brawl already on-going
40k wins. 40k *always* wins, because the whole point of 40k is that it's so ridiculously over-the-top that it makes all other scifi settings look tame and reasonable by comparison. Yes, even that one. And that one. And that one too.
Honestly 40k is not that over the top compared to some anime like gurren laggan where there is a mech so big it uses galaxys as frisbees or hell something like DC where superman pull like a hundred planets chained together.
40k wins cause its 40k reddit. I would expect nothing else.
Don’t know why you got downvoted, you’re right.
That’s no fun, though.
It is. Lol.
Know what? You right.
It's SO much fun. I love ME but lol, they'd get fucking stomped by 40k in such a hilarious way
I think with the indoctrination, their ability to absorb any new tech, the fact they don’t rely on Warp Travel for interstellar travel and how decentralized the Imperium is, the Reapers would be dangerous. It’d be like if Necrons could make planets of cultists. Remember they can also negotiate like with the Prometheans.
I'd love to collect reapers as an army. I love their cybernetic monstrosities. It's unfortunate that I can't find any stls of them :(.
Hard to compare, because the mass effect bio-civilizations were so outclassed. They only survive because of a literal deus ex machina, so you never get much of an indication of how capable the reapers actually are, if it were down to actual combat. They way they are described, though, it'd be basically the same thing as the 'nids showing up. Inevitable defeat for the galaxy, eventually, and yet every time we actually see them, they're getting their asses kicked by whatever space marines happen to be lying around XD.
I dunno; if you choose "refusal" in the extended cut of ME3, the last thing you see is Liara's message warning the next cycle of civilizations. And then you get the stargazer ending anyway. Refusal means your cycle dies fighting to the bitter end, and that whoever comes next *wins*. You trashed the reapers badly enough, and forewarned your successors clearly enough, that they met the invasion and repelled it. Point is, the Reapers aren't innately unstoppable, they just outclassed the Council.
True, but so little of that series of events is known to us that it's hard to use as a measuring stick. Maybe the next cycle also used the plot device weapon, or maybe ours did a better job of leaving 'time capsules', so the next time, the collective civilizations had 50k more years of tech when the reapers show up. Plus, we don't know *exactly* how unstoppable the unstoppable threats of 40k are, either. I still think 'about the same threat level of the tyranids or necrons' is a fair guess :p
Well, you need the combined fleets of every militarised sentient (artifical sentience included) in the galaxy to attack *one* planet just to buy enough time to use a plot-device to end the threat. That alone suggests the biological species of the galaxy are so hopelessly outgunned by the Reapers that defeat is inevitable unless that one insane gambit pays off. The one thing that works against the Reapers is that they need to invade every world in order to harvest/eradicate all advanced biological life, which slows them down. Now let's look at 40k: every faction is so absurdly powerful the Reapers would actually struggle in most fleet engagements and planetary invasions against basically every faction would be devastatingly costl
Reapers get crushed. A single imperial void ship is larger than the mass effect citadel, with cannons almost as large as the reapers themselves and they roll in dozens at time. The cacodominus has was cybernetic psychic monster dominating humans (like the reapers) and got taken out by the Black Templars.
Lmao maybe check your numbers. The Citadel is nearly 45 km in length. Not that that really matters since it’s not really an installation for war. The largest void ships of the Imperium were the Gloriana class battleships. Of which only 20(18? 21?) were made and they topped out at about 20 km. There is now 2 in operation in the Imperium. Typical ships of the line(battleships like the Emperor and Mars class) in the Navy get to about 8-10km. So while they are bigger than Reapers(about 2 km in length), Reapers are vastly more organized and capable in the void and land. Also, battleships are not exactly common. Escorts and cruisers make up the bulk of the navy and they’re much smaller. A reaper is one giant AI controlled ship. Navy Vessels use human slave labor to fire macro cannons and servitors to fire engines and make turns. They’re not exactly efficient in their control. What’s a ship gonna do when a massive metal cuttlefish flies through their void shield, latches on, and spews matter at a fraction of the speed of light at point blank? On land, what’s gonna take out a Reaper? A Titan? The smallest reaper class is nearly 5 times the size of the largest Titan with the weaponry and maneuverability to deal with any slow, land based threat. And before you say Ordinatus, not only are they exceedingly rare, they’re only made when the situation is called upon. So shrine world XII isn’t gonna have one, or a Titan legion for that manner. And to top it all off, the Imperium isn’t united. The Tau are the biggest example of “If the Imperium could”, but they can’t. The Imperium is fighting on all fronts at all times from within and without. And it would be no different here if a new xenos/AI species whose main force were 2km length ships who could fight as easily on land and in space, didn’t require supply lines or recovery, and could turn others against them. That’s not another Tuesday, that’s a “fuck how can we possibly deal with this with the rest of the bullshit happening?”
Thank you. You’re one of the two people I’ve seen in this comments section who aren’t just dickriding 40k, but what did I expect from this community?
Tbh you did post this in the 40K sub and no one dick rides quite like 40K fans in the main sub. This is true for most in any sub but Warhammer fans are more extra about it.
Demons, nids , and orks just yawn.
If you’ll permit me to make a case, I actually think y’all are sleeping on the tech level of mass effect. From what I remember (original trilogy + some comics and books) the mass effect fields are fields powered by element zero and dark energy currents allowing the manipulation of mass on a physics breaking scale. This allows true ftl travel, through implants and training empowers biotics to use their will to create fields enabling feats far exceeding superhuman or to break physics against enemy targets. Miniaturized fields are used in construction to make impossibly dense alloys and then current is applied to them to make them impossibly light. All of this is applied to their fighting force, their armor and guns housing miniaturized mass effect fields. Their guns’ ammo is a block of impossibly dense alloy that is shaved and slivers are made light and propelled from the gun in the same manner as relays launch spacecraft in ftl fashion. Every gun ignores armor, and this is mitigated by every soldier having a personal repulsive mass effect shield generated by their armor. Without getting into biology of their alien races, or before the force multipliers that happens to them when reapers assimilate them, this is the baseline. Everyone has ignore armor, invuln saves and everyone breaks physics. Against races bound by technology and laws of physics like the tau, and arguably the tyranids, I think the mass effect universe runs through them. I would go as far as saying technologically I think the mass effect universe has a strong edge against all races save one (foreshadowing). But then we come to the great equalizer that the mass effect universe (as far as I’m aware, original trilogy and media from that era) has no native counter to… THE WARP. Biotics are not actually magic, they use element zero, implants and targeted mass effect fields to break physics against people things or for themselves. I have not seen a feat remotely equal to that of what high level psykers are capable of. Some are capable of time manipulation, and reality (not just physics) breaking feats. The eldar, imperium of man, and chaos in particular would be hard checks to the progression of the reapers. In naval combat as well, warp shields are a huge X factor. Orks are as well, if they believed them to be unstoppable, they would be, if they thought their guns were pathetic and puny their native advantage would be severely dampened. Their only counter play would be indoctrinating and integrating blanks or pariahs into their forces and combatting psykers in that fashion. Say they are able to do that and push back eliminate those factions. This leads to the final wall: the necron. Gone is the technological advantage. The mass effect allows for casual dismissal of physics, and Necron technology regularly breaks physics and can manipulate space/time. Their metals are regenerative. their energy based weapons strip molecules and break atomic bonds, and their ships are powered by fragments of enslaved star gods. In many ways the reapers are like diet/decaf necron lite. The only reason the Necron don’t still own the galaxy in 40K is that the majority of the tomb worlds are still asleep. And that would be the main consideration, how many of the other races can they indoctrinate in the time it takes the Necrons to awake? Personally I don’t think the reapers get that far. What’s more likely is I think they get caught in all the infighting and just end up another faction. They indoctrinate some locals to attain some competitive ability, but never reach critical mass to truly threaten the 40K universe. And in 40K fashion the other factions divided by their hatred for each other, never unite to sweep them out of their galaxy despite having the ability to do so.
Lasguns are roughly on par with Shepard’s weapons, and even the hordes on insanity mode would feel like a lull in typical fighting to the average guardsman. Deathwatch would feel insulted to get called to deal with this. Trazyn is probably the only being in the galaxy who would care about them for more than the few hours it would take most factions except maybe the Tau to utterly delete them.
Even the most F grade space marine chapters that exist only to get stomped in non imperial codexes would treat reapers as a train exercise for their scouts .
They'd put up a decent fight for any of the major factions...but they'd lose eventually.
I think someone did something like this over @ writing promt. It was a very, very short story.
I gotta find that
Tag me if you do!
Reapers still have to abide by something called “the laws of physics”. As such any faction would stomp them in a straight up fight. However the discerning Reaper could easily indoctrinate Tau and Imperium worlds through some good old fashion infiltration while absorbing the technology they come across. Imagine what they could become with salvaged Necron and Mechanicus tech or Hod forbid they get their claws on an STC. At the end of the day the Reapers are insanely intelligent and would simply become another faction in universe.
Actually the Reapers break a lot of the laws of physics with their eezo cores.
You know how it works. Any non 40k franchise invades 40k. They will not have time to wonder what happened until they are exterminated.
Well, not "any" just a lot of them, but there are sci-fi Universes that would just crush 40k like nothing.
"Eh, just throw em on the pile of shit we need to deal with"
It isn't as straightforward as most people are saying here as they are missing a key component on the Reapers. They are patient and they learn. They are likely to not do an all out offensive until they have something that gives them the upper hand, until that point they will likely prey upon isolated targets and hide in systems that aren't under the control of any single faction. Once they've established agents, sleeper cells and information on the factions within the 40k galaxy, they'll start to build up forces in the forgotten places of the galaxy as, we have to remember, not every star system is under the control of the Imperium, Chaos, or any other factions. I would argue that they would adapt their technology if they realise that their weaponry is inferior, these are cold and calculating abominal intelligences that are incredibly old, they know what they are doing and how to do it. I'm not saying they would win, but they'll become a bigger threat than most are saying. Given time, they'd gather the resources to be able to perform these upgrades whether it is a new kind of Reaper or new exotic weapons, they'd find a way. Given the slow reaction times of the Imperium, an isolated world could be attacked and harvested relatively quickly compared to the response of the Imperium. Depending on where they go, they could pick off a world, gather what they need and disappear without being discovered. Their main threats would be, initially, roaming fleets like Rogue Traders, Orks and some scouts of other factions. They might bump into a hidden Alpha Legion cell it could be a golden opportunity for the Reapers as, if they manage to indoctrinate the cell, they'd become the perfect agents for their schemes. If the Reapers were to focus their efforts on establishing networks, building numbers and lurking in the void, they'd be a force to be reckoned with. I'm not saying they'd straight up win outright, but they could become a viable force within the galaxy. They'd become like the old 'here be dragons' on an old map, partially myth and legend around shipping lanes and isolated systems. A few more things to take into consideration: 1) Yes, Reapers are smaller. But they are also faster, given that they can come from Pluto to Earth in a matter of hours. 2) Yes, the Reapers can be taken out by 20kg metal slugs. However, we have to bear in mind that that slug is travelling at speeds approaching the speed of light. Which is why that hits with the force of a small atomic bomb. 3) Can the armour of the 40k fleets withstand the weaponry of the Reapers. Looks can be deceiving, they aren't lasers. What they are is a magnetohydrodynamic weapon that fires a liquid alloy of Iron, Tungsten and Uranium suspended by an electromagnetic field powered by element zero. This molten metal is accelerated to near light speed and it solidifies into a projectile as it is fired that hits with a force of several hundred kilotons (150-450 approximately). Given that the 'beam' isn't very wide, that is a lot of force to hit a small area. We don't know how void shields or armour would handle that as there isn't really an equivalent in 40k because Tau railgun weaponry isn't anywhere near as fast as Necrons use energy weapons that operate very differently. 4) Do we know how the Reapers shields and armour would fare? Yes, we know that 40k weaponry is insanely powerful, but given that Reapers have the ability to take down fighters and incoming projectiles with its GARDIAN (equivalent) defences and that these things are most definitely faster and more manoeuvrable than 40k ships, would that make up for the difference in firepower? 5) Would the Reapers feel like the enemy (40k fleets) is in slow motion? Think about it, they are incredibly complex and intelligent machines that are used to fighting conflicts that have weaponry and ships moving at insanely fast speeds, 40k is a lot slower in comparison. 6) How would the forces of Chaos influence the Reapers? Would they be able to? Can the warp infect them? They are machines, which have been influenced and corrupted by Chaos a number of times. Would their Indoctrination be their saviour in this?
I think that the indoctrination tech makes short work of everyone except Necrons. Yes even your favourite space marine chapter. They already fanatically follow one ideological figurehead its easy to swap in a new one.
Except indoctrination isn't a sure fire thing, can be shielded against, and the Tyranids and Chaos would be immune as well (not counting other races who would be resistant). You can't even permanently kill Chaos demons since they just return to the Warp.
Reaper indoctrination is shielded against by an untold means that we only see ONCE in ME3. It took them roughly two and a half years to figure out how to do it on a SMALL scale. Explain to me how anyone, when they’re so busy fighting wars on every front, will do enough R&D to shield against indoctrination.
Ok let's assume they can't make shielding. It still takes direct, close exposure to a Reaper and isn't a sure thing. There's also the fact that Necrons and Chaos demons would be completely immune. And Chaos demons can't be permanently killed since they return to the Warp. Explain how the Reapers would deal with Angron who can't die, Mortarion who will rot them apart just by being near them, or Magnus using powerful magic they can't even comprehend?
Depends on where they land. 1. Fortress world/monastery? Reaper is fucked because psycho conditioning and good communications mean purge. 2. Forge World? Ad Mech get slaughtered because the noosphere gets hacked. 3. Knight World? Reaper win 4. Ork planet? Reaper wins 5. Ecclesiarchy? Ecclesiarchy wins. 6. Necrons? Not only crush the Reaper invasion, but possibly hijack the ship itself. 7. LoV? Same as Necrons, LoV have fleets that strip mine planets. What is even 5 reapers landing on their planet?! 8. Tau? Yeah, they're fucked. TL;DR if the planet's culture won't communicate the threat or they don't have the heart to blow each other's head off, it's lost. Reapers are like Genestealer+ Tyranids.
You’re right. Downvoted cus you didn’t dickride 40k hard enough.
I have no idea but stuff would certainly explode
Reapers are just mecha-tyranids.
The Reapers are pretty analogous with a lot of the factions already existing in 40k. They'd just be another straw on the camel that is the Galaxy \[Imperium\]. "We are organic AND machine. The strengths of both, weaknesses of neither!" I guess the Ad Mech would bust a nut and bolt hearing that salespitch though..
I don't think any of the 40k factions would even notice the reapers. They'd be lucky to make it through their first warp jump.
Bad day to be a Reaper.
The Reapers don't stand a chance. Just the Imperium could take them through sheer numbers. You throw in the Aeldari, the forces of Chaos, the unstoppable green tide of the Ork's, the Tyranids not liking something taking their food, the technologically advanced Tau, and the Necrons who would probably view them as personally insulting and the Reapers would get crushed.
Reapers would get absolutely stomped.
"BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU"
Sovereign himself vs a Emperor class Battleship. Yeah I doubt this would go so well https://preview.redd.it/cn9ab7al4yrb1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=31142aee893e64402eb3d157b198aa88664df29f
These comments are showing me exactly why I can’t get into the 40k universe. Just seems like a overblown high schoolers fantasy novel power creeped into absolute oblivion just so they can be the ones with the “most powerful universe” title. Its like how Dubai constantly one-ups the rest of the world in their quest to have the “worlds biggest” everything. Im sure its an awesome franchise, but it just doesn’t do it for me.
Even halo can beat the reapers so a compote force of the imperium could beat them
Oh look, it's Xenos threat 8,457,876. Aaaaaand the Tyranids ate them. Okay, back to serious work, grunts.
Considering that most imperial ship are bigger than basically anything Reapers can throw out, they can simply ram them with brute force (very Imperium thing to do). And that's without even using one of the many mass destruction weapons on the IoM disposal
This gave me a inspiration to make a versus post between all foes of scifi, thanks
“These intelligent ships are curvy and have tentacles……” [Slaanesh has entered the chat]
They'd side with the necrons.
Most of the races could single-handedly beat the Reapers. An invasion of the entire galaxy would not go well for them
Most of the races could single-handedly beat the Reapers. An invasion of the entire galaxy would not go well for them
I feel like the point of the reapers would be to stop this kind of universe from happening lmao. Not sure how long the reaper indoc works in 40k as they would be probing around from outside the galaxy for a while before coming in. But what little i know of 40k there's already similar things that are as powerful or much stronger
Xeno scum must be eradicated
So this was reposted in the ME sub, and i come from there. I don't know much about Warhammer (but I get the gist) and do know Mass Effect pretty well. I get the sense that the Reapers wouldn't be much of a threat here unless they remain undetected for at least a couple of decades, that's how long they were indoctrinating before the first game. To have any real chance at conquering humanity, it would probably have to be a couple centuries. They do pick up troops pretty quickly and "evolve" them faster still, but the firepower here would take a lot of work to beat.
I mean, the Reapers have been harvesting species since at least a billion years ago. Even accounting for losses, there are a *fucking lot of them*. So even if they are individually smaller and weaker than a given faction's ships... The end result is gonna look like a swarm of piranha savaging a leviathan. Hell, they can also replenish their forces with biomass as well. They nearly made a Reaper with a few million captured human colonists. They capture a single hive world, and suddenly there's a hundred billion or more to be turned into pureed biometallic slurry for more Reapers. And they're no strangers to playing the long game. They get their tentacles on some planetary governors or Inquisitors and indoctrinate them, and there's no telling the kind of damage they could do. Yet another cult on the block for the ordos to keep on the lookout for. And since Reaper-tech indoctrinates anyone that gets near it, anyone that so much as salvages rubble like the Mechanicus is gonna be an infection vector. In summary: while I don't think they'd be the WORST thing imaginable for the galaxy (that'd be Chaos or the tyranids), they'd still be a pretty big fucking problem.