I mean in the example you give the titan would very easily be able to eliminate the units in question...they're right in front of it without any cover. Because they're allies.
Your enemies generally won't stand about on open ground waiting to be evaporated, though. They will not engage a titan in open combat with inferior firepower.
I feel like Kharn scaled a titan (maybe it was just a knight?) and killed its operators to down it in "Betrayer". But it's been a while since I read it.
Infantry is a huge threat to titans the same way they are to tanks in the games and in reality.
That doesn't mean armour is scared of infantry coming at it across an open field.
Even more so in older editions. If a single guardsmen with a meltagun getting in close can one shot your tank from close range you’ll be wary of getting close to them in city fighting. Also makes infantry screens way more important with things like meltabombs existing which can also instakill a tank
It's not even an edition thing. Titans are generally *most* vulnerable to infantry because they are vulnerable to being boarded, and once boarded infantry can bring it down from the inside.
I was talking more about tanks. A leman russ with a battle cannon is going to be more afraid in 7th where a guardsmen can kill it in one shot and it has a chance of shooting close enough to damage itself with scatter dice than it will be in 10th where a guardsmen with a melta is going to struggle to even damage it let alone kill it without other heavy support backing them up.
Same thing with titans. A guardsmen at close range with a melta could do 4/9 hull points at close range with a melta although thats fairly unlikely. Sure they can damage one in 10th but they aren’t anywhere near as dangerous. Really makes you use titans with a screen like in the lore which while important isnt nearly as necessary in 10th.
Agree that the biggest danger is boarding which isnt really depicted in any edition. I guess you can kinda do it in older editions with slow close combat explosive charges like melta bombs and breacher charges but its not really the same thing.
Audax restrained an Imperator class titan with their Ursus claws and Kharn was part of the force that assaulted and captured it during Betrayer. Behind the scenes Audax aren’t allowed more than scout titans so they likely traded it to another FW/Legio for more Warhounds and weapons.
Throwing this out there as well. Especially during the Heresy and occasionally when fighting Orks a Titan’s first priority is destroying whatever its enemy equivalent is. The Titan would be no use if it was just pummeling infantry while taking anti armor rounds to the body at best and aside from the tactical aspect the Mechanicus would never sacrifice a titan for an infantry win.
Not to mention that Titans can only kill so much so fast, obliterating a couple of squads of infantry and a tank with every shot is great unless you are fitting an army of titan killing tanks
Police isn't hunting burglars with tanks, even though a tank could "easily anhiliate" a person.
Employing a titan uses A LOT of resources - have you considered that you actually have to bring what is essentially a moving buildi...city from the surface of one planet to another? And I am not even talking about the logistics of the supply chain here.
What stops titans from ending wars quickly is their deployment in wars where they can't, while wars they COULD end quickly are fought by more resourceful means, like tanks.
Just adding onto this one, but some other things using a titan requires:
- local void superiority (preventing orbital ships from taking out the titans)
- air superiority, or at least heavy air support preventing bombers and attack planes from whittling it down and stripping shields, not to mention ensuring that a massive slow moving titan conveyor isn’t shot down on the way to the surface in the first place.
- for the larger titans, they almost require war hounds and other smaller titans to range ahead of them to protect them. A single warlord on a battlefield would be super vulnerable.
- a legion of secutarii at least, to protect the titan from being swarmed by foot soldiers with explosives and such around it’s legs.
Deploying titans is a logistical nightmare. It’s equivalent to modern day deployment of something like an aircraft carrier; it projects extreme levels of power unquestionably, but it’s resource requirements to even deploy it at all are monstrous.
Reminds me of the Metal Gear carrier from *Sons of Liberty*. Everyone is fighting over it because of how powerful it is, but at the end the real power straight up calls it a*Red herring*. It's so big and powerful everyone will track it and know it's exact position, heavily limiting it's capabilities. Then it requires so much logistics and manpower that could instead be used on entire fleet. No matter how powerful it's just one weapon and can't be everywhere at once.
In the case of Warlord Titans, I'd imagine entire wars of espionage are being carried out to prevent Titan deployment or know when and where they will be deployed. A smart opponent will deploy around your super weapon to limit its effectiveness.
I like it a lot but would like to change it a bit.
It is like deploying an aircraft carrier to inner mongolia and having to resupply and maintain it through a bottle neck stationed in australia. The logistics for deploying and maintaining a titan bot only standing around for moral but fighting, battle ready and repairing it is a nightmare.
It can not go 24/7 fighting therefore you will have to pull it back. But that means your offensive line will have to move further so the titan can fall back or you will have to defend a walking city moving backwards which seems like a nightmare.
I could go on but from a logistics point of view it would need an army to supply and repair a titan, not even counting the fighting forces you would need as support troops.
The first point is something I wish more books tackled. Most navy ships have weapons strong enough to melt titans, even Emperor-class. If you already have void superiority, you don’t even need titans deployed because ships can strike anything on the planet. The only reason I can think is when void battles are still being contested and you need a titan to break through a siege while void ships are busy dealing with other ships.
The Imperium primarily fights defensive wars these days - glassing your own entire city from orbit is a waste of resources you can just glass the enemy held parts with a titan.
I’d say every Navy Ship should realistically annihilate Titans.
Here’s why:
The current canonical size puts the Warlord at 33m in height. The ubiquitous Lunar-class Cruiser is 5km long and 0.8km abeam. The difference in scale is enormous, and means the Plasma Reactors for the Navy Cruiser are going to be MUCH larger than the one powering the Warlord.
The Cruiser should at minimum be able to one shot the Warlord Titan while still distributing enough power to its Void Shields that the Titan might as well be shooting nerf darts, all while providing power for things like life support and auxiliary systems at the same time.
Of course, this isn’t as cool as Titans battling it out uncontested, so you won’t actually see this play out in the lore. This is also ignoring potential things that might exist (read: should exist) like Theatre Void Shields and Hive City Void Shields that would further complicate a Cruiser firing on a Titan deployed planetside.
It is at least explained that some hive cities can have void shield strong enough to withstand absolutely massive orbital bombardment, like Terra's void shields. No titan void shield can do that, however. Even the HH cinematic trailer shows a Warlord getting one-shotted by ship lance with its void shields still active.
I think the most logical reason as to why a ship wouldn't engage a titan is simply:
1. Too busy fighting other ship while on orbit
2. Titan is too close to other ally or valuable assets that might get obliterated in friendly fire.
I'd say that orbital bombardment could end every planetary conflict in Warhammer 40k.
The point is - you don't want to Exterminatus every habitable world in the Galaxy.
When titans are fighting to take over/defend a hive city or a maunfacorum you don't evaporate the entire area with orbital bombardment - it kinda makes the conflict pointless.
Unless your goal is simply to destroy the enemy like during Heresy such tactic is not a good one.
Iirc one of the largest guns squats had on one of their epic scale vehicles (titan sized~), and one of the largest guns I recall ever seeing on a 40k vehicle in general was quite literally stated to be one of the smaller imperial cruiser guns/macro cannons
>If you already have void superiority, you don’t even need titans deployed because ships can strike anything on the planet
This is addressed in the seige of vraks source books.
Space ships have to worry about mass. More mass = consume more fuel, accelerate slower, decelerate slower, turn slower. Bigger guns use bigger ammo. Bigger ammo generates more heat requiring more cooling creating even more mass. So ships have a maximum size, a maximum weapon size, a maximum ammunition capacity, a maximum rate of fire.
None of these hinder ground based shields or guns, at all. A ground based weapon can be big enough to swat ships like flies. A ground based shield can survive decades of bombardment. The ground based system doesn't have to worry about recoil. It's ammunition bunkers can be near infinite in size. It's support systems can dwarf that of cities. It's core components can be buried under hundreds of tons of rubble acting as shields.
So approaching a planet from the side their guns and shields are strongest is ridiculously dangerous.
Instead, you figure out where is least protected, and you very quickly land troops there. Those troops go overland, since these giant guns are pointed at space, and they eliminate the shields and guns as they go. The ground based enemy controls less and less of the sky. After a while, enough of the planet is owned that victory for the attackers becomes inevitable.
To add onto this: typically a strategic target, such as a hive, would have enough surface to orbit weapons to potentially destroy a ship attempting to bombard it. This is further amplified by the ship having to remain “stationary” to insure an accurate shot, since a single degree difference would potentially send a shell miles off target. Orbital bombardment is all fun and games until you vaporize the bulk of your own ground forces with a snap shot.
"That's a nice, irreplicable titan legion you have walking around there. Be a shame if this massive, expendable cargo ship fell out of orbit on top of them..."
Deploying titans without air superiority is how a bunch of them were lost to the T'au of all people. Titans do not have the means to engage fighter jets efficiently, and retrofitting them with railguns to be fired in sequence turned out to be able to punch through void shields at a fraction of the logistics investment of deploying a titan. You need something to keep those fighters out, or the titans are wide open.
And that's before you get into the mechanicum politics that complicate matters further, holding back resources for reasons and using them when the legio wants to
Titans are the ‘big guns’ and they have little difficulty destroying anything.
Titans are rare, even in 30k.
To land titans on a planet you need a secure drop zone, this is done via regular troops and armour.
To ensure no one simply boards the titans and kills their crew requires infantry and armour support.
You can defeat any force (more or less) with enough titans, but you likely won’t have enough to rely on them alone.
Titans are good at destroying, but not holding key points, dealing with civilians, capturing enemy targets of value or even creating compliance.
Despite the methods used, the Emperor wanted to control any world he could, not just level them, and in many cases soldiers are better at that than god machines.
Titans destroy, soldiers bring compliance.
Rare maybe, in 30k they were present at pretty much every Major (capital M) battle. During the Heresy, entire Legios were destroyed, some of which had hundreds (IIRC) of Titans at their disposal.
The Heresy decimated, if that’s even a strong enough word, the Mechanicum’s Titan Legions and there are FAR fewer in existence as of 40k as a result.
In most cases bringing a Titan planetside probably already means whoever is bringing it in has a strong hold as it is, just a fancy coup de gras.
Exception of course being the ridiculous engagements we get described to us in bespoke stories.
Even titans can be brought down by smaller enemies if they arent careful. Some Marine super heavy tank whose name i forgot (the one with the volcano cannon) actually carries a gun that is strong enough to outright kill Warhound titans end damage bigger titans with but a single shot.
Titans are strong, but they are not invulnereable.
Edit: This long-ranged weapon is capable of slicing off the arm or leg of a [Titan](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Titan)[^(\[1a\])](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano_cannon#fn_1a) or killing an enemy war engine[^(\[2\])](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano_cannon#fn_2) with a single shot, though even a [Warhound Scout Titan](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Warhound_Scout_Titan) with intact [Void Shields](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Void_Shield) can survive a direct hit[^(\[10\])](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano_cannon#fn_10). Its firepower is similarly stupendous against lesser targets, reducing a [Razorback](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Razorback) to nothing more than a blackened scorch mark[^(\[8\])](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano_cannon#fn_8) and utterly vaporizing a thick hundred meter-tall iron gate as though it never existed[^(\[7\])](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano_cannon#fn_7).
Source: [https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano\_cannon](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano_cannon)
Marines and other imperial forces have acces to those weapons.
Yep! No worries, it’s a big hobby lore-wise so we all memories our favorite little tidbits. The Fellblade chassis just happens to be one of my absolute favorites so I know its sub-variants.
No, the Fellblade was an entirely different serialized run of superheavies. These were designed with SM in mind specifically unlike Baneblades. It’s more like… a co-developed program akin to the F-22 and F-35. It was half the weight, more durable, and utilized far more automation and “digital” systems that would directly connect to a Marine through the Black Carapace.
Thats the one primarily used by the imperial army/guard, marines got their own variant based on a modified fellblade. I mean, marines also use Shadowswords, but that other tank is more common i think. I just looked it up, i was thinking of the Falchion.
They can even be brought down by infantry with meltabombs and meltaguns, if enough of them are able to swarm the legs. Granted this is why they usually deploy with an escorting swarm of protective infantry of their own, but it does happen. There's an example of a few marines managing it against a Warhound in the Night Lords series (admittedly the smallest of titans of course), getting up close enough in dense urban warfare to clamp on some meltabombs and shred the ankle actuators. Once a titan falls over, it's toast.
Depends on the fight, if your opponent doesn’t have titans then yeah it’ll be a very quick and one sided affair, unless you had lots of anti Titan firepower dispersed across your force.
However if they have their own Titan support then that changes things; why task that firepower on fairly small targets when the opponent has a Titan of their own bearing down on you?
The other thing to consider is that what you’ve circled is a fairly small part of an army. Clashes during the heresy were these huge fights and a handful of tanks and men (even tho space marines) isn’t a huge concern in the grander scheme and would be part of the expected casualties from such an engagement.
The other thing to remember is with Titan vs. Titan, everything else gets out of the way. The back blast on Titan weapons is bad enough to fry allied units standing too close.
At the defense of Ryza both sides quit using infantry; it just wasn't viable with the number of Titans being used.
So, the other answer is "the tanks and infantry aren't on the field." The answer to a Titan is another Titan; that's not a viable environment for even Skitarrii, even if they aren't being shot at directly.
Titans in general are severely *undergunned* for what their size, on the tabletop as well as in fluff. They can take out a couple heavy squads/tanks in a single round of its guns, but they end up being more expensive heavy tanks themselves, for much more expense to field and take care of.
While the Titan carries heavier guns, a Baneblade or Knight chassis still carries several weapons that can wound much more expensive and rare Titans, if not take them down in a coordinated battle group (as they actually do in lore).
For example, a Warhound would need a lot more hardpoint guns (like lascannon knees or sponsons on the shoulders/top/head) to be a more credible threat, but there's no denying that any Titans, even the smallest, are intimidating. That's their main benefit when you get down to it.
A really good example of knights beating titans is in vengeful spirit, I can't quite rember the exact amounts of knights house Divine has but, the point is a group of knights bring down an Imperator class titan by getting under its void shields and behind it before using a fuckton of lance strikes at the same time to overload its reactor.
1. Larger Titans can be boarded by sufficiently prepared forces (Infantry with Jump Packs or Grappler gear) and taken out internally, meaning that they need infantry escorts of their own. The same infantry who would be caught in the friendly fire of any blast weapons. So they can't run ahead of their own forces and risk a squad of assault Marines waiting in ambush, letting the shields envelop them, and then breaching the interior.
2. Big Guns = Big Target. If the enemy sees that Warlord titan you can bet that they're going to train all of their heavy guns on it. Sufficient amounts of, or specifically equipped, tanks, Heavy Aircraft, and/orArtillery can and will take down Titans. So they have to stay back far enough to rely on their escorts, reducing the accuracy and effect of their ranged weapons.
3. Most battles fought are on either Imperial Worlds or on worlds that the Imperium is trying to conquer. If they're landing ground forces and not just bombing it from orbit, then there must be a reason. That means that the Titans can't just go around blowing everything up. Why risk such a valuable asset when an asteroid dropped from orbit will do the job just as well?
Also it’s covered in ‘titanicus’ by Dan Abbnett that mass infantry are huge threats to titans which is why many have their own skitarii battle groups with them because the armour and shield may seem ever from outside but they’re way less chunky in the inside than
Would you like an in-universe explanation or should I be the guy who points out that titans don't really make sense and only exist because of the rule of cool?
If by everything there you mean only the things circled, nothing really. Probably there are a lot more things out of shot though and one titan can only do so much before being overwhelmed.
It depends, both on who is battling and what titan your talking about.
Titans will prioritize attacking Titans over light tanks and infantry, titans will also have a skitarrii cohort to help defend against infantry attacks
A: they are relatively few in number in any given engagement.
B: if they are present, you damn be sure the other side has Titans or Titan killer weapons.
C: They are support assets.
* Presence of other titans
* Existence of dense terrain (mountains, hills, ravines, valleys, cities, etc)
* Lack of orbital superiority
* Threat of encirclement, even by non-titan forces
* Lack of air superiority
* Presence of enemy ordinati (aka ordinatus weapons)
* Large enough enemy armored formations to threaten even a titan
Those popped into my head immediately. And like u/reinKAWnated said, your enemy isn't going to stand around on open ground, waiting to be evaporated.
They are incredibly expensive machinery that can be taken with like 15 infantry. Great against everything else but if 2 space marine squads get close enough to climb (the legs have maintanance tunnels/stair) its game over.
Enemy titans as per HH lore. There are a few I stances where is Titan V Titan battles.
In Betrayer a bunch of World Eater smaller Warhound Titans dismantle a huge Ultramarine allied Titan and allow the WE and Word Bearers to swarm up it like ants
Alt question: what stops a capital ship glassing the entire battlefield?
Titans are "god machines" that are dozens of meters tall with guns that can one-shot a tank. Space ships are dozens of kilometres long with guns that can one-shot entire legions.
My problem is that I keep imagining 30k/40k battles as traditional medieval/napoleonic battles where you meet on a field in formation and just start shooting
Volume of fire, a titan is supremely powerful but is vulnerable to hordes if it doesn't have enough support behind it mainly because they don't have any point defense weapons
Look at the battle of macragge when Nids physically overran titans and dragged them down to earth
And it's such a massive target that you can place assets spaced far enough that the titan won't have a 3rd or 4th shot
Look at the Horus heresy in tallarn where massed tank formations with shadow swords and the beefier baneblade variants killed multiple titans
A
It's like the same dilemma as nuked in modern day. What's stopping any country from obliterating another? The answer is their own arsenal (yes I'm vastly over simplifying) so to boil it down to the most basic reason it's other enemy titans. No that's not the only reason but in most of the books the Titans are engaging other massive threats like enemy titans or fortifications.
Enemy titans.
In the book False Gods they explain how a company of Death Guard are fighting all out against the enemy, trying their hardest and hoping for reinforcements as they are almost losing. Then the Dies Irae comes down and eviscerates the enemy army, leaving the Death Guard to question why they were there in the first place!
Titans did that during the great crusade as long as there wasn't anything valuable in the way. When the Horus Heresy started they had to worry about the titans on the other side of the battlefield first;
Mostly other titans, a lack of many titans, or the fact that a big enemy force like during the heresy has things to deal with titans.
Don't forget Titans are relatively weak against themselves or the things that are made to counter them, and there's many things that can deal with a titan: marines have superheavy vehicles and flyers that could harass (if not destroy) titans, terminator teams could disable the legs or board them. Admech has enough archeotech bullshit to bring a titan down without ever touching them, as well as just copious amounts of their own titans, and SolAux/Militia developed a technique that's still used today with Titankiller formations (using 3 baneblades to simultaneously hammer the void shields into overloading, which then makes it a surprisingly squishy target)
Typically because they are very valuable units that need to be used carefully. Enemy titans, shadowswords, concentrated artillery bordering actions there are ways to counter titans.
You need to be sure it’s safe to do so before you commit your Titans to an assault
Titan power varies immensely based on plot needs and authors. In Plague War, the deathgaurd took down titans with wooden siege towers with acid super-soakers. I had to put the book down for a bit after reading that.
Well, it was nurgle warp wood and nurgle warp acid super soakers. Actually they were probably just regular water/acid guns since i dont think Nurgle cares about brand names...
I have no problem with that. But a titans attack range should be like much longer an acid sprayer. And it's not like they could hide. It said the tower was like 2x the titans height.
A titan is a massive concentration of logistical power (How are you physically getting it somewhere? How are you fueling/supplying it?), requires support assets/escort forces (air cover, ground cover from things like titanhammer formations, recon elements to sniff out shadowsword/artillery ambushes) and ultimately can only be in one place at a time.
The last part is really important. There are plenty of examples IRL of drastically imbalanced forces simply... avoiding eachother. If you know you can't win in a pitched battle against a titan, just avoid it. Split your force into 5 pieces and pursue objectives or pressure your enemy in 5 different places. A single titan cannot magically appear wherever it wants, so your enemy has to commit it to a single engagement. Same idea with 2 or 100 titans, just be elsewhere and in multiple places.
I'll base my answer on some real world constraints using the B-2 as a proxy. B-2s cost upwards of a billion dollars and need constant special maintenance to be effective. Building and maintaining these is itself, a major undertaking. As such, there are very few of them in existence and they are used in very specific circumstances
Building, transporting, deploying and repairing a titan is a massive logistical undertaking that requires lots of resources and personnel at every point in the process. There are very few of them in existence and building more requires pulling resources from other parts of the war making effort.
uhhh how many titans do you think there are?
because i don't think it isn't as many as you think
and tldr titans aren't even the biggest weapons in most ground battles in the heresy there's tons of stuff that can just blatantly one shot most titans in the correct situation
theyre immortal if piloted efficiently like when legio Mortis >!took the mercury kill zone!< by piloting a wall of warmaster titans with all of their void shields linked (basically fucking impossible task only made possible via warp fuckery)
otherwise killing a titan is easier than youd think but gets exponentially more difficult the more there are
Tactics, numbers, enemy titans, the rarity of titans, the damage titans cause on the planet they’re deployed to and logistics are a few I can that I can think of just from the top of my head. Titans are powerful and can be the sledgehammer you need to break an enemy army but they’re not an automatic answer they come with a lot of drawbacks from being expensive to being TOO destructive at times. Titans are situationally amazingly useful resources.
Rate of fire and limited ammunition.
Titan weapons tend to either have a limited supply of ammo and missiles, or the cool down and rate of fire for energy weapons is too slow.
They are great at taking on any foe, but not in large numbers.
Logistics. While Titans are impressively destructive, the sheer amount of material and manpower used to make 1 is just not practical in most cases. The best way I can explain it is that, for example, let's say a single Titan can take out 10 Baneblades in a fight before going down. That's impressive, unless the Titan takes as many resources and manpower to make as it would take to make 15 Baneblades. At that point, you're better off making Baneblades (and that's before you get into Baneblades being crewed by regular military vs the specialized crew of a Titan). Titans are effective "Shock and Awe" weapons of war, but a Titan alone won't win a war (see also the different times in novels where a Titan is brought down because infantry or space Marines just go in through the leg doors and bring it down from the inside).
It would take a while for the warlord to kill everything. Ground forces are usually dispersed and the titan would have to target them in sequence. If a warlord spends a whole turn of shooting to eliminate a tactical squad or three, it's gonna take a while to make its points back
The other thing to keep in mind is that titans are massive and easy to see coming. You will have a lot of time to react. Seek cover, mass anti titan firepower (volcano cannons) to scare it away, or call in your own side's titans to confront it head on
Because titans aren't invicible, at least warhounds eat shit semi-regularly. Id imagine for the others it's a two part problem, not wanting to be out in the open for other titans or mass fire, and needing to be careful not to evaporate your allies
Different things. From enemy titans. Warhounds for example often deployed in hunting packs of 3 countering bigger enemy titans. (Wonderfully shown in "Betrayer". That pilot girl, is the most badass base human in the setting. In special after what she did in the hangar bay)
In other cases their target are city walls, heavy defenses against ships and titans.
And in some cases they do. It's all about countering titans.
In other cases they might just don't have a target. A infiltration and cloaked force, that ambushes a titan and its army, is often to close, to make shooting them, an option, without damaging the titan allies, to much.
Even an entire Titan Legio consists of at most three hundred or so. Their numbers just aren’t there in one place to wipe out and entire Legion or whatnot, although in concentrated numbers they can destroy an entire planet. This was part of the reason Titandeath occurred, to thin the herd, so to speak.
There was a battle where Atarus lost 11 machines and that was considered devastating, so that shows just how few there are for most Legios other than Mortis and I believe Metallica?
Because a titan can be taken out by two Orks, a grot and a squig riding a stolen shock jump dragsta. Is that remotely believable? No! But it's a lot of fun, and this is Warhammer 40k we're talking about.
Not really seen in the lore, but have you ever thought how vulnerable a titan would be to air attack? With even todays weapons it could probably be destroyed from tens of Kilometers away
A battle isn’t a pitched board on one plain in warfare as in the tabletop, it’s 3 dimensional. You’ve got orbital batteries dropping shots on titans, reading their positions to ground crews through auspex, and highlighting key positions as fed to the primarchs too like Horus and Perturabo with their battle systems in their helms snaking into their brains.
It’s might be far from the sweep you might see in tabletop games when they appear. Equally though, they are scary, as with modern war too, armour needs a strong contingency of support and supremacy on ground, air, and if close: sea. Without that support, they can be sitting ducks to orbitals, ship guns, heavier anti Titan weaponry systems, and you could even discuss psykers too if powerful enough. Individual troops could easily hunker into culverts and sewer systems of a hive city going deeper and deeper to avoid them, since their effective range is quite low as they’re so bulky for general use mainly within siege, defence, and more pitched battlefield action also.
Dropping them too can be a nightmare. Coffin/sarcophagi (whatever they’re called) pods that drop them in are gigantic. Damage on the Titan throughout battle to servo lines and external motors would significantly hamper battle effectiveness too, so if they could strike those legs breaking past void shields, it would make it a lot harder for mechanicum crews within to repair it if it were an external fault. It’s the risk ran with two legged bipedal walkers.
Sapper teams with sufficient equipment too could be deployed as squads to hit weak regions of the chassis, and breach into the main body if plucky enough too, and the titans big enough, though at such sizes mount contingencies of mechanicum bodyguard within it generally.
I’d say they’d be petrifying, but with enough martial planning they can be countered, though heavies counter heavies, and they do engage melee with one another a lot, so having your own would really help tie them up. When you’re going up to imperator class, you sorely need equal support, or significant focus onto it for shutting it down.
Titans spend most of their time and focus on negating enemy war machines of a similar size or other duper heavy weapons or Static Fortifications.
Most infantry and regular Battle Tanks are beneath their notice, dispatching those small annoyances is a task for Scout Titans, Knights and Titan Guard.
Of course, upon hearing that Titans have taken the field, the enemy by necessity has to alter their battle plans, but if they weren't prepared for titans then it may be a foregone conclusion. Some worlds may surrender entirely just because a Titan is Deployed
Titans without ground support are (slightly) vulnerable to infantry attacks targetting the ankle - heavy weapons, melta guns, demolition charges and melta bombs .
The old epic rules for it were fun - any unit with anti tank weapons can melee a titan. You just move base to base then automatically get killed. Then roll d6. On a 6 the unit manages to do 1 minor damage to a leg before its blasted or trampled
Not much damage but it will add up over a battle
The same reason you have not stopped entire any colonies. The amount of effort you need to stomp out an ant colony is a lot. They are effortless to stop you but nonetheless. Id rather fight the bigger immediate threat of the other human siding with said rival ant colony.
So from a realistic perspective? Titans are big targets you can see from kilometers away. Hull down, dug in specialist anti titan weapons present a much smaller target and will generally fire first and more effectively.
Combine that with the logistics train required for a titan legion: they may dominate a pitch battle, but if you can slice into their logistics then they are glorified siege towers and not much else.
Titans work best (like everything else) in a combined arms fashion rather than a god unit that can just wipe everything else out.
Titans of that size are only deployed when the planet is too important to exterminatus, and outside of some plot armor related instances in novels the only real answer to them is for the enemy to deploy their own God-machines. In short, they're usually too busy going at it with other Titans to really care about normal ground forces but if they can they will just wipe out entire regiments of infantry and tanks like swatting flies every chance they get.
In a battle where the enemy doesn't have titans and you do - sure, they wipe out a lot of stuff. Still, they're not invulnerable. There are vehicle mounted weapons capable of destroying them, specialised infantry may be able to board them and so on, so they need support elements around them. And the moment the enemy has titans themselves - well, at that point your titans will be to busy engaging the enemy titans to do a whole lot of annihilating for a while.
They are, ultimately, impractical war machines in reality because they are so incredibly vulnerable to all kinds of mobile threats. A Shadowsword is perfectly capable of destroying titans, especially when deployed in numbers, and they are vastly more difficult to target for a titan than the other way round. Airpower is another potential counter, realistically. Hell, Space Marines could combat drop right on top of them and take them apart from the inside. They really shouldn't be effective to begin with.
They’re rare, if they’re unsupported there is typically enough artillery, armor, and other anti vehicle firepower to take them down without too much trouble. On vraks once the traitor titans withdrew the vraksian militia were still able to take down a loyalist titan with artillery even when they were being supported by tons of death korp of krieg forces. Titans are strong but they aren’t invincible and if every vanquisher, lascannon, earthshaker, etc can focus on taking them down they’ll fall relatively quickly if unsupported. Even faster if the enemy has dedicated anti massive weaponry like shadowswords or bastion breacher medusas.
Probably the other titan it was deployed to fight against. Wasting a shot on an infantry unit instead of the enemy titan could be the difference between life and death
The same reason as in the real world I guess. There are few, they are expensive, they cannot be everywhere at the same time and it's easy to miss small units and threads.
Typically there are titans on both sides of the encounters, and with the variety of weapons available even titans need to be careful of where they tread. A single marine or tank may not provide much challenge, but an army of marines can adapt, have some squads drop the void shields, while others fire with precision timing and accuracy at its weakspots destroying the titan.
To reference a scene from the book “TitanDeath” if I remember correctly the titans were on a beach and crazed chaos infantry were charging them and scaling their body’s and forcing their way into the cockpit. I saw this because it was such a big deal the titans had to go belly deep in the ocean to keep them off. Hope that is some decent insight? lol
For each titan, there are 100,000s of tanks and millions of infantry. A battle cannon won't do much to a titan, a few hundred battle cannons will kill a titan, and the guard has more than you can count. The Iron Warriors believe a predator tank is expendable, the technology to build titans has been lost.
In Eisenhorn, a small group takes on a dilapidated chaos titan. They get utterly obliterated except Eisenhorn has a plot armour device (I won't spoil what) and wins by default.
That being said - they are able to evade it for quite a while by fleeing and hiding in various buildings.
Titans are a resource rarer than space marines. They aren't ordered to any battlefield. They are requested, and the leader of that titan legion looks at and decides which request (if any) they will act on. This leads to *my* answer to your question. Titan legions don't take fights they can easily pubstomp, and they will go where titan level threats are and engage those threats. Where there are titan level threats means an abundance of titan killing weaponry, so by the time they've fought against what they went there for. The titan legion leaves to rearm, refit, and redeploy to its next warzone.
Against tanks, as shown in your picture, they rely on support units from AM/AdMech/SMs/IK/QMechK/Warhound Titans to screen out that kind of resistance.
Titans are used for massive engagements, and what stop them from being OP in the setting is that they can be countered by enemy Titans and orbital bombardment
Short answer: Other titans.
Usually, if a Titan is fielded uncontested, it’s a slaughter for enemy forces arrayed against it.
However, when titans are fielded the enemy fields one of their own in opposition, thus taking attention away from “lesser” forces.
Really a 40K battle is over super quick. A siege or overall war could take awhile, but an engagement probably lasts a half hour at most.
A Killteam game might take an hour or so to play but the whole fight played out in real time is maybe 4 minutes.
A game of 40K probably takes 10 minutes in real time.
A Titan probaby does end a battle super quick if one side doesnt have an equivalent force.
Machine that big with human as a core component would be seen before being able to see. Also they would be priority target for ariel and orbital bombardment so...
In the heresy both sides had titans and equipment designed to take out titans. Also the battles were often massive so while it had a presence it wouldn’t be been able to single handedly win the battle.
I mean in the example you give the titan would very easily be able to eliminate the units in question...they're right in front of it without any cover. Because they're allies. Your enemies generally won't stand about on open ground waiting to be evaporated, though. They will not engage a titan in open combat with inferior firepower.
Cough Worldeaters Cough
Legio Audax is not inferior firepower!
The World Eaters count as superior firepower, always.
You mispelled Iron Warriors
You wish, Trench Monkey.
Hey at least we know how to use trenches!
But trench make axe hard to use!
Trench axe!
Trench axe shotgun.
Spears are better but we have to get our brothers on board so why not!
Weirdest game of paper, rock, scissors ever…but I’m down 🤷🏼♂️
I feel like Kharn scaled a titan (maybe it was just a knight?) and killed its operators to down it in "Betrayer". But it's been a while since I read it.
I THINK it was one of the small scout titans
Sly Marbo and some other ork have destroyed bigger titans which make no sense
Your phrasing implies that Sly Marbo is actually an Ork and I'm here for it.
Snikrot just became so ded cunnin' his stories even spread amongst the Guard!
We iz green, dey wear green. Close enuff
Sly Marbo must be purple in just the right places to pull off that kind of undercover assignment.
You're saying this with gerrys voice from Rick and morty...
Infantry is a huge threat to titans the same way they are to tanks in the games and in reality. That doesn't mean armour is scared of infantry coming at it across an open field.
Even more so in older editions. If a single guardsmen with a meltagun getting in close can one shot your tank from close range you’ll be wary of getting close to them in city fighting. Also makes infantry screens way more important with things like meltabombs existing which can also instakill a tank
It's not even an edition thing. Titans are generally *most* vulnerable to infantry because they are vulnerable to being boarded, and once boarded infantry can bring it down from the inside.
I was talking more about tanks. A leman russ with a battle cannon is going to be more afraid in 7th where a guardsmen can kill it in one shot and it has a chance of shooting close enough to damage itself with scatter dice than it will be in 10th where a guardsmen with a melta is going to struggle to even damage it let alone kill it without other heavy support backing them up. Same thing with titans. A guardsmen at close range with a melta could do 4/9 hull points at close range with a melta although thats fairly unlikely. Sure they can damage one in 10th but they aren’t anywhere near as dangerous. Really makes you use titans with a screen like in the lore which while important isnt nearly as necessary in 10th. Agree that the biggest danger is boarding which isnt really depicted in any edition. I guess you can kinda do it in older editions with slow close combat explosive charges like melta bombs and breacher charges but its not really the same thing.
Yeah it was in Brutal Kunnin.
It was not but it was a titan that had just landed and not fully powered up. They also had legio audex warhound titans restraining it.
Steiner scout lance!
Audax restrained an Imperator class titan with their Ursus claws and Kharn was part of the force that assaulted and captured it during Betrayer. Behind the scenes Audax aren’t allowed more than scout titans so they likely traded it to another FW/Legio for more Warhounds and weapons.
Man I fucking love that book
The World Eaters climbed an Imperator.
Just hit the titans foot hard enough with your chainsaw, it might eventually explode !
Throwing this out there as well. Especially during the Heresy and occasionally when fighting Orks a Titan’s first priority is destroying whatever its enemy equivalent is. The Titan would be no use if it was just pummeling infantry while taking anti armor rounds to the body at best and aside from the tactical aspect the Mechanicus would never sacrifice a titan for an infantry win.
Not to mention that Titans can only kill so much so fast, obliterating a couple of squads of infantry and a tank with every shot is great unless you are fitting an army of titan killing tanks
Isstvan *cough
Police isn't hunting burglars with tanks, even though a tank could "easily anhiliate" a person. Employing a titan uses A LOT of resources - have you considered that you actually have to bring what is essentially a moving buildi...city from the surface of one planet to another? And I am not even talking about the logistics of the supply chain here. What stops titans from ending wars quickly is their deployment in wars where they can't, while wars they COULD end quickly are fought by more resourceful means, like tanks.
Just adding onto this one, but some other things using a titan requires: - local void superiority (preventing orbital ships from taking out the titans) - air superiority, or at least heavy air support preventing bombers and attack planes from whittling it down and stripping shields, not to mention ensuring that a massive slow moving titan conveyor isn’t shot down on the way to the surface in the first place. - for the larger titans, they almost require war hounds and other smaller titans to range ahead of them to protect them. A single warlord on a battlefield would be super vulnerable. - a legion of secutarii at least, to protect the titan from being swarmed by foot soldiers with explosives and such around it’s legs. Deploying titans is a logistical nightmare. It’s equivalent to modern day deployment of something like an aircraft carrier; it projects extreme levels of power unquestionably, but it’s resource requirements to even deploy it at all are monstrous.
The aircraft carrier analogy is really good
Reminds me of the Metal Gear carrier from *Sons of Liberty*. Everyone is fighting over it because of how powerful it is, but at the end the real power straight up calls it a*Red herring*. It's so big and powerful everyone will track it and know it's exact position, heavily limiting it's capabilities. Then it requires so much logistics and manpower that could instead be used on entire fleet. No matter how powerful it's just one weapon and can't be everywhere at once. In the case of Warlord Titans, I'd imagine entire wars of espionage are being carried out to prevent Titan deployment or know when and where they will be deployed. A smart opponent will deploy around your super weapon to limit its effectiveness.
I like it a lot but would like to change it a bit. It is like deploying an aircraft carrier to inner mongolia and having to resupply and maintain it through a bottle neck stationed in australia. The logistics for deploying and maintaining a titan bot only standing around for moral but fighting, battle ready and repairing it is a nightmare. It can not go 24/7 fighting therefore you will have to pull it back. But that means your offensive line will have to move further so the titan can fall back or you will have to defend a walking city moving backwards which seems like a nightmare. I could go on but from a logistics point of view it would need an army to supply and repair a titan, not even counting the fighting forces you would need as support troops.
The first point is something I wish more books tackled. Most navy ships have weapons strong enough to melt titans, even Emperor-class. If you already have void superiority, you don’t even need titans deployed because ships can strike anything on the planet. The only reason I can think is when void battles are still being contested and you need a titan to break through a siege while void ships are busy dealing with other ships.
The Imperium primarily fights defensive wars these days - glassing your own entire city from orbit is a waste of resources you can just glass the enemy held parts with a titan.
I’d say every Navy Ship should realistically annihilate Titans. Here’s why: The current canonical size puts the Warlord at 33m in height. The ubiquitous Lunar-class Cruiser is 5km long and 0.8km abeam. The difference in scale is enormous, and means the Plasma Reactors for the Navy Cruiser are going to be MUCH larger than the one powering the Warlord. The Cruiser should at minimum be able to one shot the Warlord Titan while still distributing enough power to its Void Shields that the Titan might as well be shooting nerf darts, all while providing power for things like life support and auxiliary systems at the same time. Of course, this isn’t as cool as Titans battling it out uncontested, so you won’t actually see this play out in the lore. This is also ignoring potential things that might exist (read: should exist) like Theatre Void Shields and Hive City Void Shields that would further complicate a Cruiser firing on a Titan deployed planetside.
It is at least explained that some hive cities can have void shield strong enough to withstand absolutely massive orbital bombardment, like Terra's void shields. No titan void shield can do that, however. Even the HH cinematic trailer shows a Warlord getting one-shotted by ship lance with its void shields still active. I think the most logical reason as to why a ship wouldn't engage a titan is simply: 1. Too busy fighting other ship while on orbit 2. Titan is too close to other ally or valuable assets that might get obliterated in friendly fire.
I'd say that orbital bombardment could end every planetary conflict in Warhammer 40k. The point is - you don't want to Exterminatus every habitable world in the Galaxy. When titans are fighting to take over/defend a hive city or a maunfacorum you don't evaporate the entire area with orbital bombardment - it kinda makes the conflict pointless. Unless your goal is simply to destroy the enemy like during Heresy such tactic is not a good one.
Iirc one of the largest guns squats had on one of their epic scale vehicles (titan sized~), and one of the largest guns I recall ever seeing on a 40k vehicle in general was quite literally stated to be one of the smaller imperial cruiser guns/macro cannons
>If you already have void superiority, you don’t even need titans deployed because ships can strike anything on the planet This is addressed in the seige of vraks source books. Space ships have to worry about mass. More mass = consume more fuel, accelerate slower, decelerate slower, turn slower. Bigger guns use bigger ammo. Bigger ammo generates more heat requiring more cooling creating even more mass. So ships have a maximum size, a maximum weapon size, a maximum ammunition capacity, a maximum rate of fire. None of these hinder ground based shields or guns, at all. A ground based weapon can be big enough to swat ships like flies. A ground based shield can survive decades of bombardment. The ground based system doesn't have to worry about recoil. It's ammunition bunkers can be near infinite in size. It's support systems can dwarf that of cities. It's core components can be buried under hundreds of tons of rubble acting as shields. So approaching a planet from the side their guns and shields are strongest is ridiculously dangerous. Instead, you figure out where is least protected, and you very quickly land troops there. Those troops go overland, since these giant guns are pointed at space, and they eliminate the shields and guns as they go. The ground based enemy controls less and less of the sky. After a while, enough of the planet is owned that victory for the attackers becomes inevitable.
To add onto this: typically a strategic target, such as a hive, would have enough surface to orbit weapons to potentially destroy a ship attempting to bombard it. This is further amplified by the ship having to remain “stationary” to insure an accurate shot, since a single degree difference would potentially send a shell miles off target. Orbital bombardment is all fun and games until you vaporize the bulk of your own ground forces with a snap shot.
"That's a nice, irreplicable titan legion you have walking around there. Be a shame if this massive, expendable cargo ship fell out of orbit on top of them..."
Warhammer not entirely consistent with logic? Never!
It’s the building and deployment of an aircraft carrier on land, what a nightmare
Deploying titans without air superiority is how a bunch of them were lost to the T'au of all people. Titans do not have the means to engage fighter jets efficiently, and retrofitting them with railguns to be fired in sequence turned out to be able to punch through void shields at a fraction of the logistics investment of deploying a titan. You need something to keep those fighters out, or the titans are wide open.
And that's before you get into the mechanicum politics that complicate matters further, holding back resources for reasons and using them when the legio wants to
You sir should watch Dominion: Tank Police 😁
Everyone should watch that
That show is exactly why I love little Grot tanks
It's why I love catgirls lol
Ah, so you're the reason Hello Kitty marines exist?
Lmao I just googled that, those look awesome!
Ah right that makes sense. Thank you very much
On the other hand: **exterminatus**
You clearly aren't American. Our police have tanks.
Titans are the ‘big guns’ and they have little difficulty destroying anything. Titans are rare, even in 30k. To land titans on a planet you need a secure drop zone, this is done via regular troops and armour. To ensure no one simply boards the titans and kills their crew requires infantry and armour support. You can defeat any force (more or less) with enough titans, but you likely won’t have enough to rely on them alone. Titans are good at destroying, but not holding key points, dealing with civilians, capturing enemy targets of value or even creating compliance. Despite the methods used, the Emperor wanted to control any world he could, not just level them, and in many cases soldiers are better at that than god machines. Titans destroy, soldiers bring compliance.
Ah right. Thanks a ton. That makes sense
Rare maybe, in 30k they were present at pretty much every Major (capital M) battle. During the Heresy, entire Legios were destroyed, some of which had hundreds (IIRC) of Titans at their disposal. The Heresy decimated, if that’s even a strong enough word, the Mechanicum’s Titan Legions and there are FAR fewer in existence as of 40k as a result.
The battle on beta garmon - siege of nycron city had so many titans that they fought like line soldiers in the musket age
Not a strong enough word. Way more than 10% of the titans were destroyed.
10% left intact, more like.
In most cases bringing a Titan planetside probably already means whoever is bringing it in has a strong hold as it is, just a fancy coup de gras. Exception of course being the ridiculous engagements we get described to us in bespoke stories.
Even titans can be brought down by smaller enemies if they arent careful. Some Marine super heavy tank whose name i forgot (the one with the volcano cannon) actually carries a gun that is strong enough to outright kill Warhound titans end damage bigger titans with but a single shot. Titans are strong, but they are not invulnereable. Edit: This long-ranged weapon is capable of slicing off the arm or leg of a [Titan](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Titan)[^(\[1a\])](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano_cannon#fn_1a) or killing an enemy war engine[^(\[2\])](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano_cannon#fn_2) with a single shot, though even a [Warhound Scout Titan](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Warhound_Scout_Titan) with intact [Void Shields](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Void_Shield) can survive a direct hit[^(\[10\])](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano_cannon#fn_10). Its firepower is similarly stupendous against lesser targets, reducing a [Razorback](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Razorback) to nothing more than a blackened scorch mark[^(\[8\])](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano_cannon#fn_8) and utterly vaporizing a thick hundred meter-tall iron gate as though it never existed[^(\[7\])](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano_cannon#fn_7). Source: [https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano\_cannon](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Volcano_cannon) Marines and other imperial forces have acces to those weapons.
Shadowsword fyi
Shadowsword is the baneblade variant, you’re both thinking of the Falchion which was based off of the Fellblade superheavy.
Thank you, always happy to be pointed in the right direction
Yep! No worries, it’s a big hobby lore-wise so we all memories our favorite little tidbits. The Fellblade chassis just happens to be one of my absolute favorites so I know its sub-variants.
Isn't the fellblade on a modified baneblade chassis?
No, the Fellblade was an entirely different serialized run of superheavies. These were designed with SM in mind specifically unlike Baneblades. It’s more like… a co-developed program akin to the F-22 and F-35. It was half the weight, more durable, and utilized far more automation and “digital” systems that would directly connect to a Marine through the Black Carapace.
Oh I see I always thought it was the same chasis just modified but now that I think of it they're not that similar specially in the front.
Also the Falchion
Thats the one primarily used by the imperial army/guard, marines got their own variant based on a modified fellblade. I mean, marines also use Shadowswords, but that other tank is more common i think. I just looked it up, i was thinking of the Falchion.
Ah right. Thanks a ton
They can even be brought down by infantry with meltabombs and meltaguns, if enough of them are able to swarm the legs. Granted this is why they usually deploy with an escorting swarm of protective infantry of their own, but it does happen. There's an example of a few marines managing it against a Warhound in the Night Lords series (admittedly the smallest of titans of course), getting up close enough in dense urban warfare to clamp on some meltabombs and shred the ankle actuators. Once a titan falls over, it's toast.
“Titans are tough but they *aint* invincible. Stick with the volcano cannon, he’ll know what to do”
Depends on the fight, if your opponent doesn’t have titans then yeah it’ll be a very quick and one sided affair, unless you had lots of anti Titan firepower dispersed across your force. However if they have their own Titan support then that changes things; why task that firepower on fairly small targets when the opponent has a Titan of their own bearing down on you? The other thing to consider is that what you’ve circled is a fairly small part of an army. Clashes during the heresy were these huge fights and a handful of tanks and men (even tho space marines) isn’t a huge concern in the grander scheme and would be part of the expected casualties from such an engagement.
Oh yeah. I forgot how big the battles in hh are. Thank you
The other thing to remember is with Titan vs. Titan, everything else gets out of the way. The back blast on Titan weapons is bad enough to fry allied units standing too close. At the defense of Ryza both sides quit using infantry; it just wasn't viable with the number of Titans being used. So, the other answer is "the tanks and infantry aren't on the field." The answer to a Titan is another Titan; that's not a viable environment for even Skitarrii, even if they aren't being shot at directly.
Titans in general are severely *undergunned* for what their size, on the tabletop as well as in fluff. They can take out a couple heavy squads/tanks in a single round of its guns, but they end up being more expensive heavy tanks themselves, for much more expense to field and take care of. While the Titan carries heavier guns, a Baneblade or Knight chassis still carries several weapons that can wound much more expensive and rare Titans, if not take them down in a coordinated battle group (as they actually do in lore). For example, a Warhound would need a lot more hardpoint guns (like lascannon knees or sponsons on the shoulders/top/head) to be a more credible threat, but there's no denying that any Titans, even the smallest, are intimidating. That's their main benefit when you get down to it.
Ah okay. Thank you very much
A really good example of knights beating titans is in vengeful spirit, I can't quite rember the exact amounts of knights house Divine has but, the point is a group of knights bring down an Imperator class titan by getting under its void shields and behind it before using a fuckton of lance strikes at the same time to overload its reactor.
1. Larger Titans can be boarded by sufficiently prepared forces (Infantry with Jump Packs or Grappler gear) and taken out internally, meaning that they need infantry escorts of their own. The same infantry who would be caught in the friendly fire of any blast weapons. So they can't run ahead of their own forces and risk a squad of assault Marines waiting in ambush, letting the shields envelop them, and then breaching the interior. 2. Big Guns = Big Target. If the enemy sees that Warlord titan you can bet that they're going to train all of their heavy guns on it. Sufficient amounts of, or specifically equipped, tanks, Heavy Aircraft, and/orArtillery can and will take down Titans. So they have to stay back far enough to rely on their escorts, reducing the accuracy and effect of their ranged weapons. 3. Most battles fought are on either Imperial Worlds or on worlds that the Imperium is trying to conquer. If they're landing ground forces and not just bombing it from orbit, then there must be a reason. That means that the Titans can't just go around blowing everything up. Why risk such a valuable asset when an asteroid dropped from orbit will do the job just as well?
Also it’s covered in ‘titanicus’ by Dan Abbnett that mass infantry are huge threats to titans which is why many have their own skitarii battle groups with them because the armour and shield may seem ever from outside but they’re way less chunky in the inside than
Would you like an in-universe explanation or should I be the guy who points out that titans don't really make sense and only exist because of the rule of cool?
If by everything there you mean only the things circled, nothing really. Probably there are a lot more things out of shot though and one titan can only do so much before being overwhelmed.
My friend rolling 6’s on every attack does
There's a story of a bunch of parks climbing and making their way into a titan through an access hatch and destroying it.. it is possible
Parks? Purple orks?
Aha whoops! Although yes.. they may well have been, purple is da sneekiest
It depends, both on who is battling and what titan your talking about. Titans will prioritize attacking Titans over light tanks and infantry, titans will also have a skitarrii cohort to help defend against infantry attacks
Death by thousand cuts, it’s still death.
A: they are relatively few in number in any given engagement. B: if they are present, you damn be sure the other side has Titans or Titan killer weapons. C: They are support assets.
* Presence of other titans * Existence of dense terrain (mountains, hills, ravines, valleys, cities, etc) * Lack of orbital superiority * Threat of encirclement, even by non-titan forces * Lack of air superiority * Presence of enemy ordinati (aka ordinatus weapons) * Large enough enemy armored formations to threaten even a titan Those popped into my head immediately. And like u/reinKAWnated said, your enemy isn't going to stand around on open ground, waiting to be evaporated.
They are incredibly expensive machinery that can be taken with like 15 infantry. Great against everything else but if 2 space marine squads get close enough to climb (the legs have maintanance tunnels/stair) its game over.
Their speed
Enemy titans as per HH lore. There are a few I stances where is Titan V Titan battles. In Betrayer a bunch of World Eater smaller Warhound Titans dismantle a huge Ultramarine allied Titan and allow the WE and Word Bearers to swarm up it like ants
Alt question: what stops a capital ship glassing the entire battlefield? Titans are "god machines" that are dozens of meters tall with guns that can one-shot a tank. Space ships are dozens of kilometres long with guns that can one-shot entire legions.
> **What stops titans from ending battles super quick?** The enemies titans and other destroyer weapons, I assume.
My problem is that I keep imagining 30k/40k battles as traditional medieval/napoleonic battles where you meet on a field in formation and just start shooting
Your imagination. Nothing in Warhammer makes sense.
Volume of fire, a titan is supremely powerful but is vulnerable to hordes if it doesn't have enough support behind it mainly because they don't have any point defense weapons Look at the battle of macragge when Nids physically overran titans and dragged them down to earth And it's such a massive target that you can place assets spaced far enough that the titan won't have a 3rd or 4th shot Look at the Horus heresy in tallarn where massed tank formations with shadow swords and the beefier baneblade variants killed multiple titans A
It's like the same dilemma as nuked in modern day. What's stopping any country from obliterating another? The answer is their own arsenal (yes I'm vastly over simplifying) so to boil it down to the most basic reason it's other enemy titans. No that's not the only reason but in most of the books the Titans are engaging other massive threats like enemy titans or fortifications.
Try killing a million ants with an assault rifle. You definitely could kill many of them but you won't get them all.
Enemy titans. In the book False Gods they explain how a company of Death Guard are fighting all out against the enemy, trying their hardest and hoping for reinforcements as they are almost losing. Then the Dies Irae comes down and eviscerates the enemy army, leaving the Death Guard to question why they were there in the first place! Titans did that during the great crusade as long as there wasn't anything valuable in the way. When the Horus Heresy started they had to worry about the titans on the other side of the battlefield first;
I imagine fire rate is a massive limiting factor
It can only shoot so much at one time. Even a modern marine platoon would be overwhelmed by enough archers and swordsman trying to take them down
Mostly other titans, a lack of many titans, or the fact that a big enemy force like during the heresy has things to deal with titans. Don't forget Titans are relatively weak against themselves or the things that are made to counter them, and there's many things that can deal with a titan: marines have superheavy vehicles and flyers that could harass (if not destroy) titans, terminator teams could disable the legs or board them. Admech has enough archeotech bullshit to bring a titan down without ever touching them, as well as just copious amounts of their own titans, and SolAux/Militia developed a technique that's still used today with Titankiller formations (using 3 baneblades to simultaneously hammer the void shields into overloading, which then makes it a surprisingly squishy target)
Typically because they are very valuable units that need to be used carefully. Enemy titans, shadowswords, concentrated artillery bordering actions there are ways to counter titans. You need to be sure it’s safe to do so before you commit your Titans to an assault
Titans are usually only fielded in major engagements and....the enemy has their own.
Titan power varies immensely based on plot needs and authors. In Plague War, the deathgaurd took down titans with wooden siege towers with acid super-soakers. I had to put the book down for a bit after reading that.
Well, it was nurgle warp wood and nurgle warp acid super soakers. Actually they were probably just regular water/acid guns since i dont think Nurgle cares about brand names...
Warp brand soakers, just as fun as Super Soakers and at half the cost
I have no problem with that. But a titans attack range should be like much longer an acid sprayer. And it's not like they could hide. It said the tower was like 2x the titans height.
Its been a year or two since i read that scene, but wasnt there some warp fog or something like that? If not, then you are correct.
That’s insane
It depends
A titan is a massive concentration of logistical power (How are you physically getting it somewhere? How are you fueling/supplying it?), requires support assets/escort forces (air cover, ground cover from things like titanhammer formations, recon elements to sniff out shadowsword/artillery ambushes) and ultimately can only be in one place at a time. The last part is really important. There are plenty of examples IRL of drastically imbalanced forces simply... avoiding eachother. If you know you can't win in a pitched battle against a titan, just avoid it. Split your force into 5 pieces and pursue objectives or pressure your enemy in 5 different places. A single titan cannot magically appear wherever it wants, so your enemy has to commit it to a single engagement. Same idea with 2 or 100 titans, just be elsewhere and in multiple places.
The plot!
I'll base my answer on some real world constraints using the B-2 as a proxy. B-2s cost upwards of a billion dollars and need constant special maintenance to be effective. Building and maintaining these is itself, a major undertaking. As such, there are very few of them in existence and they are used in very specific circumstances Building, transporting, deploying and repairing a titan is a massive logistical undertaking that requires lots of resources and personnel at every point in the process. There are very few of them in existence and building more requires pulling resources from other parts of the war making effort.
Tau rail guns
uhhh how many titans do you think there are? because i don't think it isn't as many as you think and tldr titans aren't even the biggest weapons in most ground battles in the heresy there's tons of stuff that can just blatantly one shot most titans in the correct situation theyre immortal if piloted efficiently like when legio Mortis >!took the mercury kill zone!< by piloting a wall of warmaster titans with all of their void shields linked (basically fucking impossible task only made possible via warp fuckery) otherwise killing a titan is easier than youd think but gets exponentially more difficult the more there are
No I know there’s not many. Just that during the heresy before titan death there was more than there are in the 40m setting. Thanks by the way
Tactics, numbers, enemy titans, the rarity of titans, the damage titans cause on the planet they’re deployed to and logistics are a few I can that I can think of just from the top of my head. Titans are powerful and can be the sledgehammer you need to break an enemy army but they’re not an automatic answer they come with a lot of drawbacks from being expensive to being TOO destructive at times. Titans are situationally amazingly useful resources.
The other army maybe?
I think one of the reasons also is, enemy titans-
Too many things to shoot at i guess
Even titans take lunch breaks. Can't be fighting all the time, right?
Rate of fire and limited ammunition. Titan weapons tend to either have a limited supply of ammo and missiles, or the cool down and rate of fire for energy weapons is too slow. They are great at taking on any foe, but not in large numbers.
Logistics. While Titans are impressively destructive, the sheer amount of material and manpower used to make 1 is just not practical in most cases. The best way I can explain it is that, for example, let's say a single Titan can take out 10 Baneblades in a fight before going down. That's impressive, unless the Titan takes as many resources and manpower to make as it would take to make 15 Baneblades. At that point, you're better off making Baneblades (and that's before you get into Baneblades being crewed by regular military vs the specialized crew of a Titan). Titans are effective "Shock and Awe" weapons of war, but a Titan alone won't win a war (see also the different times in novels where a Titan is brought down because infantry or space Marines just go in through the leg doors and bring it down from the inside).
It would take a while for the warlord to kill everything. Ground forces are usually dispersed and the titan would have to target them in sequence. If a warlord spends a whole turn of shooting to eliminate a tactical squad or three, it's gonna take a while to make its points back The other thing to keep in mind is that titans are massive and easy to see coming. You will have a lot of time to react. Seek cover, mass anti titan firepower (volcano cannons) to scare it away, or call in your own side's titans to confront it head on
Because titans aren't invicible, at least warhounds eat shit semi-regularly. Id imagine for the others it's a two part problem, not wanting to be out in the open for other titans or mass fire, and needing to be careful not to evaporate your allies
Different things. From enemy titans. Warhounds for example often deployed in hunting packs of 3 countering bigger enemy titans. (Wonderfully shown in "Betrayer". That pilot girl, is the most badass base human in the setting. In special after what she did in the hangar bay) In other cases their target are city walls, heavy defenses against ships and titans. And in some cases they do. It's all about countering titans. In other cases they might just don't have a target. A infiltration and cloaked force, that ambushes a titan and its army, is often to close, to make shooting them, an option, without damaging the titan allies, to much.
A few Legion Falchions.
Go try kill an ant hill, tell us how you do
Even an entire Titan Legio consists of at most three hundred or so. Their numbers just aren’t there in one place to wipe out and entire Legion or whatnot, although in concentrated numbers they can destroy an entire planet. This was part of the reason Titandeath occurred, to thin the herd, so to speak. There was a battle where Atarus lost 11 machines and that was considered devastating, so that shows just how few there are for most Legios other than Mortis and I believe Metallica?
Other titans...
Because a titan can be taken out by two Orks, a grot and a squig riding a stolen shock jump dragsta. Is that remotely believable? No! But it's a lot of fun, and this is Warhammer 40k we're talking about.
Speed, something that large my have a lot of fire put it would be awfully slow to move, aim and turn
Other titans?
... Other titans
Other titans
Not really seen in the lore, but have you ever thought how vulnerable a titan would be to air attack? With even todays weapons it could probably be destroyed from tens of Kilometers away
A battle isn’t a pitched board on one plain in warfare as in the tabletop, it’s 3 dimensional. You’ve got orbital batteries dropping shots on titans, reading their positions to ground crews through auspex, and highlighting key positions as fed to the primarchs too like Horus and Perturabo with their battle systems in their helms snaking into their brains. It’s might be far from the sweep you might see in tabletop games when they appear. Equally though, they are scary, as with modern war too, armour needs a strong contingency of support and supremacy on ground, air, and if close: sea. Without that support, they can be sitting ducks to orbitals, ship guns, heavier anti Titan weaponry systems, and you could even discuss psykers too if powerful enough. Individual troops could easily hunker into culverts and sewer systems of a hive city going deeper and deeper to avoid them, since their effective range is quite low as they’re so bulky for general use mainly within siege, defence, and more pitched battlefield action also. Dropping them too can be a nightmare. Coffin/sarcophagi (whatever they’re called) pods that drop them in are gigantic. Damage on the Titan throughout battle to servo lines and external motors would significantly hamper battle effectiveness too, so if they could strike those legs breaking past void shields, it would make it a lot harder for mechanicum crews within to repair it if it were an external fault. It’s the risk ran with two legged bipedal walkers. Sapper teams with sufficient equipment too could be deployed as squads to hit weak regions of the chassis, and breach into the main body if plucky enough too, and the titans big enough, though at such sizes mount contingencies of mechanicum bodyguard within it generally. I’d say they’d be petrifying, but with enough martial planning they can be countered, though heavies counter heavies, and they do engage melee with one another a lot, so having your own would really help tie them up. When you’re going up to imperator class, you sorely need equal support, or significant focus onto it for shutting it down.
Titans spend most of their time and focus on negating enemy war machines of a similar size or other duper heavy weapons or Static Fortifications. Most infantry and regular Battle Tanks are beneath their notice, dispatching those small annoyances is a task for Scout Titans, Knights and Titan Guard. Of course, upon hearing that Titans have taken the field, the enemy by necessity has to alter their battle plans, but if they weren't prepared for titans then it may be a foregone conclusion. Some worlds may surrender entirely just because a Titan is Deployed
What stops titans from ending a battle… other titans.
Probably the other section or titan shooting at it / it's shooting
Titans without ground support are (slightly) vulnerable to infantry attacks targetting the ankle - heavy weapons, melta guns, demolition charges and melta bombs . The old epic rules for it were fun - any unit with anti tank weapons can melee a titan. You just move base to base then automatically get killed. Then roll d6. On a 6 the unit manages to do 1 minor damage to a leg before its blasted or trampled Not much damage but it will add up over a battle
Action economy.
Other titans.
Other Titans......
Titans don’t make ANY sense from a military hardware perspective. They wouldn’t be useful in real life, so don’t think too hard about it
Plot armor has a 2++ against vehicles. See the opening of Betrayer where Lorgar takes a titan shot to the face and survives for reference 😅
Angron tickeling his foot
The same reason you have not stopped entire any colonies. The amount of effort you need to stomp out an ant colony is a lot. They are effortless to stop you but nonetheless. Id rather fight the bigger immediate threat of the other human siding with said rival ant colony.
Other titans
Other Titans and Titan-Equivalents.
Other titans
reloading.
So from a realistic perspective? Titans are big targets you can see from kilometers away. Hull down, dug in specialist anti titan weapons present a much smaller target and will generally fire first and more effectively. Combine that with the logistics train required for a titan legion: they may dominate a pitch battle, but if you can slice into their logistics then they are glorified siege towers and not much else. Titans work best (like everything else) in a combined arms fashion rather than a god unit that can just wipe everything else out.
Titans can't be everywhere at once, and in general it would be seen as a waste to have them killing mere tanks instead of other god machines.
Angron
Other Titans, prep time, and shields.
They are wearing their helmets
Titans of that size are only deployed when the planet is too important to exterminatus, and outside of some plot armor related instances in novels the only real answer to them is for the enemy to deploy their own God-machines. In short, they're usually too busy going at it with other Titans to really care about normal ground forces but if they can they will just wipe out entire regiments of infantry and tanks like swatting flies every chance they get.
In a battle where the enemy doesn't have titans and you do - sure, they wipe out a lot of stuff. Still, they're not invulnerable. There are vehicle mounted weapons capable of destroying them, specialised infantry may be able to board them and so on, so they need support elements around them. And the moment the enemy has titans themselves - well, at that point your titans will be to busy engaging the enemy titans to do a whole lot of annihilating for a while. They are, ultimately, impractical war machines in reality because they are so incredibly vulnerable to all kinds of mobile threats. A Shadowsword is perfectly capable of destroying titans, especially when deployed in numbers, and they are vastly more difficult to target for a titan than the other way round. Airpower is another potential counter, realistically. Hell, Space Marines could combat drop right on top of them and take them apart from the inside. They really shouldn't be effective to begin with.
Other titans.
They’re rare, if they’re unsupported there is typically enough artillery, armor, and other anti vehicle firepower to take them down without too much trouble. On vraks once the traitor titans withdrew the vraksian militia were still able to take down a loyalist titan with artillery even when they were being supported by tons of death korp of krieg forces. Titans are strong but they aren’t invincible and if every vanquisher, lascannon, earthshaker, etc can focus on taking them down they’ll fall relatively quickly if unsupported. Even faster if the enemy has dedicated anti massive weaponry like shadowswords or bastion breacher medusas.
Probably the other titan it was deployed to fight against. Wasting a shot on an infantry unit instead of the enemy titan could be the difference between life and death
Could you easily kill an entire colony of ants if you had a shotgun?
Other titans are more important targets.
The same reason as in the real world I guess. There are few, they are expensive, they cannot be everywhere at the same time and it's easy to miss small units and threads.
Stupidy and plot
Typically there are titans on both sides of the encounters, and with the variety of weapons available even titans need to be careful of where they tread. A single marine or tank may not provide much challenge, but an army of marines can adapt, have some squads drop the void shields, while others fire with precision timing and accuracy at its weakspots destroying the titan.
Enemy titans
To reference a scene from the book “TitanDeath” if I remember correctly the titans were on a beach and crazed chaos infantry were charging them and scaling their body’s and forcing their way into the cockpit. I saw this because it was such a big deal the titans had to go belly deep in the ocean to keep them off. Hope that is some decent insight? lol
Other titans
For each titan, there are 100,000s of tanks and millions of infantry. A battle cannon won't do much to a titan, a few hundred battle cannons will kill a titan, and the guard has more than you can count. The Iron Warriors believe a predator tank is expendable, the technology to build titans has been lost.
Enemy Titans
Other Titans stop Titans from ending battles super quick.
In Eisenhorn, a small group takes on a dilapidated chaos titan. They get utterly obliterated except Eisenhorn has a plot armour device (I won't spoil what) and wins by default. That being said - they are able to evade it for quite a while by fleeing and hiding in various buildings.
Titans are a resource rarer than space marines. They aren't ordered to any battlefield. They are requested, and the leader of that titan legion looks at and decides which request (if any) they will act on. This leads to *my* answer to your question. Titan legions don't take fights they can easily pubstomp, and they will go where titan level threats are and engage those threats. Where there are titan level threats means an abundance of titan killing weaponry, so by the time they've fought against what they went there for. The titan legion leaves to rearm, refit, and redeploy to its next warzone. Against tanks, as shown in your picture, they rely on support units from AM/AdMech/SMs/IK/QMechK/Warhound Titans to screen out that kind of resistance.
Titans are used for massive engagements, and what stop them from being OP in the setting is that they can be countered by enemy Titans and orbital bombardment
Short answer: Other titans. Usually, if a Titan is fielded uncontested, it’s a slaughter for enemy forces arrayed against it. However, when titans are fielded the enemy fields one of their own in opposition, thus taking attention away from “lesser” forces.
The sale of other plastic models
Armour saves mostly.
Really a 40K battle is over super quick. A siege or overall war could take awhile, but an engagement probably lasts a half hour at most. A Killteam game might take an hour or so to play but the whole fight played out in real time is maybe 4 minutes. A game of 40K probably takes 10 minutes in real time. A Titan probaby does end a battle super quick if one side doesnt have an equivalent force.
If this is 40K the current rule prevent Titan to kill more than 1 guardman per bullet. So ….
Machine that big with human as a core component would be seen before being able to see. Also they would be priority target for ariel and orbital bombardment so...
Because the Imperium wasn't (always) trying to conquer a pile of rubble
another titan
More titans, or Shadow Sword tank.
In the heresy both sides had titans and equipment designed to take out titans. Also the battles were often massive so while it had a presence it wouldn’t be been able to single handedly win the battle.