Who are the Best Mechanical Engineers.

[Warhammer002]

As the title says, Who are the Best Mechanical Engineers.

Empire - Known for their more wacky and odd designs such as the Helstorm Rocket Battery and Marienburg Landship.
Dwarfs - Known for their reliable and fascinating designs such as the Organ Gun and Dwarfen Airship.
Chaos Dwarfs - Known for their dark and daemon-infused designs such as the Hellcannon and Kraken Submarine Ship.

Edit: I completely forgot about Skaven, sorry.

[The Devourer]

Chaos dwarves- They have the skill of standard dwarves but are as inventive as the most insane empire engineers.

[Danny_D14]

I want to vote Skaven :-( There's nothing they can't fix or do with some warpstone and copper wiring.

But I'll go with Chaos Dwarves for [The Devourers] reasoning.

[Righthandedtwin]

Skaven and Chaos Dwarves are more techno-arcana rather than Technology, as thier tech combines magic with mechanics (or rather daemons with mechanics in the case of the chaos dwarves) so probably the Dwarves if we are talking purely engineers rather than mage engineers.

[The Devourer]

Dwarves do the same though. While it is less obvious dwarven runes are key part of their technology.

[Righthandedtwin]

Dwarves do the same though. While it is less obvious dwarven runes are key part of their technology.

Nope, dwarven technology is self standing and not every dwarf device uses runes. They make use of runes to enhance thier existing devices unlike Skaven and CD tech which requires magic to be able to function.

[Beaviz81]

I would actually had gone for the dark horses the Dark and High Elves due to their technology working without any hitches. But they are not making any progress and looks backward, and they are also off-topic.

For the finest I would say the Dwarves. Reliable, they have taught the Empire their level of technology and doesn't suffer from as many accident with their technology.

[woodster17]

You can't really include HE and DE in a topic about Mechanical Engineers though. They don't operate their weapons or general equipment with technology such as that. For quality of artifacts perhaps they should be considered but I would probably vote Dwarfs.

[reth]

Dwarfs are well know worldwide because of their engineering jobs Their designs have been copied by the other races, their technological capacity, and I mean purely technology without magic, has no rival.

[Vmartini]

I don't think using magic makes it any less of an engineering feat, in the same way a modern engineering system will use electronic components to perform a role which would have been purely mechanical a generation ago, they are using what is available to them.

In fact, I'd say the Dwarf's reluctance to innovate makes them poor engineers, regardless of how reliable their devices are they are still mainly the same devices that have been used for a long, long time. I think the Empires engineers beat them because of this.

[Leogun_91]

Chaos Dwarfs - Known for their dark and daemon-infused designs such as the Hellcannon and Kraken Submarine Ship.

The Black Kraken, was made by a dwarf from Barak Varr who later, as a renegade traveled to the Chaos Dwarfs, but he didn't need them to make his Black Kraken.

Dwarves do the same though. While it is less obvious dwarven runes are key part of their technology.

No it is not, an invention needs to be tested in millenia before they can be inscribed with runes.

All three are good but when reading the Throne of Tamurkhan book the chaos dwarf technology comes of as....kind of bad, it accomplishes little, seems inferior to the empires.

I'd go for dwarfs with empire a close second.

[Sexiest_hero]

Scaven made a nuke over 400 years too early, they win.

[Felwether]

Scaven made a nuke over 400 years too early, they win.

Over 400 years too early? How does that work?

[Leogun_91]

Over 400 years too early? How does that work?

I guess it was commissioned as a project that would last quite some time, only way that statement can work.

[woodster17]

Skaven can almost certainly create more powerful weapons than the other races mentioned but surely nobody can debate that they are by far the worst mechanical engineers. My rudimentary understanding of engineering in the Warhammer World could be combined with crunching some warpstone in to something to make it extremely powerful but it definitely doesn't make me an engineer in any shape of form. Skaven are competent and extremely risky, but technically lacking when it comes to perfecting mechanized engines.

[Dargon]

Definately the Dwarfs. They may be reluctant to innovate (as Vmartini points out), but their reluctance isn't without merit or logic. They have spent centuries perfecting their designs, and with their constantly dwindling population the secrets to that perfection is always under threat of being lost if not continually passed on to the next generation. The Warhammer background barely begins to hint at the mechanical engineering feats the Dwarfs still have hidden away undiscovered by the world at large within the depths of their holds - trains, bilge pumps, mining drills and excavators, golems, an entire factory powered by a waterfall (Zhufbar), an entire hold that can be played like a tuba (Karak Hirn). The engineering involved in just excavating and creating their mountain fortresses on the scale they do is staggering, let alone that (for the most part) they stood up to the power of massive earthquakes. Dwarf Engineers are obsessed with their work outlasting not only them, but most of their descendants (which for a Dwarf is a long time).

Skaven however are the complete opposite. They plan to long outlast any of their engineering feats and just hope they work for long enough to give them a good running start. Skaven engineering doesn't even rate. Sure, it gets ridiculously high points for inventiveness and out of the box thinking, but frankly it's a miracle that Skaven engineering even works. When it does work it's impressive, but odds are it won't continue to work much longer. Not to mention it's a serious health hazard to be anywhere near a piece of Skaven Engineering (especially if you're the operator).

Human Engineering from the Empire is more showy and innovative, but seems far from being anywhere near as practical, reliable or long-lasting as something Dwarf-made. The engineers of Nuln seem a bit insane, with only the comparison of the even more insane Skaven and Goblin engineering giving their designs any grounding - they basically take what they learn from the Dwarfs and (like a movie director adapting a book) mistake bigger, flashier and more complicated for actually being better.

Chaos Dwarfs are a bit of a wildcard, as we don't know too much about their engineering. Being Dwarfs you'd think they'd be at least the equal of their cousins, but I can't help feeling that their innovation and binding of Daemons into machines is actually more detrimental to the quality of their engineering than the stagnation of the Dwarfs. Binding Daemons into a piece of Technology to make it work is a bit of a cheat - makes the results seem like little more than a suit of armour for a daemon, rather than a feat of engineering.

[Liber]

Definately the Dwarfs. They may be reluctant to innovate (as Vmartini points out), but their reluctance isn't without merit or logic. They have spent centuries perfecting their designs.

If only this was in any way represented in the actual game.

Hopefully their 8th edition release (whenever the hell that actually happens) brings either the game to the fluff or the fluff to the game...cause right now there is a divide between the two.

[TauDrone]

Easily the Dwarves! Although with the amount of arcane rune "magic" at work, can it truly be called just engineering? doodoodoo doodoodoo!

[Urgat]

The Black Kraken, was made by a dwarf from Barak Varr who later, as a renegade traveled to the Chaos Dwarfs, but he didn't need them to make his Black Kraken.

The Black Kraken uses a captured soul nonetheless.

[TheDarkDaff]

Can the Dwarves make a reaper bolt thrower? Do they build tall graceful towers that defy logic by simply remaining upright? But then I guess the whole question boils down to what you actually define as "mechanical engineering". It also bears to look at are we comparing actual engineering (which is purely thought process) or also actual craftsmenship.

Just going on the pure area of engineering I’d say that it comes down to Dwarves and Elves simply because they understand so much more of the engineering side than the Empire, Orcs and Skaven do. The lesser lived races make up for their lack of understanding with enthusiasm and a willing disregard for OH & S.