I would point out that if Humanity of the present era were to try to make an 1900's era steam locomotive, it would take years to a decade and millions of dollars. This isnt to say we couldn't make a better more efficient steam engine in that time, but we have already lost the knowledge of how to maintain let alone build most of that Era's technologies. This seems like "no big deal" to us, because we've already moved well past it for equivalent machines for that task. But if something was to happen, say EMPs or alien invasions or whatever, that then blocked or destroyed our ability to create that modern tech, we'd be in the same boat as the Imperium. Anyone that COULD build the modern versions would be much more valuable building it than trying to recreate the past everyone else could understand and grow. Its like giving yourself end game gear for a level 1 character. Learning how to get there or build anything in between is a lot less important than the fact you know it works and nothing can beat it NOW
I’d argue that the stream argument isn’t very accurate for this specific argument. We have the knowledge, it’s just that industry has moved past that. We have all the records to produce it, and if the demand was there it would be very easy for a factory to “re-tool” for the new demands. There isn’t a machine from history that we couldn’t reverse engineer with enough money and time. Our current society prioritizes professional and educated professionals. Ingenuity and outside the box thinking is often promoted.
@@MacroLore I agree and disagree. I completely agree that with money and time we could rebuild anything. The thrust of my argument was that when the money and time is finite, creating the best we can make NOW is better than creating something more "appropriate to the time". I disagree that the trend towards specialization allows us to even GO backwards. The chip shortage for cars was a great example, despite the fact that most cars use less processing than a laptop from a decade ago, and could work on chips from 20 easily, it was cheaper to buy the chips they make NOW and run them lower than specifications. Because that manufacturing capacity was better spent on NEW chips regardless. So when those chips were outbid for other more important things, it was STILL cheaper to make the rest of the cars and sit for a year for the chips to be made. If we could have recreated the factories for those decade old chips in a year, we absolutely just would have, but instead we waited because all the specialists had moved on to the latest thing and "lost" how to make the old thing
we still have the documents and construction plans for many steam locomotives as well as some very enthusiastic experts that rebuild and maintain existing steam locomotives. the knowledge is concentrated in a few experts but its not entirely lost. we "lost" the knowledge to make greek fire mainly because we have neither any documentation nor any living memory of its production.
One thing about the Tau. The tau have several stations capable of sucking up the energy of entire stars, with some of them blowing up in the process due to premature aging causing by taking all the energy from them. If we are going to use the Kardashev Scale, they are a K2 by default. There are 6 sunbursts in the Tau empire´s map, with a 1000s or so worlds that are definetly in the kardashev 1, (With one tau World having trillions of inhabitants that can be in K1.2) (Btw, I wouldn´t say ANY planet besides a major necron tomb world with a ctan shard in in the 1.3 , 1.4, or 1.5) So, the Tau are a type 2,07 in the Kardashev Scale. Lucius is a hollow forge in the same way that a nuclear reactor is hollow, it is not the size of a star, nor even close, even if it is huge. Its nucleus is a gigantic fusion reactor, and stars are mainly output their energy in fusion, that is why it is called "The hollow sun". If we dare to day it is a 100 times the size of Earth, and have 100 times the surface area to radiate the heat, it can be at maximum an Type 1.2 (waste heat must go somewhere) Even if we consider that every single planet of the Imperium is a full K1 in avarage, the Two million figure that you put would be around a Type 1.6, a Type 1.7 if every single world would be some grand hive city that is a 1.1 in scale, or a Type 1.8 if every single world was as productive as Lucius. So, by the Kardashev, I would not dare to say that the Imperium is a K2, with the more optimistic way to put it in the Type 1.7 range, and that is even ludricus to say.
I 100% agree on the T’au. But remember the imperium has at a minimum 1.5 million worlds consuming roughly 20quadrillion watts annually. And I didn’t factor in ANY of the mining or logistics infrastructure. Or any of the naval or guard consumption/usage
are there any sources for a tau world having "trillions" of inhabitants? from what I can remember tau worlds are much less densely populated than imperial worlds on average. falling more in the civilized category than in the hive world category.
@@KT-pv3kl Codex: T'au Empire (9th Edition), pg. 34 , the world of Sa'cea. Also, the Tau don´t only colonize habitable worlds; they can pretty much transform any world in habitable using enough drones , tech, and most importantly, competent urban planing.
I think that piece of lore is just grimderp and it’s dumb trying to justify because the author didn’t think that using 1000 slaves to load a shell comes of as dumb instead of cool
@@Idk-ky4kb its absolutely grimderp but it also makes sense . humans are in fact cheaper to produce than ancient autoloading technology that is jealously guarded by religious fanatic techno cultists who don't understand half the technology they have access to.
I would like to challenge the notion that the Admech doesn't reverse engineers things, they do but are limited to their doctrine, they can rediscovered how old tech is made and they do but before they can actually use that knowledge they have to fit it somewhere with the existing doctrine. Also due to the fact the Admech works as a technocracy there is a extrem competition between Magi to be the one actually discovering something so they horde information instead of sharing it.
@@OBrasaThere are 8 tiers with tier 7 being the lowest they are. 1. Tier 7: Pre-industrial 2. Tier 6: industrial 3. Tier 5: Atomic age 4. Tier 4: Space age 5. Tier 3: Space-faring (This is were the UNSC is at) 6. Tier 2: interstellar (This is were the covenant is at) 7. Tier 1: World builder (the forerunners) 8. Tier 0: Transsentient (the precursors)
Nice video. The primary focus output of energy can be quite a deceptive method while trying to accurately convey a entire sci fi nation's true tier of strengths and weaknesses. Especially with a nation that is heavily divided into varies inter dependent regions and institutions who both monopolize and centralized their control into such extremely strict unitary organization structures that nationalizes practically every form of business and institute they can cram into their folds. When they are so forgetful and both stagnant and regressive in advancements and record keeping the blueprint schematics which they hardly remember 1/10th of the time as you said and how the Imperium's over one million worlds can vary dramatically both internally and externally in technology and cultural and societal make up. A few worlds out of like 3 thousand might actually focus on trying to refine and improve the technology while working under heavy restrictions and sanctions. To the Imperium's wartime economy it's all quantity over quality even when entire sectors and the realms within the cities are in heavy economic debts trying to meet High Terra's high demands and following the codes and tenants of their laws. The Adeptus Mechanicus can hardly remember how to create blueprints themselves half the time too. The Imperium can be quite overly stupid many times especially in not utilizing autoloaders and using massive slave labor on their ships to load their main cannon systems. One thing I do disagree with you though is that when you said quadrillions of deaths would not matter to the Imperium of Man that's not true though. Losing quadrillions of citizens along with soldiers in a short amount of time spread out among sectors would actually be pretty bad that would be significantly noticed. Losing quadrillions of men, women, and children are numbers not even the modern Imperium of Man would simply brush off thinking it's no big deal. They may be bigger then the Horus Heresy Imperium in totality but even they know losing quadrillions is extremely bad news to report on. Especially the after effects it would have on multiple sectors as a rippling consequence. So I do disagree on that summary you made. The Katzenartig Imperium would be quite disappointed at this development if they saw it.
I didn’t mean no big deal. I believe a more accurate wording is quadrillions of expected casualties daily. With thousands of warzones and millions of less than safe factoriea
@@MacroLore Quadrillions daily would mean entire sectors would be killed off over night. Most of the big hive world minus Terra barely have populations that reach a trillion and majority of the Hive worlds are only just above a hundred billion. The Imperium of Man's manpower cannot cover something so dramatic as what you are saying daily. Now many dozens of trillions dying on average every year in either warring conflicts or by natural causes or the bad environments of the planets and hive cities combined that is fine, heck you could say in some intense cases a hundred trillion could have possibly perished in multiple conflicts added in total when combined in a extended period of time but quadrillions daily? That's too much of a expotential number to recover from in a short amount of time that's it ridiculously too high. For perspective the Star Wars Galaxy with it's 2 million inhabited systems has over one hundred quadrillions of both humans and sentient aliens combined. If you are saying the it would take a hundred days to clean out all humanoid life in Star Wars while the Yuuzhan Vong war in 2 years killed over 365 trillion which is small, with this claim that's simply too high a number. Keep in mind in Warhammer 40k ftl is very slow to respond for nearly all factions who use them resulting in very slow grinding conflicts. Not like Star Wars ftl where the wars could be lightning fast.
@@MacroLore Quadrillions is far too big and the Wars are grinding slow not lightning blitzkrieg fast like the warfare the Yuuzhan Vong can do during the Yuuzhan Vong war that slew over 365 trillion of a 100 quadrillion galaxy within 2 years. Which is much larger then the Horus Heresy mere 2 trillion official casualty count in 7 years. To lose quadrillions daily is impossible for the Imperium to recover in a short amount of time especially with how slow they to recruit, rebuild ships, and colonize worlds and develop them to be self efficient and pay Terra the taxes. It's the equivalent of losing entire hundreds of sectors from multiple fronts overnight. Most Hiveworlds don't have populations in the trillions and average out in the hundreds of billions. Losing dozens of trillions a year? Then yeah sure that's plausible. Heck maybe losing a hundred trillion in a series of intense brutal conflicts and sectors in constant strife added together in a few years is possible however multitudes of Quadrillions... daily at that continually? Those are numbers and timeframes that cannot be maintained even by the Imperium of Man objectively. That's something a deadly event like Slaanesh waking up in the heart of the Ancient Eldar Empire should be within.
I'm late commenting, but as always, i definitely enjoyed this. Understanding where the Imperium is technology wise is definitely not an easy thing. Some places have tech to make me wish we had it. Other places... seem like walking through Europe during WW2. (With lasers of course)
If you want to make some numbers for the Imperium´s production instead of just tech level, there are some ways you can do it, I can explain to you if you would like to know
i think comparing the tech level of the imperium vs the tau and then concluding that the tau are more advanced because each individual has on average better tech is fundamentally flawed due to economies of scale. for each and every tau firewarrior with fancy tech there is a human noble who has ten times more advanced tech than the tau. we are talking about an empire with 1000 worlds vs an empire with 1000000 worlds. just because its cheaper to burn promethium than to build plasma fusion generators doesn't mean a species that relies on promethium combustion isn't advanced when they have access to both. you also made flawed arguments about technological advancement which is a rather moot point when looking at the current level of technology. the tau cant even properly warp travel and you honestly argue they are more technologically advanced because their tech "looks" more fancy?
Even those nobles prefer to use tau tech when given the oportunity because it simply is better, that is one of the way the tau gets to subdue imperial rule by selling the nobles better tech. Imperial tech isn´t DAoT tech, and only the DAoT tech can be better than anything the Tau have today.
You can´t classify DAoT as Imperial tech, Imperial tech is anything that the Imperium can relliably reproduce. The two main things that allows the Imperium´s warp travel to function is a Space Ligth house that is a DAoT tech, and the Navegators, that are also made using DAoT and only exist in M42 because they have doing soo much inbreading that would make the habesburg chin look charming. Without that, the only reliable warp travel tech the Imperium have is the calculated jump, that is only good for 4 ly jump, while the Ether Drive can jump for 10 ly at the time, again, better than the Imperium´s. Stop taking the Copium and just acept imperial fan, the neofeudal Theofascistic state is just less advanced than the Tau.
