Title says it all - no Astra militarism or Naval support - can only 1000 of humanity's finest übermensch superman (created in Nazi-like genetic labs) conquer and subdue an entire planet say with just 6 billion people (around earth today)?

Or would it be a case of Deneriys in GoT where her unsullied couldn't even keep order in one large city?

Fluffwise, definately. Game wise, no.

Depends on the planet, and who/what's on it.

If it's something a few precision strikes can deal with, then sure. Otherwise they'd suffer from attrition/supply issues. In either case they wouldn't be able to hold an entire planet unsupported, so it would be a hit-and-run campaign.

Take, oh yes... Hold, hell no

The biggest weapon the Space Marines have against humans is that they are revered as near godlike war machines, and after key battles have been won most planets would want to give up.

But they'll never have the numbers to hold hold a planet if the populace aren't willing to give in

In current fluff it's possible, but gamewise, nevermind IRL it'd be absolutely impossible. Even with Astartes capabilities they have nowhere near the resources to conquer and hold new england, nevermind a whole planet.

Astartes capabilities were better shown off during the Great Crusade when it'd require in some cases 100.000+ to conquer a world. Chapters doing the same stuff is just ridiculous.

Assuming they had the full logistical support to conduct the range of operations, they'd make a good go of it.

They could certainly knock out most planets government, and eventually wipe out organized militaries, unless it was unusually elite and well equipped.

With planetary mobility and quick strike ability, they'd be able to keep resistance movements off balance for quite a while. Attrition would not be their friend, and eventually the billions will figure out IEDs and other booby traps.

Now, the Marines might ally with some of the natives, and use them for a lot of dirty work, but that's assuming the Marines can convince locals to do so. Of course, if the planet has something valuable, there would likely be some exchange of goods.

So, the short answer would be: yes, but probably not for too long.

There is a lack of boots.

If they could get the planet to surrender, sure. If the planet was willing to fight to the last man - no. There's only so much ground you can cover with 1000 men.

The problem with military operations that aren't flat-out extermination you need a lot of people to secure the area regardless of how much local battlefield superiority you have. The US had complete one-sided dominance over Iraq, a relatively small country, and still 250,000 men was not nearly enough to keep it secure.

This is why FW books on the matter tend to be more realistic as you have 10-12 millionish Guardsmen being used to take over sparsely populated planets.

Fluffwise easily

Particularly if that SM's name was Conrad Kurze.


Small warbands of CSM are able to conqure planets. Just a squad of 5-8 guys can incite a rebellion and topple a government then set up a system where the strongest rule. In such a system, a SM will always win.

No, they can't, they need way more boots on the ground to establish proper dominance.

It's pretty well established in the fluff that Space Marines don't do conquest - that's the job of the Imperial Guard. They're an elite commando force that acts as the tip of the spear.

A Space Marine chapter could cause mass disorder by decapitating the leadership of the planetary government and defence force, cause catastrophic damage to infrastructure through lightning commando raids on key facilities, and just generally make a mess of things. They could send the planet back to the stone age - but they wouldn't truly have "conquered" the place. Even the Legions didn't really do this - they acted as shock troops to obliterate the planetery defense forces. They were followed up by the Imperial Army who performed the grubby work of breaking local resistances and re-establishing order.

The flip side of conquest is the re-establishment of order - and you need manpower to do that. One chapter of marines doesn't have the manpower to man checkpoints, to enforce curfews, guard key facilities, all those many boring jobs that an occupying force has to perform if they want to re-establish order after they have defeated the planet's military forces.

So 500 Space Marines land in New England...

Quickly the US Army realizes they need a tactical nuclear strike and the second last thing Obama does is order a missile strike on American soil.

The last thing Obama does is melt into a puddle of goop when the Marines order a missile strike of their own.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Then the other 500 show up and we put our hands up politely and cue towards the nearest Inquisitorial Assessment Centre...

 darkcloak wrote:
So 500 Space Marines land in New England...

Quickly the US Army realizes they need a tactical nuclear strike and the second last thing Obama does is order a missile strike on American soil.

The last thing Obama does is melt into a puddle of goop when the Marines order a missile strike of their own.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Then the other 500 show up and we put our hands up politely and cue towards the nearest Inquisitorial Assessment Centre...

Apart from the marines do that against every capital city on the globe in the same day.

Oh and obviously they magically know with 100% where all the leaders are, how the planet works and blablabla. Yeah, right, omniscient marines.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Oh and obviously they magically know with 100% where all the leaders are, how the planet works and blablabla. Yeah, right, omniscient marines.

Psykers can rip thoughts from anybody on the planet, Techmarines can patch into our satellite network and siphon away data, and even your basic grunt can simply kidnap a human and devour their mind to assimilate their memories from their greymatter.

Or they just annihilate any city with a large concentration of people. For example, erase New York and London and you crash the global economy.

What was that Margaret Atwood quote?

Never question the ability of a small group of Space Marines to conquer an entire planet...

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Oh and obviously they magically know with 100% where all the leaders are, how the planet works and blablabla. Yeah, right, omniscient marines.

Psykers can rip thoughts from anybody on the planet, Techmarines can patch into our satellite network and siphon away data, and even your basic grunt can simply kidnap a human and devour their mind to assimilate their memories from their greymatter.

.

They'll have to find the right person, and what if our tech isn't compatible with Techmarines? No, somehow they're always able to find the right guy, hack the tech without failing, yeah, no I don't buy it.

They could definitely conquer a planet, even a company is enough for that in most cases.
I'd wager they could hold on to it in most cases as well. Precision strikes are pretty efficient at dealing with dangerous unrest, and if the planet proves to be too unruly, most Astartes are not beyond simply murdering the entire population and flying in a new one. An entire chapter has more than enough power for that.
The only planets they might not be able to take on are ones that are very heavily fortified or have very strong defensive forces. Worlds like Cadia, Krieg etc.

That said, Space Marines are not there to conquer stuff on their own, that is why the Legions were broken into Chapters in the first place. Space Marines are there to eliminate the heaviest enemy resistance and create a breach for other Imperial Forces to move in and hold.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Oh and obviously they magically know with 100% where all the leaders are, how the planet works and blablabla. Yeah, right, omniscient marines.

Psykers can rip thoughts from anybody on the planet, Techmarines can patch into our satellite network and siphon away data, and even your basic grunt can simply kidnap a human and devour their mind to assimilate their memories from their greymatter.

.

They'll have to find the right person, and what if our tech isn't compatible with Techmarines? No, somehow they're always able to find the right guy, hack the tech without failing, yeah, no I don't buy it.

Of course their tech is compatible- the Imperium manages everything from feral worlds to planets with modern day tech. Just exactly how little of the fluff have you even read?

A lot, still try to flush out the awful stuff I've read on there about psykers cutting ships with swords and other idiocies, but its a long process, sadly. And they use STC tech to manage those worlds, more often than not, means they got a common base, and most of it comes from the Ad-Mech, once again, common base and all that

Let's go up with a hypothetical situation. we'll assume modern military equipment is on par with IG weaponry as I don't wanna get bogged down in "modern tech vs 40k tech" comparisons. it's irrelevent to ask how we could see Space Marines conquer a world. secondly I'm mostly gonna focus on one or two great powers, worlds in 40k have united planetary governments so "well just because the US surrenders doesn't mean Germany would" isn't all that relevent to the discussion at hand.



so hypotheticly let's assume a planet more or less like earth is targeted for invasion. the Inqusition would have had scouts and spies in place well before hand, targets would be identified etc. while this is all going on the Imperial fleet will begin to move into position, with a space Marine strike cruiser in the vanguard. the cruiser we will assume carries a force consisting of one battle company,\ plus support assests (a squad of two of scout, squad or two of terminators, some armor, etc)


so the space marine vessel blasts through and makes orbit. it then launches it's drop pods. it doesn't launch it's drop pods at the troops, hell no that'd be a waste. instead it drops at critical command infastructure points. a droppod of 5 marines lands in the middle of the white house lawn and captures or kills the President and Cabinet. a tatical squad in a droppod lands at the pentagon and swiftly begins to tear it apart. another dropod lands in New York and siezes control of the UN building.

within an hour major command installations have fallen. the planets defenders are in complete disarray. and about this time the Imperial guard is landing and beginning to move in and begin the conquest. meanwhile the space marines are returning to orbit and perparing for phase 2. now that the battle has been joined, the Marines continue to make strikes at key areas. hitting notconcentrations of forces but command notes, ammo depots and others areas. as the Marines demolish this target the campaign becomes easy for the IG,

after the battle ends the Marines are credited pretty much single handed with the victory, and the millions of guardsmen who did most of the fighting are pretty much ignored.


Basicly Marines are used by the IoM for operations where they need to deploy small numbers of troops in a high concentration of force.

it's worth noting the biggest road block to SM sucess would be the enemy having air superiorty

It's really easy to subdue piles of dust after you exterminatus them all.
:p just saying. Most battle barges have the ability to exterminatus.

Most battleship-class capital ships have the ability to pretty much render a world down to the stone age, Astartes or Imperial Navy.

The only problem is that that more or less eliminates the point of invading in the first place; a dead ball of rock is largely irrelevant.

But yes, agree with most people here; 1000 marines on their own do virtually nothing - they've got to slog through armies tens of thousands strong. It's the combination of astartes strike forces with drop pods, gunships and orbital fire to allow them to engage on their own terms which makes them dangerous.

Can marines take a planet? Possibly.

Can they hold a planet? Probably not. Not without killing 90% of the population, at least.

A while back, I had a game of Dawn of War Soulstorm (with a bunch of mods). It was a 1v1 take and hold game. To win, a player must have control of over 66% of the capture points for a set amount of time in order to win. I was playing as Chaos Daemons, my opponent was Grey Knights.
My opponent could only field about 2-3 units of 3-5 Marines iirc, but I could field about 7 or so units of Furies.
What ended up happening was that, while I couldn't kill the knights at all, I could play hide-and-seek with them. I had multiple fast-moving units across the map, and every time the GK captured one of my points, I'd capture two of theirs.

The game was unwinnable for both of us, because I could't hold the points long enough, but the GK could never get a majority.

Moral of the story: Unless marines can be in multiple places at once, or have orbital support (for killing gak), they'll be given the runaround without getting anything out of it.

It would all depend on if they could get the population behind them through fear or admiration. If not and without supplies they would eventually lose control through attrition.

Most Primarchs were able to conquer their homeworlds, but couldn't have accomplished the task if it weren't for the people behind them.

The Dark Angels could. Imperial records do not have the exact number of Deathwing or Ravenwing on their books so there are likely to be quite a large number of them, plus the Dark Angels and all their successor chapters all operate as a single chapter/legion so they would have the numbers and resources.

They just keep the legion strength bit a secret from the inquisition....

 Slaphead wrote:
The Dark Angels could. Imperial records do not have the exact number of Deathwing or Ravenwing on their books so there are likely to be quite a large number of them, plus the Dark Angels and all their successor chapters all operate as a single chapter/legion so they would have the numbers and resources.

They just keep the legion strength bit a secret from the inquisition....

the dsark angels keep in close contact with their sucessors but to claim they operate as a legion is stretching it. also while we don;'t have exact numbers for the deathwing and ravenwing we can't presume that means they're really giant million man strong formations. we can proably assume they're not much stronger then a company. it's worth noting that having a full 100 suits of terminator armor is considered impressive, and only the best supplied chapters have that many. MANY chapters do not have sufficant terminator suits to equip every vetern with one.


Honestly I think the codex as written was intended for space Marines to require support to engage in planetary conquest. as I outlined in my earlier post, a chapter can make an easy job of it for guardsmen, but they need the feet on the ground the Guard can provide, as well as the navy to ensure air/space superiority

BrianDavion wrote:

 Slaphead wrote:
The Dark Angels could. Imperial records do not have the exact number of Deathwing or Ravenwing on their books so there are likely to be quite a large number of them, plus the Dark Angels and all their successor chapters all operate as a single chapter/legion so they would have the numbers and resources.

They just keep the legion strength bit a secret from the inquisition....

the dsark angels keep in close contact with their sucessors but to claim they operate as a legion is stretching it.

All Dark Angel successor chapters report to the Dark Angels Supreme Grand Master in secret and do his bidding. Their use of successor chapters is just a pretense to keep the Lords of Terra happy. They do operate as a legion.


In terms of a standard Space Marine chapter, they could orbital bombard a planet and they do have the option of exterminatus by completely blowing it up. They wouldn't really have the numbers to take over an entire planet quickly, but with time on their side (a lot of time!), they could take a planet apart piece by piece. Throughout the Great Crusade/Heresy it took entire legions to completely conquer a planet and even then they had auxiliary support from the adeptus mechanicus and imperial guardsmen (with the excellent warhound titans).

How does the saying go?

"To take a city send a squad, to take a planet send a company, to take a system send a chapter"

Something like that.

I think they could definitely take it easy, but they'd need guard regiments to help them hold it, unless they were planning on garrisoning it and making it their homeworld.

Come to think of it, how are we defining conquering?

-Total destruction of military capability
-Removal of leadership
-Extermination
-Replacing the leadership and exerting control
-Other

Use quick strikes to take out all leadership. Start propaganda broadcasts with demands to surrender/cease resistance to avoid/stop the pain that is to come. Start randomly killing folks and nuking cities disrupting military, food and economic production. Identify dissidents who support surrender and protect and arm them. Show the peace and stability they enjoy in these dissident's propaganda cities. Planet eventually subdued as ranks of dissents grow. Expected time to accomplish goals is 6 months to 5 years.

I think Alpha Legion is very capable of conquering a planet.

I guess to many people in this thread are assuming that conquest = exterminatus. I don't agree with that since, despite having the capability of wipe all life out in a single planet, SM fleets don't do that, except on extreme circonstances.

I guess one chapter can hurt a world very badly but once again, we have to define which type of world we are talking about. IIRCthe Badab sector was not that fortify and it took half a dozen of chapter to take it, with heavy losses in the end !

So, if I'm allowed to go Humanity F*** Yeah for a moment here...

A rift appears around Mars, and out of it comes a fleet of ancient, yet advanced ships. The fleets send down drop pods filled with with huge power armoured soldiers unlike anything Earth has ever seen. Most leaders (after the first few casulties) manage to escape, while the power armoured soldiers begin taking control of larger cities and such.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world begins planning to how to throw the usurpers out through clever tricks, guerilla warfare and possibly a supposed last stand in a large city or something.

Then, nuclear bomb go boom.

It's the perfect plot for an action film.

But nukes are never the answer in such movies!

If anything, it would be something like Alien vs Predator - SM and CSM taking their war to Earth.

DorianGray wrote:
Title says it all - no Astra militarism or Naval support - can only 1000 of humanity's finest übermensch superman (created in Nazi-like genetic labs) conquer and subdue an entire planet say with just 6 billion people (around earth today)?

Or would it be a case of Deneriys in GoT where her unsullied couldn't even keep order in one large city?

In several of the Horus Heresy books it is mentioned that 10 marines would be enough to take a city. 100 enough to take a planet. It does feel somewhat exagerated though. But yeah, 1000 should def be enough.

 Selym wrote:
Come to think of it, how are we defining conquering?

- They tithe guard regiments
- They surrender their psykers every x years
- They confess the Imperial Creed

You really don't want to hurt their military, because they have to defend themselves later and tithe you guard regiments.

 The Wise Dane wrote:
So, if I'm allowed to go Humanity F*** Yeah for a moment here...

A rift appears around Mars, and out of it comes a fleet of ancient, yet advanced ships. The fleets send down drop pods filled with with huge power armoured soldiers unlike anything Earth has ever seen. Most leaders (after the first few casulties) manage to escape, while the power armoured soldiers begin taking control of larger cities and such.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world begins planning to how to throw the usurpers out through clever tricks, guerilla warfare and possibly a supposed last stand in a large city or something.

Then, nuclear bomb go boom.

It's the perfect plot for an action film.

I think you mean everybody dies. We could fire every single nuke in our possession at an Imperial frigate and only succeed in scratching the paint.

I think it's possible but not in the sense we know it that requires boots on the ground to patrol and control the population. It would be a form of conquering the likes of which we might not ever expect.
They do have the resources to wipe out gov'ts, electrical infrastructures, radios and quite a fair bit of what we consider to be our tools of modern civilization and then sit back and let the quasi medieval leaderless chaos sort itself out with regular interventions on the surface to foster a warlike tradition/religion across the globe with contrived grievances and grudges. From then on that SM chapter has a recruiting planet by picking out the toughest, strongest soldier from a planet whose entire society is based on combat acumen.

40k is kinda based on the idea that the ruler of a planet, whether that's one guy or a senate body or something along those lines, is like the king in chess. Take that out, and you win the game.

So, based on that premise of the setting then, yes, one Space Marine Chapter can topple an entire world. They blitz in, cut the head off the snake, and go home, they won. This, of course, is not at all how actual warfare works, but it's something of a conceit of the setting.

 Psienesis wrote:
40k is kinda based on the idea that the ruler of a planet, whether that's one guy or a senate body or something along those lines, is like the king in chess. Take that out, and you win the game.

So, based on that premise of the setting then, yes, one Space Marine Chapter can topple an entire world. They blitz in, cut the head off the snake, and go home, they won. This, of course, is not at all how actual warfare works, but it's something of a conceit of the setting.

Considering the fact that Space Marines have kilometer-long Battle Barges, they could just nuke a few cities from orbit, and say "surrender, or die" Any country that did not surrender would have its military leaders butchered followed by its political leaders (drop pods, and teleportation). If resistance continued, nuke it. Then repeat.

In conclusion, yes, Space Marines could conquer a planet given enough time and strategical genius (which Captains are supposed to have, despite the fact that they never actually do).

 dusara217 wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
40k is kinda based on the idea that the ruler of a planet, whether that's one guy or a senate body or something along those lines, is like the king in chess. Take that out, and you win the game.

So, based on that premise of the setting then, yes, one Space Marine Chapter can topple an entire world. They blitz in, cut the head off the snake, and go home, they won. This, of course, is not at all how actual warfare works, but it's something of a conceit of the setting.

Considering the fact that Space Marines have kilometer-long Battle Barges, they could just nuke a few cities from orbit, and say "surrender, or die" Any country that did not surrender would have its military leaders butchered followed by its political leaders (drop pods, and teleportation). If resistance continued, nuke it. Then repeat.

In conclusion, yes, Space Marines could conquer a planet given enough time and strategical genius (which Captains are supposed to have, despite the fact that they never actually do).

You have to land ground-forces to take out the "orbital defense" batteries on the planet's surface before you do that, or your Battle-barge/Strike Cruiser/what-have-you becomes so much debris in space.

True. If an SM chapter showed up here it would have to launch their small hard to hit drop pods with Marines in key places on the ground to take out missiles we've designed to take down orbitals. Maybe even cause some of our Nukes to go off in key places. Turn the planet into a setting like Fallout and then recruit the strongest of the survivors to be SM themselves.

 ProwlerPC wrote:
True. If an SM chapter showed up here it would have to launch their small hard to hit drop pods with Marines in key places on the ground to take out missiles we've designed to take down orbitals. Maybe even cause some of our Nukes to go off in key places. Turn the planet into a setting like Fallout and then recruit the strongest of the survivors to be SM themselves.

Our "orbital" defenses mean squat. Again we could fire every single nuke in our possession at a Strike Cruiser and fail to do anything.

Not talking about us using them. Mentioning that the SM can easily use our own Nukes against us and send us back into dark ages.

40k is kinda based on the idea that the ruler of a planet, whether that's one guy or a senate body or something along those lines, is like the king in chess. Take that out, and you win the game.

40k is kinda based on the idea that the ruler of a planet is like the king in a kingdom. There are lots of dukes around, and one of those dukes is the king's cousin. If you can put the duke who is the king's cousin in charge, he'll pay you taxes, because he hates the king and is thankful for bing put in charge.

I mean, for "king" read the U.S. or China, and for "cousin" read Russia or Canada. Use most any countries, really.

Broly wrote:
I think Alpha Legion is very capable of conquering a planet.

Hmm... I am now starting another thread about this - but with only one marine.
Good idea!

pelicaniforce wrote:

40k is kinda based on the idea that the ruler of a planet, whether that's one guy or a senate body or something along those lines, is like the king in chess. Take that out, and you win the game.

40k is kinda based on the idea that the ruler of a planet is like the king in a kingdom. There are lots of dukes around, and one of those dukes is the king's cousin. If you can put the duke who is the king's cousin in charge, he'll pay you taxes, because he hates the king and is thankful for bing put in charge.

I mean, for "king" read the U.S. or China, and for "cousin" read Russia or Canada. Use most any countries, really.

Took me a few seconds to get it, but yeah. That might work.

Raising this thread from the dead, but I've been conducting significant research into this, and other, subjects, and thought I would share my results.

SM 7e codex chronicles list several battles with rough numbers and assumed battle strengths. For example, a large Raven's Guard strike force disabled defenses and captured a heretic fortified world in 1 day with 300+ marines and scouts.

Siege of Vraks: multiple companies from various chapters aid in the ongoing siege of Vraks, a campaign over 17 years. Several hundred casualties (150 Red Hunters KIA in one drop assault)

The common concept is that taking a planet is not actually boots on the ground in every city, just the important ones. Planetary defense batteries make this more difficult.

Legions could take and hold a planet for an unlimited period of time. Chapters can't do this. 1K soldiers, no matter how powerful and well equiped, won't even be able to hold a small country, let alone a whole planet.

I think we've pretty much reached a consensus that the Chapter could easily *take* the planet, but they'd have a very hard time holding it until reinforcements from the other arms of the Imperial war machine arrived.

I suppose what we need to know is WHY they want the planet.

If they wanted to bring the planet under Imperial compliance, great crusade style, then they'd struggle to impose themselves on a population that would likely resist their way of life being changed so much.

If they want its natural resources, then Exterminatus would easily allow them to hold the planet until a mechanicum force arrived to strip mine the planet.

Exterminatus would be the easiest option for most of their goals really. The planet is strategically placed and will be used as a staging post for operations? What do they need a rebellious population for?

They could, by decapitating leadership, military command, and sever communications links to ability to control assets.

Strikes like destroying the military hq. Taking out key airbases, logistics sites. Extreme force multiplication.

One chapter. With 1000 marines, terminators, scouts, and 10 full company, backled by at least one to 2 battle barge, and strike cruisers is a heavy orbital bombardment formation.

Whenever I see threads like this, I remember this quote which I saw somewhere:

"Yeah, we flew our space church across 500 light years to get to this planet taken over by the orks. Now we're going to drop from orbit in buckets and run out and shoot pistols and hit people in the head with chainsaws."

Suffice to say, you can never hope to conquer a planet in this manner. Never.

I think it depends on two factos:
a) What Chapter it is - or more precisely, how well equipped they are and
b) What type of world is being assaulted.

a) includes factors such as fleet capability and armor on the ground.
The Space Wolves for example have more ships and battle barges than the grey knights and the deathwatch combined, I believe.
Some 30-something founding understrenght chapter with two rhinos and a broken predator do not constitute a good siege force, whereas say the salamanders have enough armor to shoot up some fortifications when needed.

b) lands you on a scale between 0 - barbaric hillbillie planet or poorly defended agriworld and 10 - ancient forgeworld with titans, orbital defense platforms, blackjack and repentia. The later is entirely out of question, but an average world with a couple hive cities and say a couple regiments worth of defenders is fair game i'd say.

It depends on the world. If it is a world that can easily be shocked back into compliance by eliminating rebellious leadership and military elements, then yes. If it is a world where an entire population of millions is rebelling and killing their leaders would not discourage them, then no. Not unless by conquering you mean 'Exterminatus'.

This is how you conquer a planet. Any other means is just inefficient by comparison.

You would only send in troops to conquer a planet if you cared about public relations.

As its been pointed out conquer no destroy yes. This is why the Chaos Space Marines often are more potent and able to carry on the long war despite having far less logistical support than the Imperial Space Marines. They kill and destroy what they don't want to take and take everything else as loot, slaves, or new recruits. They have don't have to spread their forces piecemeal and as a result can attack with their full numbers. In this aspect the question is misleading because an entire chapter would never be able to attack in its entirety with exception of the Grey Knights and Red Hunters who are kept in reserve by the High Lords. Most Chapters have commitments to different planets who supply them with recruits and forge worlds that build them weapons and ships.

Lol you don't need an entire chapter to conquer planets. rogue traders do it all the time with only a fragment of the resources, orks even conquered Terra without sending an army down. You just need one decent starship, a way to communicate with the planets leaders and questionable ethics.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Now I think of it, what modern war has ever been won by killing of every enemy soldier?

 Bobthehero wrote:
Oh and obviously they magically know with 100% where all the leaders are, how the planet works and blablabla. Yeah, right, omniscient marines.

Marines cannot come to earth, see our primitive satellite technology and broadcast a message

"welcome from the imperium of Man, join or die"

While waiting for a response the techmarine aboard the battlebarge connects to the www, downloads all of our collective knowledge and, while getting key information regarding our leadership, military and infrastructure, it's all online and easily accessed by a techmarine.

Our leaders say no

With a mix of orbital info, our own broadcast info and the info on the Internet, they target all the key systems of the u.s, they wipe out Washington dc from orbit, we respond with nukes, they prove ineffective, we decide to resist.

The Marines deploy onto air bases (easily spotted) around the us, a sqaud per base, 10 Marines, they inflict massive casualties and withdraw, moral plummets as we realise the sheer terror of these super soldiers, men and woman blown into chunks, people literally torn to pieces, the us refuses to surrender, several cities are wiped out from orbit, the scale of bloodshed is so massive the us is forced to surrender, rinse and repeat across several nations around the world, through technological, biological and information superiority the Marines have crippled the most powerful threats on earth, with ease, no major battle fought.

The Marines call for imperial guard support and move on to the next world, leaving humanity crippled.

A legion would just land 10000 Marines in the us and wipe put the military wholesale.

They need not be omniscient, we have all the info needed broadcasted via the Internet and TV, anyone sufficiently intelligent would find it and exploit it.

And the Imperium is the pinnacle when it comes to be smart and interacting with unknown tech, yup. Oh obviously while the SM magically hack into unknown tech, the comms art does nothing and leaves all its critical airbases undefended. A single drop pod would get annuhilated before it reaches the airbase.

The one critical advantage the SM have is the orbital support, which can be denied in 40k but not on Earth.

 Bobthehero wrote:
And the Imperium is the pinnacle when it comes to be smart and interacting with unknown tech, yup. Oh obviously while the SM magically hack into unknown tech, the comms art does nothing and leaves all its critical airbases undefended. A single drop pod would get annuhilated before it reaches the airbase.

The one critical advantage the SM have is the orbital support, which can be denied in 40k but not on Earth.

Techarines can miu link into databases, shown in multiple sources, they can then shunt the info either into a storage device in there cranium or the ships computers (cogitators), Techarines have also been shown to be able to force their way into devices through the ability to out think computers.

The tech is not "unknown" It's out of date by 40k standards, basic at best, Marines are very intelligent, adaptive and can learn quickly, the Internet is not secure, anyone can access it and find almost any information they need, such as where the us president lives, doesn't take a genius.

We lack the technology to shoot down a meteor, as we can't cover the entire sky, by the time we detect the pod (assuming we even can), it's too late, it's landed, bye bye air base.

That's not even factoring psykers, or any of the future tech they could bring to bare

Can't shoot a meteor if it flies where there is defense, no gak, but there going to be AA systems around an airbase and radar, pods are large un subtle things that falls in a certains direction, it will be easy to detect. If we can lock a missile on a plane, the pod should be no issue. It happened in 40k where a renegade planet was able to pour enough AA fire to deny the opportunity for Marines to pod in, in this case if they go where the guns are, they won't reach the ground either.

 Formosa wrote:


Marines cannot come to earth, see our primitive satellite technology and broadcast a message

"welcome from the imperium of Man, join or die"

While waiting for a response the techmarine aboard the battlebarge connects to the www, downloads all of our collective knowledge and, while getting key information regarding our leadership, military and infrastructure, it's all online and easily accessed by a techmarine.
....
.

I don;t expect a standard 40k tech ship to be able to download anything of out web, this would require too much flexibility for most tech priests.
But they dont need to, nor do they need to land on the ground.

This is how to do it.
Drop in system out in real space, use your near light speed drive to get to earth and stay in orbit.
This will get earths attention and might even trigger anti doomsday meteorite scenario's. Blast those primitive nukes and shuttles out of the sky.
Start with scanning the planet for energy sources, life signs and tectonic activity resources and all the other usual scans your ship is capable of.
Now power up your Broadband Hymn-Casters to flood all radio wavelengths with your favorite surrender to the might of the emperor or die message.Switch it off periodically and wait for a response, while continue scanning for one day. Lock on to all interesting targets such as major cities, powerful nuclear readings,unstable volcano's, dam's, ice caps, the highest mountains etc. Start lancing them to enforce your ultimatum after that day. Continue until they surrender. Total panic will arise on earth, and no world leader would dare to resist after seeing the first few lance impacts. If some do send defying messages slug them from orbit until it stops.

The whole operation should take no longer than a few days. If you don't agree with me ask yourself how many Hiroshima like events it would take for your government to comply. My guess would be far less than 5. The only boots on the ground that you would need would be an ambassador there to collect the taxes and send a come back and lance some more message if they revolt in your absence. But whatever you do do not send any high tech stuff down. You would not want them to learn anything from you.

The language barrier would be an issue, we may not understand their messages of surrender, and they may not understand our surrender after they blast parts of the planet.

Logistically the idea is pretty laughable unless you're speaking about a very small planet with a tiny population.

Could a Space Marine chapter either obliterate a planet from orbit or eliminate key command and control assets? Sure. Could they do something to convince a planet to surrender? Sure.

But attacking a planet with any population over a billion and a reasonable PDF you'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Assuming they didn't surrender, it'd be impossible short of nuking/laying waste to the planet from orbit.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Can't shoot a meteor if it flies where there is defense, no gak, but there going to be AA systems around an airbase and radar, pods are large un subtle things that falls in a certains direction, it will be easy to detect. If we can lock a missile on a plane, the pod should be no issue. It happened in 40k where a renegade planet was able to pour enough AA fire to deny the opportunity for Marines to pod in, in this case if they go where the guns are, they won't reach the ground either.

Again your assuming we can detect said craft, we'd get a radar blip, not know what it is, by the time we have the slightest clue it could be hostile, it's already landed, also, 40k have the same defences you are talking about, pods are specifically designed to land through heavy fire, and again, your assuming our weapons can even pop a drop pod, sadly we don't know just how strong a pods armour is, something that can handle multiple atmospheric landings and impact on the ground, then be used again, that's pretty damn tough.

And yet they were able to shoot down the pods aThere's absolutely no indicatiosn we can't spot the pod, I never saw any mentions of pods having stealth systems, and they're rather large and obvious things.

It might have a reinforced prow and what have you, missiles and AA defenses can pop and ours are pretty good.

 Bobthehero wrote:
And the Imperium is the pinnacle when it comes to be smart and interacting with unknown tech, yup. Oh obviously while the SM magically hack into unknown tech, the comms art does nothing and leaves all its critical airbases undefended. A single drop pod would get annuhilated before it reaches the airbase.

The one critical advantage the SM have is the orbital support, which can be denied in 40k but not on Earth.

Tech Marines would not need to hack anything, just do a Leloo from 5th Element.

I am curious about a few things myself, but how quickly does a Drop Pod drop?

Also what sort of Electro-Magnetic weapons do Space Marines have? I imagine a simple EMP blast would disable the air defences capable of taking down a Drop Pod before it hits the ground. Drop Pods are EMP proof right? I am really not up to date with the more specific fluff.

Regardless, I believe, the dust clouds (and Tsunamis/Earthquakes) caused by an orbital bombardment would remove any argument to surrender very quickly.

Never seems the Marines use an EMP, read a part where one SM armor was disabled by some sort of Ork EMP-Speargun kinda thing.

WHat's that Leloo, just instant learn everything... of course someone would give them that ability.

Realistically

NO.

Sans Exterminatus there are too many stubborn donkey-caves on a planet would would never surrender and who would resort to guerrila warfare for 1000 men no matter how elite they are to hold an ENTIRE planet.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Never seems the Marines use an EMP, read a part where one SM armor was disabled by some sort of Ork EMP-Speargun kinda thing.

WHat's that Leloo, just instant learn everything... of course someone would give them that ability.

The Tau wona war against space marines by short cirtuiting their armor with a EMP.

godking wrote:
Realistically

NO.

Sans Exterminatus there are too many stubborn donkey-caves on a planet would would never surrender and who would resort to guerrila warfare for 1000 men no matter how elite they are to hold an ENTIRE planet.

The Space Marines would not need to control the whole population though, only the ruling class. Plus when the alternative is to live in caves with the previously ruled class, I think the ruling class would happily surrender to any Space faring civilisation willing to bomb their planet from orbit.

Just think about what the British Empire managed to accomplished with a limited pool of manpower and a high level of organisation.

 Bobthehero wrote:
And yet they were able to shoot down the pods aThere's absolutely no indicatiosn we can't spot the pod, I never saw any mentions of pods having stealth systems, and they're rather large and obvious things.

It might have a reinforced prow and what have you, missiles and AA defenses can pop and ours are pretty good.

very few if any pods get shot down during a planetary invasion, reaching a speed of 7456.4543mph (FW speed is 12000kph), our fastest jet built is 4,520 mph, so cannot intercept, and our fastest missile is 6,200 mph, so that wont be able to catch up either, then we have an assumed orbit for the marines of 1,240 miles from earth, so if my maths is correct (I'm not great at this) we would have 9 : 58 seconds, so not fast enough to intercept, add to this we don't know what it is, if its multiple pods, we would assume a meteor shower, if just the one, we just wouldn't know, then we have the assumption that our radar can actually pick up the object falling from space onto the location, and again an assumption our level of tech can destroy the pod, lets say for arguments sake it can, so we have an unknown object heading towards an airbase, at a speed that we cannot intercept with aircraft, that we can possibly or possibly not detect, a lot of uncertainty to what the object is, permissions needed to actually fire upon it if it is deemed hostile somehow, and we have to hope that any AA around the airbase (never ever seen any in any of the airbases I have been on over the years... which is odd now I think of it) can get the right angle to try to intercept (pod is faster, but can still be done) with a missile.

all that in under 10 min, from orbit, highly unlikely.

In my source pods get '' swiftly countered '' by Firestorm Nexuses. Basically AA lascannon, so I suppose we would have to break out the old 120mm + AA guns made in the past. I suppose missiles would be a poor weapon to shoot out pods, we would have to settle for an air strike at the pod landing zone. Once again, even if its faaaaaaast, I don't see how our radars would not pick up the pods, and with their pretty straightforward tajectory, it would be pretty easy to figure out where they land and get people going, maybe not in a minute, but way before everyone gets killed unprepared.

If there was a threat you would think people would move AA defenses where they matter the most and an airbase is pretty important, fairly sure someone would order defenses to be set.

Although props to FW for pumping the numbers this time, between the Land Raider that has armor about four times less efficient than an Abrams and the Thunderhawk that flies about the same speed as the previous jet generation, you'd think someone would bother looking up modern numbers and go higher.

 Formosa wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
And yet they were able to shoot down the pods aThere's absolutely no indicatiosn we can't spot the pod, I never saw any mentions of pods having stealth systems, and they're rather large and obvious things.

It might have a reinforced prow and what have you, missiles and AA defenses can pop and ours are pretty good.

very few if any pods get shot down during a planetary invasion, reaching a speed of 7456.4543mph (FW speed is 12000kph), our fastest jet built is 4,520 mph, so cannot intercept, and our fastest missile is 6,200 mph, so that wont be able to catch up either, then we have an assumed orbit for the marines of 1,240 miles from earth, so if my maths is correct (I'm not great at this) we would have 9 : 58 seconds, so not fast enough to intercept, add to this we don't know what it is, if its multiple pods, we would assume a meteor shower, if just the one, we just wouldn't know, then we have the assumption that our radar can actually pick up the object falling from space onto the location, and again an assumption our level of tech can destroy the pod, lets say for arguments sake it can, so we have an unknown object heading towards an airbase, at a speed that we cannot intercept with aircraft, that we can possibly or possibly not detect, a lot of uncertainty to what the object is, permissions needed to actually fire upon it if it is deemed hostile somehow, and we have to hope that any AA around the airbase (never ever seen any in any of the airbases I have been on over the years... which is odd now I think of it) can get the right angle to try to intercept (pod is faster, but can still be done) with a missile.

all that in under 10 min, from orbit, highly unlikely.

Surface to Air missiles come from the ground.

Drop Pods come from the sky.

"catching" wouldn't be the issue.

Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

One must imagine drop pods have some kind of countermeasures to foil SAM missiles. Perhaps some kind of electronic warfare suite to jam the guidance systems?

 Ashiraya wrote:
Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

They do work, not always.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
One must imagine drop pods have some kind of countermeasures to foil SAM missiles. Perhaps some kind of electronic warfare suite to jam the guidance systems?

Missiles that operate on an IR band, would be pretty hard to fool those. An object burning through the atmo at 7k MPH is going to leave a hell of a heat signature.

And don't forget rail guns. A 25lb Tungsten bullet travelling at 4500mph... There isn't an object on earth that it wouldn't carve in half.

Are there any math whizzes here who could figure out the momentum that would have?


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 Ashiraya wrote:
Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

Yeah, cause GW's fluff is impeccable. Remember, these are the guys who said a Land Raiders armor was 3/4 that of a modern day Leopard tank.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

They do work, not always.

They always work in my games.

The whole point is that they make it past ground defenses, so that's what they do. Sure, maybe some get lost here and there, but the point is that they deliver the goods.

The marines can also launch pods without marines in them. If equipped with Homers, all that needs to happen is one Pod makes it to the target and then Terminators can teleport in. Or the SM can launch empty pods just to find out where the effective AA is, then bombard the AA from space. Having the superior orbital position gives lots of options.


Ultimately "conquer" is an unspecific goal for the SM though, and the end result depends a lot on the SM objective and the "personality" of the Chapter/commander.

That's my point, sometimes, the drop pods fail, like in my example, Vraks is another example, while there was no direct podding, the fact that it was so thick with AA defences meant that drop poding wasn't a viable option.

 Bobthehero wrote:
That's my point, sometimes, the drop pods fail, like in my example, Vraks is another example, while there was no direct podding, the fact that it was so thick with AA defences meant that drop poding wasn't a viable option.

I don't know what you're first example is, but a brief lookup tells me that Vraks is an Armory World, and thus one of the most heavily defended types of worlds the Imperium has to offer. I think it's a safe assumption that our modern earth doesn't posses a fraction of the defensive capability.

We know that Drop Pods work in the majority of situations. Are we really willing to bet that modern earth is somehow in the far upper tier of anti-orbital insertion technology when compared to the Imperium at large, where space-faring invaders are common? Drop Pods are in common use in an environment where worlds are routinely equipped with anti-air and anti-orbital materiel.

There's not going to be thousands of pods, let alone if the Marines want to '' send a pod per airbase '', a bunch of single pods landing on different bases would be little trouble.

Probably only a few airbases are relevant at any given time. Not many planes with weapons can fly around the world. And many of them are sloooooow.

Edit:
Also

 Bobthehero wrote:
. . . a bunch of single pods landing on different bases would be little trouble.

Based on what?

 Formosa wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Oh and obviously they magically know with 100% where all the leaders are, how the planet works and blablabla. Yeah, right, omniscient marines.

Marines cannot come to earth, see our primitive satellite technology and broadcast a message

"welcome from the imperium of Man, join or die"

While waiting for a response the techmarine aboard the battlebarge connects to the www, downloads all of our collective knowledge and, while getting key information regarding our leadership, military and infrastructure, it's all online and easily accessed by a techmarine.

Our leaders say no

With a mix of orbital info, our own broadcast info and the info on the Internet, they target all the key systems of the u.s, they wipe out Washington dc from orbit, we respond with nukes, they prove ineffective, we decide to resist.

The Marines deploy onto air bases (easily spotted) around the us, a sqaud per base, 10 Marines, they inflict massive casualties and withdraw, moral plummets as we realise the sheer terror of these super soldiers, men and woman blown into chunks, people literally torn to pieces, the us refuses to surrender, several cities are wiped out from orbit, the scale of bloodshed is so massive the us is forced to surrender, rinse and repeat across several nations around the world, through technological, biological and information superiority the Marines have crippled the most powerful threats on earth, with ease, no major battle fought.

The Marines call for imperial guard support and move on to the next world, leaving humanity crippled.

A legion would just land 10000 Marines in the us and wipe put the military wholesale.

They need not be omniscient, we have all the info needed broadcasted via the Internet and TV, anyone sufficiently intelligent would find it and exploit it.

I've seen this movie. Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum beat them, no problem.

Airbases would be far more relevant once the Marine broadcast their '' Surrender or Die '' message.

Based on the fact that they're easily detectable (giant heat signature) have a pretty fixed direction, basically sending a surface-to-air missile on a collision course with the pod should be child's play.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Airbases would be far more relevant once the Marine broadcast their '' Surrender or Die '' message.

Based on the fact that they're easily detectable (giant heat signature) have a pretty fixed direction, basically sending a surface-to-air missile on a collision course with the pod should be child's play.

Quote IA 2 "a single Drop Pod is extremely difficult to detect and track, making them useful for inserting scout teams."

So not child's play. Also, see former arguments. If it were child's play Drop Pods wouldn't be as viable as they are in the combat environments they operate in. Like vs. Imperial worlds with anti air/orbital defences, or against advanced Tau tech. Maybe they have stealth tech, maybe they are just too fast, maybe they can be deployed with a bunch of chaff, maybe they jink unpredictably on the way down to dodge AA missiles. It just is what it is. Odds are that they are in your base and touching your stuff.

And yet in the Scion book a Chaos insurgency is able to blow most of the Flesh Tearers pods, as well as threaten their Thunderhawks to the point where they have to send Scions to disable the AA defences.

You have details? What were the defenses?

Maybe it's just the exception that proves the rule

Firestorm Nexuses, a bunch of Firestorm Redoubts with lascannons, they were hidden in '' bases in the hillsides ''

Our planet doesn't have anything remotely like a lascannon, so your point is almost mute.

Secondly, how many asteroids that hit our earth are shot down? And how many sensors and cameras out in space can pick up a strike cruiser whilst on it's final approach, let alone when in orbit?

We wouldn't know they are entering the atmosphere until it is far too late, and what lands is going to be an absolute pain to deal with. Lastly, pods don't need to attack a base directly through AA fire, they can drop scouts hundreds of miles out via pod and have them neutralise any anti air defences before the pods come down. There would be absolutely no rush for the marines to tackle our planet with any urgency. There is nothing on the planet barr nuclear weapons that can one shot them while on a cruiser in space and they don't have to worry about anything off world coming as reinforcements, they can literally take their time and make surgical strikes one after another till we would surrender.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

They do work, not always.

No, I mean, have you seen how long it takes to create and train a Marine? If they lose that many transports before they even land, they would be extinct by now. They must work.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

They do work, not always.

No, I mean, have you seen how long it takes to create and train a Marine? If they lose that many transports before they even land, they would be extinct by now. They must work.

Well, there's a reason people say you shouldn't take 40k lore to seriously, and that Marines have plot armour up the wazoo...

 djones520 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
And yet they were able to shoot down the pods aThere's absolutely no indicatiosn we can't spot the pod, I never saw any mentions of pods having stealth systems, and they're rather large and obvious things.

It might have a reinforced prow and what have you, missiles and AA defenses can pop and ours are pretty good.

very few if any pods get shot down during a planetary invasion, reaching a speed of 7456.4543mph (FW speed is 12000kph), our fastest jet built is 4,520 mph, so cannot intercept, and our fastest missile is 6,200 mph, so that wont be able to catch up either, then we have an assumed orbit for the marines of 1,240 miles from earth, so if my maths is correct (I'm not great at this) we would have 9 : 58 seconds, so not fast enough to intercept, add to this we don't know what it is, if its multiple pods, we would assume a meteor shower, if just the one, we just wouldn't know, then we have the assumption that our radar can actually pick up the object falling from space onto the location, and again an assumption our level of tech can destroy the pod, lets say for arguments sake it can, so we have an unknown object heading towards an airbase, at a speed that we cannot intercept with aircraft, that we can possibly or possibly not detect, a lot of uncertainty to what the object is, permissions needed to actually fire upon it if it is deemed hostile somehow, and we have to hope that any AA around the airbase (never ever seen any in any of the airbases I have been on over the years... which is odd now I think of it) can get the right angle to try to intercept (pod is faster, but can still be done) with a missile.

all that in under 10 min, from orbit, highly unlikely.

Surface to Air missiles come from the ground.

Drop Pods come from the sky.

"catching" wouldn't be the issue.

I covered that already, correct trajectory and assuming they are even present in the air base, and again your assumption we would know it's a hostile craft.

Bur ignore most of my post to pick out something I've already covered if you like lol, I don't mind


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 djones520 wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
One must imagine drop pods have some kind of countermeasures to foil SAM missiles. Perhaps some kind of electronic warfare suite to jam the guidance systems?

Missiles that operate on an IR band, would be pretty hard to fool those. An object burning through the atmo at 7k MPH is going to leave a hell of a heat signature.

And don't forget rail guns. A 25lb Tungsten bullet travelling at 4500mph... There isn't an object on earth that it wouldn't carve in half.

Are there any math whizzes here who could figure out the momentum that would have?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

Yeah, cause GW's fluff is impeccable. Remember, these are the guys who said a Land Raiders armor was 3/4 that of a modern day Leopard tank.

We don't have railguns defending anything yet, so that's not a factor, I agree about the missile however, but still leaves the issue of permissions to fire and knowing it's an enemy object.

In terms of AA on military bases, you aren't going to see it. There is kind of a point in that.

In terms of "permissions to fire". If A Space Marine Battle Cruiser shows up in our orbit, you can absolutely guarantee our military would be on the highest alert. It will also be very easy to tell the difference between a ship approaching on peaceful terms, and a couple dozen drop pods coming in on a military strike. I won't argue that are systems are sophisticated enough to destroy all of them, or even half. Casualties would be sustained though.

Going back to being on maximum war footing, I feel a Chapter would stand zero chance in taking even the US, let alone the whole world, baring orbital bombardment.

Our Air Force/Navy will maintain aerial dominance, given to sheer weight of numbers. A chapter is going to have a couple dozen atmospheric aircraft, at the most. Our hundreds of F-22's, F-35's, F-15's, F-16's, and F-18's will deal with those, and at that point the war is over.

Tactical Armor is powerful, sure, but it's not going to stand up to a GBU/TOW/Javelin. Given GW's published numbers, their 30ish tanks in their Armory will be wrecked in the first engagement with our armor/aircraft. Given their "fluff" capabilities, they'll be quickly immobilized by loss of track, and infantry will deal with them then.

The only real edge they'll have is Terminator armor, and I've gotta questions its ability to stand up to a GAU-8 Avenger.

In the end, the sheer lack of numbers, just won't get the job done. Casualties sustained by defending forces will be horrendous, initially, but as soon as the air battle is done, it's game over.

Now again, this is all just based on the idea of a conventional assault. We don't have the capabilities to deal with their dominance of space. As such, it'll just end in exterminatus for us.

Considering an M1 Abrams has 3-4 times more effective armour than a Land Raider. It doesn't look that great for the space marines. Ork shootas are a threat to them so .50 cals should be moderately effective against marines and our air forces would have no problem blowing up land speeders and thunderhawks.

So what will the marines do when they have no air support and earths vastly superior tanks and ground attack aircraft comes? They might be able to take a city temporarily while the military mobilize but 1000 marines have absolutely no chance of holding it.

Rogal Dorn said it best. "Give me a hundred Space Marines. Or failing that give me a thousand other troops"

Space marines are good, but it's laughable to think they can take over a planet with just 1000 men.

 djones520 wrote:
In terms of AA on military bases, you aren't going to see it. There is kind of a point in that.

In terms of "permissions to fire". If A Space Marine Battle Cruiser shows up in our orbit, you can absolutely guarantee our military would be on the highest alert. It will also be very easy to tell the difference between a ship approaching on peaceful terms, and a couple dozen drop pods coming in on a military strike. I won't argue that are systems are sophisticated enough to destroy all of them, or even half. Casualties would be sustained though.

Going back to being on maximum war footing, I feel a Chapter would stand zero chance in taking even the US, let alone the whole world, baring orbital bombardment.

Our Air Force/Navy will maintain aerial dominance, given to sheer weight of numbers. A chapter is going to have a couple dozen atmospheric aircraft, at the most. Our hundreds of F-22's, F-35's, F-15's, F-16's, and F-18's will deal with those, and at that point the war is over.

Tactical Armor is powerful, sure, but it's not going to stand up to a GBU/TOW/Javelin. Given GW's published numbers, their 30ish tanks in their Armory will be wrecked in the first engagement with our armor/aircraft. Given their "fluff" capabilities, they'll be quickly immobilized by loss of track, and infantry will deal with them then.

The only real edge they'll have is Terminator armor, and I've gotta questions its ability to stand up to a GAU-8 Avenger.

In the end, the sheer lack of numbers, just won't get the job done. Casualties sustained by defending forces will be horrendous, initially, but as soon as the air battle is done, it's game over.

Now again, this is all just based on the idea of a conventional assault. We don't have the capabilities to deal with their dominance of space. As such, it'll just end in exterminatus for us.

I've been on many an airbase I'd have seen them, but that's here, not there, so don't know, like I said, bit odd.

I agree that a chapter can't take and hold a world, but they can cripple it to the extent that the guard would take it, but that's the point of Marines, they are shock troopers, imagine a few tactical squads dropping into new York where air cover can t be guaranteed to be effective, the built up area would make it horrific to drive them out.

In regards to Air superiority through numbers, I don't know, they have better pilots, better tech and are more manoeuvrable... Theoretically, as sadly the aircraft are designed by people who don't know how they work, but seeing as how Ork heavy calibre guns can down a Marine aircraft, it's safe to assume our tech could possibly down them.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

They do work, not always.

No, I mean, have you seen how long it takes to create and train a Marine? If they lose that many transports before they even land, they would be extinct by now. They must work.

Or marines are actually extinct. 1000 is a VERY small number.

Maybe we are missing somthing here, the fluff says they can, so they can, but our conventional warfare attitude cannot conceive of how they are able to do so, from our point if view its just not possible for them to do so, yet in the fluff they do, and often smash world's, with a single company somtimes.

Maybe it's plot armour, maybe handwavium, but it still happens, so while the abrams has better armour when compared to the data sheets put out years ago, than a Land raider, the land raider is so advanced that we simply don't know how it's so tough to the insane weaponry of the 40k universe, ans thus, impervious to our weaponry.

Just a thought

 Formosa wrote:
Maybe we are missing somthing here, the fluff says they can, so they can, but our conventional warfare attitude cannot conceive of how they are able to do so, from our point if view its just not possible for them to do so, yet in the fluff they do, and often smash world's, with a single company somtimes.

Maybe it's plot armour, maybe handwavium, but it still happens, so while the abrams has better armour when compared to the data sheets put out years ago, than a Land raider, the land raider is so advanced that we simply don't know how it's so tough to the insane weaponry of the 40k universe, ans thus, impervious to our weaponry.

Just a thought

Well, the fluff says they can, because the rest of the galaxy fights warfare with a 1914 mindset. GW's ability to write convincing warfare is atrocious. Even when they do try to do it right, they get it wrong.

Hell, if we want to go with GW's fluff being "convincing", all it takes to kill an Eldar Wave Serpent is a small child with a rock.

godking wrote:
]The Tau wona war against space marines by short cirtuiting their armor with a EMP.

Ahahaha what's that in? Tau make Marines look like chumps way too often.


On a more on-topic note; without orbital bombardment I don't see it working on modern day earth. However as previously noted in 40K as in most sci-fi there generally are a small number of important areas on a planet and if you take or destroy them the planet is yours. This mitigates the small number of Space Marines issue.

Guys, it's just 1,000 Space Marines. At some point, they have to get out of their metal bawkses. When that happens, they become vulnerable to shotgun, stubber, heavy stubber, krak grenade and demolition charges. At some point, a billion PDF beats a thousand Marines.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Evidently they do work, otherwise they wouldn't use them.

They do work, not always.

No, I mean, have you seen how long it takes to create and train a Marine? If they lose that many transports before they even land, they would be extinct by now. They must work.

Often, not always, like pretty much every other strategy out there. Its a reliable strategy, for sure, not a 100% guarantee.

The US is testing laser based fighter weaponry and railguns on battleships. If the space marines invaded they would have no intel on the planet and it would be easy to put prototype weaponry into action. These are just the things they acknowledge right now. There are rumors of some sort of strange new jamming tech pod technology on the F-35 that is described as a weapon. If so conventional EWAR in air space doesn't work that way.

There is only one force which can plot armor its way through any other force. MERIKA! I'm a Canadian who watches a lot of movies. I know this stuff. Those poor Space Marines don't stand a chance. They would probably even be stupid and invade on independence day.

The modern military fights like a 1000x more annoying and effective Tau Empire force. We all seen what happened the last time the Space Marines just to bro fist their way down to a Tau planet.

Your average Imperial citizen is a moron. Your average Earth citizen is (mostly) not.

 Gamgee wrote:
Those poor Space Marines don't stand a chance. They would probably even be stupid and invade on independence day.

I think this will keep me smiling till bed time.

 Gamgee wrote:

The modern military fights like a 1000x more annoying and effective Tau Empire force. We all seen what happened the last time the Space Marines just to bro fist their way down to a Tau planet.

The modern military is also incredibly reliant on satellite communications. I do wonder what the redundancies are.

If we're talking a chapter, or even a reinforced company, we're talking about a fleet of starships. Orbital supremacy could mean all sorts of things for the marines, like wipe out all the satellites. Any of our fancy weapons that use GPS lose effectiveness. Or it could mean that they bombard every hangar they can find, and there goes any hope of an air war, and any air support for a ground war.

So imagine a modern military without satellite communications, and without aircraft. Marines then have orbital and air superiority. With air superiority they can land wherever our army isn't. And if they know where our army is, they can hit it from space, and there would be nothing we could do about it.

I'm not saying that they would necessarily win in this scenario, it all depends on what their objectives are. But orbital supremacy trumps an air force (planes have to land) in a total war, and they can make coordination more difficult by knocking out satellites and surface communications hubs.

1000 guys couldn't even take a large city more than likely.

Martel732 wrote:
1000 guys couldn't even take a large city more than likely.

aye, 1000 troops, no matter how superhuman, can only cover so much ground. 1000 troops could cover a neighborhood perhaps. A large or even medoum sized city would be beyond their ability to properly clear, pacify, or hold from amy realistic perspective, an entire planet would be totally laughable. There just arent enough bodies to be in enough places.

Marines have a fundamental problem regardless of how powerful you make them. As presented on the table top, they could never carry out anything from the fluff. Fluff marines, or movie marines, pass the "Ogre limit" or the limit at which strategic weapons become viable for use.

But either way, 1000 guys can't begin to touch a planet. All space marine chapters put together would be pushed to the limit. Marines only make sense if they numbered 10,000,000 per chapter because of scaling.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
1000 guys couldn't even take a large city more than likely.

aye, 1000 troops, no matter how superhuman, can only cover so much ground. 1000 troops could cover a neighborhood perhaps. A large or even medoum sized city would be beyond their ability to properly clear, pacify, or hold from amy realistic perspective, an entire planet would be totally laughable. There just arent enough bodies to be in enough places.

That's true, but that's just not how they operate. Space Marines are more likely to demonstrate their threat level (by bombarding from orbit or landing on your command center), and then give you the option of surrender to the Imperium. If you don't surrender immediately, then they just bombard you more, from orbit, and take apart your defensive capability until you surrender, or drive you back into the stone age.

In the Imperium, they continue this until the IG show up, and let them do the holding and pacification. But the deal is the same, surrender or they raze everything to the ground.

Martel732 wrote:
Marines have a fundamental problem regardless of how powerful you make them. As presented on the table top, they could never carry out anything from the fluff. Fluff marines, or movie marines, pass the "Ogre limit" or the limit at which strategic weapons become viable for use.

But either way, 1000 guys can't begin to touch a planet. All space marine chapters put together would be pushed to the limit. Marines only make sense if they numbered 10,000,000 per chapter because of scaling.

Thing is, I don't need to nuke a city to take out a Tacmarine.

All I need are the existing IEDs and MANPADs. If I can take out a MRAP or helo, I can take out a Space Marine.

I doubt 1,000 SMs could take Afghanistan, even with their metal bawkses for support.

The only reason a SM Chapter is dangerous is because it has naval assets for bombardment. Without the ships, the SMs are nothing.

Aye, Space Marines chapters work on a LOTR Fantasy scale, where an army of 50,000 Uruks is almost unstoppably large. There, 1000 super soldiers can work. Thats really where Space Marines come from. Outside of that, they dont function in any sort of reality.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
1000 guys couldn't even take a large city more than likely.

aye, 1000 troops, no matter how superhuman, can only cover so much ground. 1000 troops could cover a neighborhood perhaps. A large or even medoum sized city would be beyond their ability to properly clear, pacify, or hold from amy realistic perspective, an entire planet would be totally laughable. There just arent enough bodies to be in enough places.

That's true, but that's just not how they operate. Space Marines are more likely to demonstrate their threat level (by bombarding from orbit or landing on your command center), and then give you the option of surrender to the Imperium. If you don't surrender immediately, then they just bombard you more, from orbit, and take apart your defensive capability until you surrender, or drive you back into the stone age.

In the Imperium, they continue this until the IG show up, and let them do the holding and pacification. But the deal is the same, surrender or they raze everything to the ground.

Except, at no point are the SM needed for this. Imperial Navy and Imperial Guard are more than sufficient.

And all of that presumes a lack of planetary defenses. If the planet is well defended with volcano cannon, marco lasers, etc, then the SMs might lose a Battle Barge in the process...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Aye, Space Marines chapters work on a LOTR Fantasy scale, where an army of 50,000 Uruks is almost unstoppably large. There, 1000 super soldiers can work. Thats really where Space Marines come from. Outside of that, they dont function in any sort of reality.

Well, that's because it's Fantasy, and 40k is Space Fantasy / Fantasy in Space...

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
1000 guys couldn't even take a large city more than likely.

aye, 1000 troops, no matter how superhuman, can only cover so much ground. 1000 troops could cover a neighborhood perhaps. A large or even medoum sized city would be beyond their ability to properly clear, pacify, or hold from amy realistic perspective, an entire planet would be totally laughable. There just arent enough bodies to be in enough places.

That's true, but that's just not how they operate. Space Marines are more likely to demonstrate their threat level (by bombarding from orbit or landing on your command center), and then give you the option of surrender to the Imperium. If you don't surrender immediately, then they just bombard you more, from orbit, and take apart your defensive capability until you surrender, or drive you back into the stone age.

In the Imperium, they continue this until the IG show up, and let them do the holding and pacification. But the deal is the same, surrender or they raze everything to the ground.

The problem is in most SM fluff this is not how it goes. Most SM fluff is writtwn with Marines getting stuck in and winning the day by themselves, even in stuff like attritional siege warfare. They dont wait for the IG, they dont just blast wverything to smithereens from orbit. They get stuck in

And, if that was how they operated...how do they magically know where the enemy command centers and defense systems are, and how are they landing with impunity? More to the point, what is the point of needing those expensive super soldiers when you can just invest in more ships and conventional troops that you dont have to worry about running off doing their own thing with?

Also, what happens when the planet has antiorbital defenses and extensive aircraft capabilities?

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
1000 guys couldn't even take a large city more than likely.

aye, 1000 troops, no matter how superhuman, can only cover so much ground. 1000 troops could cover a neighborhood perhaps. A large or even medoum sized city would be beyond their ability to properly clear, pacify, or hold from amy realistic perspective, an entire planet would be totally laughable. There just arent enough bodies to be in enough places.

That's true, but that's just not how they operate. Space Marines are more likely to demonstrate their threat level (by bombarding from orbit or landing on your command center), and then give you the option of surrender to the Imperium. If you don't surrender immediately, then they just bombard you more, from orbit, and take apart your defensive capability until you surrender, or drive you back into the stone age.

In the Imperium, they continue this until the IG show up, and let them do the holding and pacification. But the deal is the same, surrender or they raze everything to the ground.

This absolutely will not work with other highly advanced species, however. Marines in this context are a bully unit, and nothing else. We are back to 20 Riptides being able to exterminate an entire chapter because MCs OP.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Except, at no point are the SM needed for this. Imperial Navy and Imperial Guard are more than sufficient.

And all of that presumes a lack of planetary defenses. If the planet is well defended with volcano cannon, marco lasers, etc, then the SMs might lose a Battle Barge in the process...

I'm just giving response to the scenario given. "Can one Space Marine conquer a planet?" Which got turned into "Space Marines vs. earth." So the assumption is that Guard aren't around. The problem is that people seem to be mistaking this for a scenario in which Space Marines make landfall and then start the fight, as opposed to using their full range of assets available.

If we're expanding this to a planet with orbital defenses, just think it through. If there's only one cannon, then Space Marines park their starships on the other side of the globe, then approach it planetside. Or maybe they launch Drop Pods from beyond it's range or arc of fire, and storm the complex. Or maybe they Pod into the governors palace instead and hold it hostage. It all depends on the setup, and the devil is in the details.

But given their history, they've probably done it before too. It's literally their job.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The problem is in most SM fluff this is not how it goes. Most SM fluff is writtwn with Marines getting stuck in and winning the day by themselves, even in stuff like attritional siege warfare. They dont wait for the IG, they dont just blast wverything to smithereens from orbit. They get stuck in

And, if that was how they operated...how do they magically know where the enemy command centers and defense systems are, and how are they landing with impunity? More to the point, what is the point of needing those expensive super soldiers when you can just invest in more ships and conventional troops that you dont have to worry about running off doing their own thing with?

Also, what happens when the planet has antiorbital defenses and extensive aircraft capabilities?

Well, some of the fluff is very comic-bookey, it's true. But some of it more serious, too, and from those examples we can get a more "realistic" picture.

Codex Space Marines 3rd. Ed. Appendix, pg 44. "MODUS OPERANDI

". . .A typical offensive against a rebel or alien-held planet begins with the arrival of strike craft which engage and clear away defending system ships and may establish a hidden base located within an asteroid field or on a small moon if a protracted campaign in being undertaken. Their strike craft then move on to neutralize any orbital defenses, ground-based defense laser silos and missile bunkers. Orbital defenses are boarded and captured [...] and then turned against ground defenses or simply destroyed. Surviving ground defenses are sabotaged by scout forces or captured by main force assault troops inserted via drop pods. By preference, if system defenses are weak or still under friendly control, the Space Marines will deploy directly into the midst of a decisive engagement to take advantage of the considerable shock of their arrival."

There's no magic involved, it's easy to assume that they have sophisticated scanning equipment that tells them where things are (think Star Trek). Or they intercept enough communications and have the means to bypass encryptions, or can just figure out where the loci are, and can infer the location of C&C infrastructure. Our own satellites are very good at spying, but as backwards as the culture may be, Marine starship scanning technology might be magnitudes better.

As for why the Marines themselves? I think the fluff is that only their physiques can handle drop pod assaults. That's a hefty part of their strategy.

Edit:

Martel732 wrote:

This absolutely will not work with other highly advanced species, however. Marines in this context are a bully unit, and nothing else. We are back to 20 Riptides being able to exterminate an entire chapter because MCs OP.

Grav is your friend. The Skyhammer Annihilation force is considered broken for a reason.

I don't know if you guys have ever seen a drop pod but those things have a sizeable engine pointed upward.

They are not just dropping, they are being boosted down (with the smaller floor engines used to somewhat arrest that fall).

No wonder only Marines can take it, and no wonder ground defenses have problems intercepting that kind of velocity.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Except, at no point are the SM needed for this. Imperial Navy and Imperial Guard are more than sufficient.

And all of that presumes a lack of planetary defenses. If the planet is well defended with volcano cannon, marco lasers, etc, then the SMs might lose a Battle Barge in the process...

I'm just giving response to the scenario given. "Can one Space Marine conquer a planet?" Which got turned into "Space Marines vs. earth." So the assumption is that Guard aren't around. The problem is that people seem to be mistaking this for a scenario in which Space Marines make landfall and then start the fight, as opposed to using their full range of assets available.

If we're expanding this to a planet with orbital defenses, just think it through. If there's only one cannon, then Space Marines park their starships on the other side of the globe, then approach it planetside. Or maybe they launch Drop Pods from beyond it's range or arc of fire, and storm the complex. Or maybe they Pod into the governors palace instead and hold it hostage. It all depends on the setup, and the devil is in the details.

But given their history, they've probably done it before too. It's literally their job.

And yet, sometimes, that fails. There are spaces where the Imperium fails to go, due to strong space defenses.

Heck, I doubt the SMs could come close making landfall on the Tau homeworld at this point, what with the sheer amount of mass driver hyper-velocity rail weaponry now available. And the Tau are a very minor power in the grand scheme of things.

 Insectum7 wrote:
[

 Vaktathi wrote:
The problem is in most SM fluff this is not how it goes. Most SM fluff is writtwn with Marines getting stuck in and winning the day by themselves, even in stuff like attritional siege warfare. They dont wait for the IG, they dont just blast wverything to smithereens from orbit. They get stuck in

And, if that was how they operated...how do they magically know where the enemy command centers and defense systems are, and how are they landing with impunity? More to the point, what is the point of needing those expensive super soldiers when you can just invest in more ships and conventional troops that you dont have to worry about running off doing their own thing with?

Also, what happens when the planet has antiorbital defenses and extensive aircraft capabilities?

Well, some of the fluff is very comic-bookey, it's true. But some of it more serious, too, and from those examples we can get a more "realistic" picture.

Codex Space Marines 3rd. Ed. Appendix, pg 44. "MODUS OPERANDI

". . .A typical offensive against a rebel or alien-held planet begins with the arrival of strike craft which engage and clear away defending system ships and may establish a hidden base located within an asteroid field or on a small moon if a protracted campaign in being undertaken. Their strike craft then move on to neutralize any orbital defenses, ground-based defense laser silos and missile bunkers. Orbital defenses are boarded and captured [...] and then turned against ground defenses or simply destroyed. Surviving ground defenses are sabotaged by scout forces or captured by main force assault troops inserted via drop pods. By preference, if system defenses are weak or still under friendly control, the Space Marines will deploy directly into the midst of a decisive engagement to take advantage of the considerable shock of their arrival."

which would generally appear to be an exception to most portrayed SM battles and still relies on a foe having largely limited defensive and intelligence capabilites however, and the SM's magically knowing where to strike.

There's no magic involved, it's easy to assume that they have sophisticated scanning equipment that tells them where things are (think Star Trek).

Even in Star Trek it was almost a running joke of continuous Hand-wavium

Or they intercept enough communications and have the means to bypass encryptions, or can just figure out where the loci are, and can infer the location of C&C infrastructure.

most of this isnt mentioned at all however, and even in the modern world is hugely resource intensive and error prone (such as the recent US airstrike on Syrian military forces during a ceasefire). Imagine an SM ship arriving in orbit and blasting the biggest transmitters it finds.

"Well...ESPN just went dark and the SETI labs appear to be unavailable...but the missile silos and the Pentagon are just fine"

Even if they could decrypt and locate everything, analyzing it all is a tremendous endeavor. Looking at Earth, or even just the US, if youre just sponging all electromagnetic communications, good luck deciphering 40 billion facebook messages, WAN gaming traffic and car GPS signals from military communications and their infinite variety of functions.

Deciphering and analyzing that all is difficult. There's a russian station that has been broadcasting in the clear for decades and nobody has figured out what its messages mean because theres no context to them.

Our own satellites are very good at spying, but as backwards as the culture may be, Marine starship scanning technology might be magnitudes better.

Sure, but we also know what we are looking for and general areas for most stuff fed by other intelligence sources, and have tens of thousands of people devoted to pouring over that information back by gargantuan telecom infrastructure, none of which is true of the Space Marines in ships which use indentured slave crews to mechanically turn gun turret and load shells

We also still get it wrong a huge amount of the time. Having the worlds most powerful intelligence and surveillance capabilities didnt stop the Serbs in the 90's from tricking NATO into throwing most ordnance dropped into dummy targets and emtpy locations (and the Iraqi's too in many instances).

As for why the Marines themselves? I think the fluff is that only their physiques can handle drop pod assaults. That's a hefty part of their strategy.

Right, but if the point is that you are mostly just blasting stuff from orbit and waiting for the big numbers of IG anyway...seems like needing drop pods would be a largely trivial capability in a strategic sense if you have to set them up as autonomous nobility who report only to themselves and fleets of their own

 Ashiraya wrote:
I don't know if you guys have ever seen a drop pod but those things have a sizeable engine pointed upward.

They are not just dropping, they are being boosted down (with the smaller floor engines used to somewhat arrest that fall).

No wonder only Marines can take it, and no wonder ground defenses have problems intercepting that kind of velocity.

We have missile systems that can track and engage targets moving at such speeds today, and the RIM-161 Block II is capable of reaching speeds in excess of Mach 15 itself.

You wouldnt even need to destroy the pod in the air. Minor damage or tossing off the trajectory could cause reentry failure or a crash, and even a minor course change could result in a landing dozens or hundreds of miles from the drop zone.

 Vaktathi wrote:

. . . "no way man, that's impossible". . .

Nevertheless that's how they roll. The narratives we have give the Space Marines the capacity to find important strategic objectives, I'm just filling in the blanks with theory. You can knock away at the theory 'til your face turns blue, but it's beside the point. We know they can track that information down. You say magic, I say high-tech. ("indistinguishable from magic," yadda yadda.) It's millennia in the future, and they can do what they can do.

 Vaktathi wrote:

We have missile systems that can track and engage targets moving at such speeds today, and the RIM-161 Block II is capable of reaching speeds in excess of Mach 15 itself.

You wouldnt even need to destroy the pod in the air. Minor damage or tossing off the trajectory could cause reentry failure or a crash, and even a minor course change could result in a landing dozens or hundreds of miles from the drop zone.

Earlier quote: "pods are hard to detect". Conversely, missile launches are easy to detect, travel an even more predictable path and for a much longer time. They are also covered as the "missile bunkers" in the quote I gave above.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

And yet, sometimes, that fails. There are spaces where the Imperium fails to go, due to strong space defenses.

Heck, I doubt the SMs could come close making landfall on the Tau homeworld at this point, what with the sheer amount of mass driver hyper-velocity rail weaponry now available. And the Tau are a very minor power in the grand scheme of things.

Sure, sometimes what the SM bring to the theater isn't enough. Or sometimes they don't have the luxury of standing off and pounding away because of time constraints. I'm just putting out a broader picture of what they can do beyond "Huur chainsword!" which is really the most simple way of interpreting the fluff. Dig deeper and you get more interesting stuff, and therefore more interesting scenarios.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

. . . "no way man, that's impossible". . .

Nevertheless that's how they roll. The narratives we have give the Space Marines the capacity to find important strategic objectives, I'm just filling in the blanks with theory. You can knock away at the theory 'til your face turns blue, but it's beside the point. We know they can track that information down. You say magic, I say high-tech. ("indistinguishable from magic," yadda yadda.) It's millennia in the future, and they can do what they can do.

But thats kind of exactly the whole thing here. They're portrayed as doing all sorts of stuff (like taking and holding entire planets, engaging in attritional siege warfare, etc) that they obviously have neither the numbers nor capabilities to actually carry out once looked at critically without just chalking it all up to plot armor or inventing suppositions

Earlier quote: "pods are hard to detect".

I guess I missed that, but even modern day systems would have no problem detecting and tracking something like a drop pod, it'd light up every radar, microwave, thermal, and acoustic sensor station within hundreds of miles.

There's nothing even remotely stealthy about them and we certainly can detect and track meteors a fraction of the size going several multiples more than a Drop Pod's stated 12000 km/h speed today.

Conversely, missile launches are easy to detect, travel an even more predictable path and for a much longer time.

Probably less so than a drop pod hurtling through the atmopshere with all the subtlety of a meteor I would wager. Trying to actually maneuver a pod in flight and stay on course would be far more difficult to accomplish than for a missile.

They are also covered as the "missile bunkers" in the quote I gave above.

which assumes the SM's know where they are and can engage them before/without being engaged back and that they arent mobile, none of which would necessarily be true, but which is just automatically assumed so by whoever wrote the passage, or more likely, never really thought about in detail.

"pods are hard to detect"

modern day systems would have no problem detecting and tracking something like a drop pod, it'd light up every radar, microwave, thermal, and acoustic sensor station within hundreds of miles.

Vak, are you sure you are reading what you are replying to?

Pods are hard to detect. Fact. You cannot then say 'We can easily detect pods'. You can't! That is part of the premise.

You cannot say 'we obviously can'. 40k has more than enough handwavium and if your point of immersion breaking is at drop pod detectability then I question your choice of setting.

 Vaktathi wrote:
But thats kind of exactly the whole thing here. They're portrayed as doing all sorts of stuff (like taking and holding entire planets, engaging in attritional siege warfare, etc) that they obviously have neither the numbers nor capabilities to actually carry out once looked at critically without just chalking it all up to plot armor or inventing suppositions

I agree with the take on siege warfare, it doesn't make sense. But "holding" a planet? That's really dependent on the details. They could literally hold it hostage with bombardment cannons. "Do as we say or every city with a population over X will be destroyed."

But to have fancy scanners that can find missile silos? That's very believable to me. To find communications hubs? Easy-peasy, since they're obviously broadcasting all the time. Track army movements? No problem.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I guess I missed that, but even modern day systems would have no problem detecting and tracking something like a drop pod, it'd light up every radar, microwave, thermal, and acoustic sensor station within hundreds of miles.

There's nothing even remotely stealthy about them and we certainly can detect and track meteors a fraction of the size going several multiples more than a Drop Pod's stated 12000 km/h speed today.

In your mind they aren't stealthy, but right there in IA2 is says they are hard to detect. So then that's what they are. Like I said before, they are "hard to track" in a paradigm where anti-orbital/anti-planetfall systems are relatively commonplace. Your assumptions about them are directly contradictory to their description and purpose.

Trying to actually maneuver a pod in flight and stay on course would be far more difficult to accomplish than for a missile.

I don't see how you'd make that assumption. Both have guidance fins and are computer controlled. In fact Drop Pods have thrusters while ICBMs don't at that stage.

which assumes the SM's know where they are and can engage them before/without being engaged back and that they arent mobile, none of which would necessarily be true, but which is just automatically assumed so by whoever wrote the passage, or more likely, never really thought about in detail.

If you want, you can willfully ignore the fluff. I can't stop you. But if we're talking about the plausibility of them conquering a world then the fact that they, as a matter of routine, spot and disable "missile bunkers" can't really be ignored.

 Ashiraya wrote:

"pods are hard to detect"

modern day systems would have no problem detecting and tracking something like a drop pod, it'd light up every radar, microwave, thermal, and acoustic sensor station within hundreds of miles.

Vak, are you sure you are reading what you are replying to?

Pods are hard to detect. Fact. You cannot then say 'We can easily detect pods'. You can't! That is part of the premise.

You cannot say 'we obviously can'. 40k has more than enough handwavium and if your point of immersion breaking is at drop pod detectability then I question your choice of setting.

More to the point detecting a Drop Pod is very different from detecting a Drop Pod in time to do anything about it.

 Ashiraya wrote:

"pods are hard to detect"

Pods are hard to detect. Fact. You cannot then say 'We can easily detect pods'. You can't! That is part of the premise.

what exactly does "hard to detect" mean, and by who's standards?

Hard to detect may mean they're hard to detect launching directly from the ship until they hit the atmosphere, which, sure, I'd acccept, but pretty much by fundamental definition, anything entering an atmosphere is going to be lit up like a christmas tree in some way, including literally, as long as there's an atmosphere. Even if the pod was perfectly visually and thermally hidden, the atmospheric disturbance is going to be exceptionally "loud" in terms of a detection signal, and every visualization we've ever seen of Drop Pods shows them entering very violently indeed.

Again, we detect and track things *today* that move far faster than Drop Pods, are far smaller, and far less blocky and angular and likely to bounce back perfect radar signals. If we're talking space interception, ok, I'd grant they may be difficult to detect there. once they hit an atmosphere though, there's really no subtle way to manage that. That's simply a fundamental fact of the physical reality of physics unless they work radically differently than they ostensibly claim to.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
But thats kind of exactly the whole thing here. They're portrayed as doing all sorts of stuff (like taking and holding entire planets, engaging in attritional siege warfare, etc) that they obviously have neither the numbers nor capabilities to actually carry out once looked at critically without just chalking it all up to plot armor or inventing suppositions

I agree with the take on siege warfare, it doesn't make sense. But "holding" a planet? That's really dependent on the details. They could literally hold it hostage with bombardment cannons. "Do as we say or every city with a population over X will be destroyed."

Sure, and by that standard, ok. I was envisioning more of a traditional "we have taken the planet and are going to hold it against conventional counterattack and domestic reprisal/insurrection".

But to have fancy scanners that can find missile silos? That's very believable to me.

They're concrete bunkers filled with big metal tubes and lots of wiring, lots of facilities match that profile. It's not like they send out special "missile" particles or have special targeting systems that paint targets which can be traced back to a silo the way an actively engaged SAM site does. There's no fluff to support the idea that they can just automatically detect and destroy buried missile silos, in fact, much the opposite, such as with Storm of Iron.

This is also a universe where human labor still does what machines have done on earth for hundreds of years (again, such as manually turning gun turrets on starships by chain-gang), and where common military hardware cannot match the capabilities of weapons that have been obsolete for multiple generations of military hardware.

To find communications hubs? Easy-peasy, since they're obviously broadcasting all the time.

Again, going back to my earlier example, you'd probably take ESPN off the air before you found anything of military significance. In every major city you have dozens if not hundreds of major broadcast centers for everything from radio to TV, and cell phone towers every couple of blocks, and cell phones and WiFi networks broadcasting from every person and dwelling. Likewise, tracking a broadcast station isn't going to do squat against wired networks and major communications infrastructure that isn't broadcasting over airwaves but rather fiberoptic cable and wire. Analyzing broadcast traffic isn't going to uncover Google's datacenter or the Pentagon. If one were to attack the US in this manner and just obliterate the cities putting out the largest amount of broadcast traffic, you'd have to destroy a good number of cities before you reached DC and the primary military command center.

Track army movements? No problem.

It's a problem if you don't know where such forces are stationed, where their transportation and supply stations and routes are, etc. It's easy when you've been analyzing areas for years or decades and know the terrain and traffic patterns and where the forces already are.

In your mind they aren't stealthy, but right there in IA2 is says they are hard to detect.

As I noted above, "hard to detect" is rather vague. If we're talking attempting to detect them in space, I could by that. Going by the fundamental reality of objects entering an atmosphere at great speed however, in an atmosphere even if the pod itself was perfectly invisible to radar and optical sensors (including eyes), the atmospheric disturbances and giant sheet of flame and accompanying thermal and sonic phenomena would not be.

Kinda like how a common supermarket parking lot speed bump could stop a Land Raider because it's got a ground clearance of 4"

I don't see how you'd make that assumption. Both have guidance fins and are computer controlled. In fact Drop Pods have thrusters while ICBMs don't at that stage.

A drop pod has thrusters, sure. It's also comically unbalanced and and would be very poor at maneuvering, particularly with as much mass as one would have, and if knocked off-axis would have essentially no ability to right themselves properly. We're talking about something as thickly armored as a medium tank crashing through the atmosphere at extremely high speeds on direct course for the ground, and even the tiniest of movements can send it many miles off course or worse. ICBM's don't have thrusters at that stage because don't need them, they're a far smaller object that's much harder to hit and can arrive some distance away from their target and still accomplish their goal. There's also generally multiple warheads so if one is lost another can still do the job.

If you want, you can willfully ignore the fluff. I can't stop you. But if we're talking about the plausibility of them conquering a world then the fact that they, as a matter of routine, spot and disable "missile bunkers" can't really be ignored.

Again, the point was that this is accomplished largely through plot armor, and that looking at the actual realities of such a thing would quickly break down. The fluff also has them engaging in hand to hand combat with 30m tall war machines and fighting attritional trench warfare battles, which everyone generally agrees is pretty stupid. It makes for fun reading, but if we're actually looking at how something would play out and trying to earnestly discuss how a Space Marine chapter could conquer a planet, the only way it works out for the Space Marines is if you accept that they work only with a very large helping of Plot Armor and Handwavium. That I guess is really my ultimate point.

 AnomanderRake wrote:


More to the point detecting a Drop Pod is very different from detecting a Drop Pod in time to do anything about it.

The big issue there being how long do they actually remain at such tremendous speeds, because they have to slow down to land, and they're not landing at 12000 KP/H without hitting with the impact energy of a micronuke and exerting G forces that would liquefy titanium, even with superhuman G force resilience, it would require several minutes of slowdown time.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Even if the pod was perfectly visually and thermally hidden, the atmospheric disturbance is going to be exceptionally "loud" in terms of a detection signal, and every visualization we've ever seen of Drop Pods shows them entering very violently indeed.

Now this is what you should use redirected meteors for. Which of those 100 things messing up your atmosphere is the real drop pod? Better guess fast!

 Vaktathi wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:


More to the point detecting a Drop Pod is very different from detecting a Drop Pod in time to do anything about it.

The big issue there being how long do they actually remain at such tremendous speeds, because they have to slow down to land, and they're not landing at 12000 KP/H without hitting with the impact energy of a micronuke and exerting G forces that would liquefy titanium, even with superhuman G force resilience, it would require several minutes of slowdown time.

Unfortunately it's midnight where I am and I need to be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow but I'll get back to you on that.

If you only count a single chapter with absolutely no support from anything outside of it (no Navy, Inquisitors, IG, etc) then in a brute force way? Probably not. However this was the intention of Space Marines splitting into chapters; no one man would be able to wield the power of a legion of super soldiers that can conquer planet after planet.

The older fluff illustrated this better; Space Marines were the Scalpel to the IG's Hammer. Where IG smashes and crushes all opposition, the Space Marines were suppose to strike at critical points, thus allowing said Hammer to crumble the entire planet's government with one fell swoop (if your logistics, morale and livelihood are decimated under the current government, then they suffer a major loss in a grand battle, this would cause the citizens to start revolting, and the rest is just cleanup work). The reason Marines sound like they can do this in fluff is because they end up taking all the credits.

Now Chaos Marines opens up a whole new can of worms, but again it wouldn't be the marines themselves doing it, it would be basically a bunch of converts and cultists, with traitor elements of the native forces backed by daemons. The main difference is that Chaos Marines probably don't need anyone else at the beginning, while loyalist marines would.

That is assuming the Marines don't solve things diplomatically. After all having basically the barrier between science fiction and reality shattered by their mere existence is probably enough to cause a bunch of countries to cave in on the spot. I mean if genetically enhanced supersoldiers came to our doorstep offering to help us defeat the swarm of alien locusts and zombie robots out there, showed us proof of both of these, then said that the only thing they ask in return is tithes and becoming part of the imperium, a lot of world leaders would be put in a very weird place.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Even if the pod was perfectly visually and thermally hidden, the atmospheric disturbance is going to be exceptionally "loud" in terms of a detection signal, and every visualization we've ever seen of Drop Pods shows them entering very violently indeed.

Now this is what you should use redirected meteors for. Which of those 100 things messing up your atmosphere is the real drop pod? Better guess fast!

Aye, which would be a great tactic, and you could spread them far enough apart to not majorly risk collisions and still have it work.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:


More to the point detecting a Drop Pod is very different from detecting a Drop Pod in time to do anything about it.

The big issue there being how long do they actually remain at such tremendous speeds, because they have to slow down to land, and they're not landing at 12000 KP/H without hitting with the impact energy of a micronuke and exerting G forces that would liquefy titanium, even with superhuman G force resilience, it would require several minutes of slowdown time.

Unfortunately it's midnight where I am and I need to be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow but I'll get back to you on that.

I look forward to it!

"Grav is your friend. The Skyhammer Annihilation force is considered broken for a reason."

A chapter doesn't have enough grav to stop a huge army of Riptides/Stormsurges. At best, they have 10-15 grav cannons because all the other heavy weapons presumably get fielded in the fluff. That's part of my point. A marine chapter doesn't have enough of anything to accomplish a single thing. Hell, a genestealer cult could get big enough to kill an entire chapter on the right hive world. 1000 is a tiny, tiny TINY number.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:


More to the point detecting a Drop Pod is very different from detecting a Drop Pod in time to do anything about it.

The big issue there being how long do they actually remain at such tremendous speeds, because they have to slow down to land, and they're not landing at 12000 KP/H without hitting with the impact energy of a micronuke and exerting G forces that would liquefy titanium, even with superhuman G force resilience, it would require several minutes of slowdown time.

Unfortunately it's midnight where I am and I need to be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow but I'll get back to you on that.

I look forward to it!

So Forge World figures, a few guesses, and a bit of approximation are giving me a density of slightly more than balsa wood for a loaded Drop Pod and a terminal velocity of over five hundred kilometers per second. Going to have to go back and try and guess better figures. (That said an object with a terminal velocity of over 2km/s will make it from low orbit to the ground in a straight line in just over three minutes if it doesn't decelerate to land, so the final number is unlikely to be under three minutes).

Of course, but it'd be more like an episode of "Star Trek" than what you're imagining.

The Space Marines' ships would probably be capable of subduing an entire world. 1000 guys on the ground with a few tanks? Never, unless there's basically no modern weapons on the world at all. The PDF is likely to outnumber them 1000 to 1.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

godking wrote:
]The Tau wona war against space marines by short cirtuiting their armor with a EMP.

Ahahaha what's that in? Tau make Marines look like chumps way too often.


On a more on-topic note; without orbital bombardment I don't see it working on modern day earth. However as previously noted in 40K as in most sci-fi there generally are a small number of important areas on a planet and if you take or destroy them the planet is yours. This mitigates the small number of Space Marines issue.

Blades of Damocles.

On topic.

Space marines might be able to subvert the ruling class and hold the important areas but they are not holding the entire planet with just a thousand men.

It took rome damn near 200 years to fully pacify Iberia and that was with a lot more then a 1000 men.

Modern militaries have trouble clearing 100 men out of a mountain that have very outdated tech compared to the military forces. What on earth are they going to do if it was a chapter like the raven guard?

And that is just one example of how things would go bad for this planet, there are a hell of a lot other scenarios that don't work out too well for us with different chapters.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Modern militaries have trouble clearing 100 men out of a mountain that have very outdated tech compared to the military forces. What on earth are they going to do if it was a chapter like the raven guard?

And that is just one example of how things would go bad for this planet, there are a hell of a lot other scenarios that don't work out too well for us with different chapters.

It's easy with strategic weapons.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Modern militaries have trouble clearing 100 men out of a mountain that have very outdated tech compared to the military forces. What on earth are they going to do if it was a chapter like the raven guard?

And that is just one example of how things would go bad for this planet, there are a hell of a lot other scenarios that don't work out too well for us with different chapters.

So the Raven Guard company has achieved a very solid hold on one mountain. That leaves them with enough to go that Wikipedia has sublisted them three deep.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Modern militaries have trouble clearing 100 men out of a mountain that have very outdated tech compared to the military forces. What on earth are they going to do if it was a chapter like the raven guard?

And that is just one example of how things would go bad for this planet, there are a hell of a lot other scenarios that don't work out too well for us with different chapters.

They have trouble when they have restrictions placed on their engagement methods and tools.

A force like the Raven Guard, realistically, would have zero ability to sustain itself for any period of time cut off. Ammunition resupply, parts breakage and maintenance of extremely complex armor systems (to say nothing of sustaining their energy requirements), and communications would be critical issues, and food supply would be a serious problem (for a Space Marine who would require something 20,000 calories a day to support their massive and tuned up bodies while also fighting and exerting themselves) even if they can eat things that normal humans cant, there just isnt enough chemical energy in dead squirrels, rocks and lichen to sustain that. Those SM's would quickly deteriorate the effectiveness of such a fighting force in days. It's one thing for a 5'3" 120lb dude with an AK to live in the mountains he's known all his life. It is quite another for a 700lb 8ft tall super soldier with extremely complex and bulky gear who's never set foot in that moutain range to do so.

Being 8ft tall superhumans in gigantic metal suits is also not particularly stealthy just because they're painted black.

Martel732 wrote:

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Modern militaries have trouble clearing 100 men out of a mountain that have very outdated tech compared to the military forces. What on earth are they going to do if it was a chapter like the raven guard?

And that is just one example of how things would go bad for this planet, there are a hell of a lot other scenarios that don't work out too well for us with different chapters.

It's easy with strategic weapons.

Again, don't need to nuke them. If we know they're stuck on a mountain, it's not hard to launch cruise missiles and fire artillery from far beyond their threat range. And bear in mind that modern artillery fires for miles, whereas the heaviest Imperial weapons carried by the Raven Guard have a maximum range of well under 500 feet (48"). We could park modern MBTs and just take them apart if they ever show their heads.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Modern militaries have trouble clearing 100 men out of a mountain that have very outdated tech compared to the military forces. What on earth are they going to do if it was a chapter like the raven guard?

And that is just one example of how things would go bad for this planet, there are a hell of a lot other scenarios that don't work out too well for us with different chapters.

It's easy with strategic weapons.

Again, don't need to nuke them. If we know they're stuck on a mountain, it's not hard to launch cruise missiles and fire artillery from far beyond their threat range. And bear in mind that modern artillery fires for miles, whereas the heaviest Imperial weapons carried by the Raven Guard have a maximum range of well under 500 feet (48"). We could park modern MBTs and just take them apart if they ever show their heads.

That works too. I was just being extreme.

So I'm having some fun working around data type overflow trying to figure out how to do these computations from high altitudes. I can tell you that a simplified model of a drop pod (an egg shape 5m wide and 8m tall weighing 35 metric tons with an approximate coefficient of friction slightly better than a sphere) nudged out of a ship (no initial velocity) at 43 kilometers above the ground will take around five and a half minutes to hit the ground with no reverse thrust.

Data is also inconclusive on whether the Drop Pod actually has an engine propelling it downwards (FW says no, but they also say it's at least ten tons lighter than makes any sense) and the only image I've got of Drop Pods launching from the spacecraft is a bit of FMV that I think is from Chaos Gate (a '90s 40k turn-based strategy game, for those in the audience who aren't old enough to remember it and haven't been digging around to see what random bits of footage are from) so I've got no idea if they're propelled out of the spacecraft at all.

Independent of the fall distance if a Drop Pod didn't have any reverese thrust it'd hit the ground at around 41.5 meters per second (about 93 miles per hour). If neither the surface or the pod deforms during impact and the pod's harnesses can deform by about a meter the passengers would be decelerating at 170g for about 0.02 seconds, which I've found documented cases of unarmoured humans taking and walking away with no injuries. The retro-rockets may not actually be necessary, given the added protection of power armour, a Space Marine's reinforced physiology, and the rarity of surfaces you could crash thirty-five tons of Drop Pod into at terminal velocity without deforming them. (Also given that you aren't allowed to deploy other armies in pods anymore I may not have to ask what would happen if a Guardsman was subjected to the same stresses)

Also it should be pointed out that it seems like drop pods have some sort of anti-grav tech on the bottom (not sure if this is stated anywhere but it looks like the same type of "bars" under a land speeder)

At least that's how I've always imagined it, in the last few hundred meters the anti-grav engages along with the retrograde thrusters and slows the pod down at non=lethal levels allowing it to maintain full speed decent until the very last second, making it "hard to detect" until it lands.

Headcannon for me anyways...

 Vaktathi wrote:
to say nothing of sustaining their energy requirements

While the nutrition requirement is indeed rather egregiously glossed over by GW, the energy requirement is not. Marines carry fusion reactors on their backs. They are not running out of power any time soon.

 Forcast wrote:
Also it should be pointed out that it seems like drop pods have some sort of anti-grav tech on the bottom (not sure if this is stated anywhere but it looks like the same type of "bars" under a land speeder)

At least that's how I've always imagined it, in the last few hundred meters the anti-grav engages along with the retrograde thrusters and slows the pod down at non=lethal levels allowing it to maintain full speed decent until the very last second, making it "hard to detect" until it lands.

Headcannon for me anyways...

5th Edition SM Codex states retro jets.

Without any help whatsoever, absolutely not. A typical codex chapter is 1,000 battle brothers. The only thing they'd conquer alone are moons and space stations. But if it's a world, then they'd definitely need local PDF or IG to help flex their muscles. Otherwise, they're losing the numbers game really bad, and even as superhuman as they are, it wouldn't be hard for a capable rebel commander to eliminate them.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
to say nothing of sustaining their energy requirements

While the nutrition requirement is indeed rather egregiously glossed over by GW, the energy requirement is not. Marines carry fusion reactors on their backs. They are not running out of power any time soon.

but bullets and gun rounds is another thing. an entire Chapter lands on a planet with a population of billions (like earth) it doesn't matter how big and bad they are, the numbers are against them.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
to say nothing of sustaining their energy requirements

While the nutrition requirement is indeed rather egregiously glossed over by GW, the energy requirement is not. Marines carry fusion reactors on their backs. They are not running out of power any time soon.

Sure, but even if we accept that, then we have issue of "Sergeant Tyrus's pack was hit when he died and ruptured intensely radioactive material all over the area, Brothers Marnus and Leraxes had breaches in their armor and were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation which will degrade their performance and would have killed lesser men, and their suit systems are now compromised".

Even setting aside that scenario, they have do have issues with the suits and weapons in other ways. Ammunition, basic water (even a Space Marine isn't immune to this need even if we accept the need is somewhat more controllable), parts and other consumables (e.g. replacement seals or servo motors and lubricant or sensor modules or armor plates and the like). Marines are almost never portrayed exactly carrying an abundance of ammunition and supplies, and are even more rarely portrayed receiving any supplies short of some sort of return to a ship or base.

In a codex astartes chapter, it includes 6 standard issue chapters, 1 assault, 1 dev and 1 scout, then the veterans, but in a full chapter you will have a space fleet ( which can destroy all life on a planet), as well as tanks, planes ect, it depends if you are going for conquer and claim or destroy.

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
Without any help whatsoever, absolutely not. A typical codex chapter is 1,000 battle brothers. The only thing they'd conquer alone are moons and space stations. But if it's a world, then they'd definitely need local PDF or IG to help flex their muscles. Otherwise, they're losing the numbers game really bad, and even as superhuman as they are, it wouldn't be hard for a capable rebel commander to eliminate them.

sure except the first indication the rebel commander has that he's fighting space Marines is proably going to be when a Squad of terminators teleports into the middle of his command center. Space Marines don't conduct line up drag out fights. they're not geared for war's of attrition. they're all about shock and awe.

lets put it this way, On taros the marines dropped into tau held territory, the tau have comparable tech to the imperium, but massively more advanced than us, the marines dug in and for 3 days they took on a massively superior force, holding out, and eventually escaping, we have no where near the level of tech that the tau do.

As a side note, people need to stop using the TT rules for ranges and how accurate and army is in the fluff, the fluff influences the rules, but the rules are not representative of the actual fluff, we know marines could take this planet out easily because... guess what, they do, against tech levels both greater and lesser than ours.

as a second side note, the models are designed by people who have no idea how such things work, were the 40k universe real, these vehicles would look very different, better clearance etc. so people need to drop that too, we know leman russ and land raiders couldn't actually get around properly.

 Formosa wrote:
lets put it this way, On taros the marines dropped into tau held territory, the tau have comparable tech to the imperium, but massively more advanced than us, the marines dug in and for 3 days they took on a massively superior force, holding out, and eventually escaping, we have no where near the level of tech that the tau do.

As a side note, people need to stop using the TT rules for ranges and how accurate and army is in the fluff, the fluff influences the rules, but the rules are not representative of the actual fluff, we know marines could take this planet out easily because... guess what, they do, against tech levels both greater and lesser than ours.

as a second side note, the models are designed by people who have no idea how such things work, were the 40k universe real, these vehicles would look very different, better clearance etc. so people need to drop that too, we know leman russ and land raiders couldn't actually get around properly.

going by the Fluff, ignore the Fluff it is geared towards making whoever they want to look good even if it defies logic, look at the battle of Macragge and the Battle of Caliban, fluff is not designed to follow logic but to follow the story they want to tell and using fluff as your basis of comparison to what would/could happen is flawed.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
Without any help whatsoever, absolutely not. A typical codex chapter is 1,000 battle brothers. The only thing they'd conquer alone are moons and space stations. But if it's a world, then they'd definitely need local PDF or IG to help flex their muscles. Otherwise, they're losing the numbers game really bad, and even as superhuman as they are, it wouldn't be hard for a capable rebel commander to eliminate them.

sure except the first indication the rebel commander has that he's fighting space Marines is proably going to be when a Squad of terminators teleports into the middle of his command center. Space Marines don't conduct line up drag out fights. they're not geared for war's of attrition. they're all about shock and awe.

Well, this assumes that the Space Marines somehow know who the rebel commander is, where he is, and that it's possible to teleport there. And there are huge numbers of fluff examples of Marines conducting drag out fights and wars of attrition they have no business engaging in

 Formosa wrote:
lets put it this way, On taros the marines dropped into tau held territory, the tau have comparable tech to the imperium, but massively more advanced than us, the marines dug in and for 3 days they took on a massively superior force, holding out, and eventually escaping, we have no where near the level of tech that the tau do.

Hrm, we have capabilities in modern militaries that the Tau could only dream of. The Tau have nothing analagous to radar or GPS guided artillery, their aircraft are all built around WW2 style dogfighting with nothing resembling the beyond visual range engagement capabilities modern aircraft have, they have nothing like an AWACS capable of detecting, tracking, and disseminating targeting data on dozens of targets to friendly fighter aircraft to engage from over a hundred miles away, and descriptions of the effects of Railsguns against Leman Russ tanks merely match what modern APFSDS rounds do to tanks, hell we even widely distribute Blacksun filter equivalent equipment to basic infantry en-masse as opposed to just on heavy equipment like tanks/suits/etc, and it's standard issue on literally everything instead of some sort of special upgrade.

As a side note, people need to stop using the TT rules for ranges and how accurate and army is in the fluff, the fluff influences the rules, but the rules are not representative of the actual fluff, we know marines could take this planet out easily because... guess what, they do, against tech levels both greater and lesser than ours.

We also have background where they die to mundane equipment that we very much have modern equivalents to, and the point of many arguments put forth has been that the Space Marines win because the author wants them to win and all sorts of logistic and combat realities are simply ignored or hand-waved away without every being addressed or usually even considered.

as a second side note, the models are designed by people who have no idea how such things work, were the 40k universe real, these vehicles would look very different, better clearance etc. so people need to drop that too, we know leman russ and land raiders couldn't actually get around properly.

If we're going to assume all the designs would look and operate differently from how they're presented, then we're talking an entirely different discussion that can't really be had because we're no longer talking about the 40k that everyone is familiar with.

Likewise, even with these wonky model designs, we can't just assume they'd look and operate different, as in many cases we also have detailed cutaway drawings given from background perspectives that reinforce how absurd their designs are.

Asterios wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
lets put it this way, On taros the marines dropped into tau held territory, the tau have comparable tech to the imperium, but massively more advanced than us, the marines dug in and for 3 days they took on a massively superior force, holding out, and eventually escaping, we have no where near the level of tech that the tau do.

As a side note, people need to stop using the TT rules for ranges and how accurate and army is in the fluff, the fluff influences the rules, but the rules are not representative of the actual fluff, we know marines could take this planet out easily because... guess what, they do, against tech levels both greater and lesser than ours.

as a second side note, the models are designed by people who have no idea how such things work, were the 40k universe real, these vehicles would look very different, better clearance etc. so people need to drop that too, we know leman russ and land raiders couldn't actually get around properly.

going by the Fluff, ignore the Fluff it is geared towards making whoever they want to look good even if it defies logic, look at the battle of Macragge and the Battle of Caliban, fluff is not designed to follow logic but to follow the story they want to tell and using fluff as your basis of comparison to what would/could happen is flawed.

No, you look at the whole and not little snipets of the fluff, on the whole we can see that marines are an extremely capable force, there are a few examples of mega ultra marines like brotherhood of the snake, but the vast majority just has them as extremely capable shock troops, but by no means godlike, the HH series is a good example of this, people seem to only focus on the extreme examples and take that as the gospel.

For example, we know that a land raider in the fluff can take an insane amount of firepower to bring down (by our standards) as its shown consistenly across the fluff, but in the TT all it needs is a few hits with the right weapons and is pretty lacklustre, because the game is made for balance (lol), the fluff isn't, the fluff shows what these things are capable of, but the writers have no military or technical training, so don't really know what they are talking about, thing is, neither do we, we don't know just how powerful a lascannon is, a gauss rifle, a railgun etc. so when people say something stupid like "an abrams can take out a land raider on the move at 50kph" the answer is no, it couldn't because the fluff shows that such weapons are ineffective against the land raider, then people say "ah, but the post with the land raider and FW say that the armour is X thick" again no, this is technical info made by people who haven't a clue what they are talking about, if they did, we would have real land raiders.

so as I say, take the whole not just the little bits of info, the rules can be disregarded as they have little to do with the fluff, and this is a fluff discussion, not a TT one.

 Formosa wrote:

Asterios wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
lets put it this way, On taros the marines dropped into tau held territory, the tau have comparable tech to the imperium, but massively more advanced than us, the marines dug in and for 3 days they took on a massively superior force, holding out, and eventually escaping, we have no where near the level of tech that the tau do.

As a side note, people need to stop using the TT rules for ranges and how accurate and army is in the fluff, the fluff influences the rules, but the rules are not representative of the actual fluff, we know marines could take this planet out easily because... guess what, they do, against tech levels both greater and lesser than ours.

as a second side note, the models are designed by people who have no idea how such things work, were the 40k universe real, these vehicles would look very different, better clearance etc. so people need to drop that too, we know leman russ and land raiders couldn't actually get around properly.

going by the Fluff, ignore the Fluff it is geared towards making whoever they want to look good even if it defies logic, look at the battle of Macragge and the Battle of Caliban, fluff is not designed to follow logic but to follow the story they want to tell and using fluff as your basis of comparison to what would/could happen is flawed.

No, you look at the whole and not little snipets of the fluff, on the whole we can see that marines are an extremely capable force, there are a few examples of mega ultra marines like brotherhood of the snake, but the vast majority just has them as extremely capable shock troops, but by no means godlike, the HH series is a good example of this, people seem to only focus on the extreme examples and take that as the gospel.

For example, we know that a land raider in the fluff can take an insane amount of firepower to bring down (by our standards) as its shown consistenly across the fluff, but in the TT all it needs is a few hits with the right weapons and is pretty lacklustre, because the game is made for balance (lol), the fluff isn't, the fluff shows what these things are capable of, but the writers have no military or technical training, so don't really know what they are talking about, thing is, neither do we, we don't know just how powerful a lascannon is, a gauss rifle, a railgun etc. so when people say something stupid like "an abrams can take out a land raider on the move at 50kph" the answer is no, it couldn't because the fluff shows that such weapons are ineffective against the land raider, then people say "ah, but the post with the land raider and FW say that the armour is X thick" again no, this is technical info made by people who haven't a clue what they are talking about, if they did, we would have real land raiders.

so as I say, take the whole not just the little bits of info, the rules can be disregarded as they have little to do with the fluff, and this is a fluff discussion, not a TT one.

Actually I disagree I do think an Abrams could take out a Land Raider, how you say? a good shot placed on the tracks and its out of circulation, you seem to attribute god like abilities to these weapon systems and such, a Bolter round is nothing but a rocket propelled bullet, thats it, a bullet from an M-16 could probably do as much damage, a Bullet from a 50 cal definitely could. as to armor, no armor is impervious all it takes is the right round or the right shot and the fact Tyranids can cut thru it, it can't be all that good. but I digress you keep quoting the fluff as it is gospel it is not it is whatever the author at the time wrote up in a their mad delirium state at the time, also reason we do not have Land Raiders right now is, well they are pointless, lets face it, the land raider is just a fancy troop transport and that is it. we already have a vehicle the Rhino was based on and the Warthog or whatever GW calls it, and the Land raider is a send back to old WWI style tanks, its an old outclassed system that is useless, that is why we don't have vehicles like the Land Raider now.

Where does fluff show that something like an Abrams could not successfully engage a Land Raider?

 Vaktathi wrote:
Where does fluff show that something like an Abrams could not successfully engage a Land Raider?

Where is an Abrams part of wh40K?



Maybe some people should realize this is 40k Background ....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Fact is, Space Marines can conquer GW designed planets.

 1hadhq wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Where does fluff show that something like an Abrams could not successfully engage a Land Raider?

Where is an Abrams part of wh40K?

That was kind of my point, people arguing that an Abrams could not engage a Land Raider because "the fluff shows that such weapons are ineffective against a land raider" doesn't actually have any fluff to reinforce that point that I can recall.

Bringing in real life stuff came in as a result of pointing out how Space Marines really do lack lots of capabilities and couldn't function on the scales they're often represented in once any bit of non-tactical concerns were introduced.

 1hadhq wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Where does fluff show that something like an Abrams could not successfully engage a Land Raider?

Where is an Abrams part of wh40K?



Maybe some people should realize this is 40k Background ....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Fact is, Space Marines can conquer GW designed planets.

it Depends if SM's could conquer GM based planets, all too many times they enacted Exterminatus, where no boots on the ground and they blasted the planet from space, furthermore most of the planets they are seen conquering are not what I would call great forces too begin with but forces related too maybe our WWI or WWII times. as to Abrams in the GW universe look too the IG's they are almost designed like Earth's equivalent in Troop and vehicle types.

Asterios wrote:

 1hadhq wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Where does fluff show that something like an Abrams could not successfully engage a Land Raider?

Where is an Abrams part of wh40K?



Maybe some people should realize this is 40k Background ....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Fact is, Space Marines can conquer GW designed planets.

it Depends if SM's could conquer GM based planets, all too many times they enacted Exterminatus, where no boots on the ground and they blasted the planet from space, furthermore most of the planets they are seen conquering are not what I would call great forces too begin with but forces related too maybe our WWI or WWII times. as to Abrams in the GW universe look too the IG's they are almost designed like Earth's equivalent in Troop and vehicle types.

Fighting in engagements with Land Raiders gainst several non-Land Raiders isn't hard to find. Just look up the stories published at the release of the plastic Land Raider kit.
But maybe that isn't what you are looking for.

 1hadhq wrote:

Asterios wrote:

 1hadhq wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Where does fluff show that something like an Abrams could not successfully engage a Land Raider?

Where is an Abrams part of wh40K?



Maybe some people should realize this is 40k Background ....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Fact is, Space Marines can conquer GW designed planets.

it Depends if SM's could conquer GM based planets, all too many times they enacted Exterminatus, where no boots on the ground and they blasted the planet from space, furthermore most of the planets they are seen conquering are not what I would call great forces too begin with but forces related too maybe our WWI or WWII times. as to Abrams in the GW universe look too the IG's they are almost designed like Earth's equivalent in Troop and vehicle types.

Fighting in engagements with Land Raiders gainst several non-Land Raiders isn't hard to find. Just look up the stories published at the release of the plastic Land Raider kit.
But maybe that isn't what you are looking for.

didn't say it was, just saying Land Raiders are not impervious and that even an Earth Type Abrams could take one out.

 Vaktathi wrote:


Bringing in real life stuff came in as a result of pointing out how Space Marines really do lack lots of capabilities and couldn't function on the scales they're often represented in once any bit of non-tactical concerns were introduced.

If you are going to bring in all the 'Land Raiders would not work in real life' and so into the discussion, it kind of makes the entire subject moot because the fight could never happen to begin with. Many things in 40k simply physically cannot exist in real life, and bringing them here would create a metaphysical paradox that would spell the end of all life.

IOW, a draw?

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:


Bringing in real life stuff came in as a result of pointing out how Space Marines really do lack lots of capabilities and couldn't function on the scales they're often represented in once any bit of non-tactical concerns were introduced.

If you are going to bring in all the 'Land Raiders would not work in real life' and so into the discussion, it kind of makes the entire subject moot because the fight could never happen to begin with. Many things in 40k simply physically cannot exist in real life, and bringing them here would create a metaphysical paradox that would spell the end of all life.

IOW, a draw?

oh Land Raiders could work no doubt about that, but they are not that great of a vehicle, you have to remember that the 40K universe lost a lot of its tech and technical knowledge over the past 10 millenia to the point that working on a vehicle is tantamount to a religion almost, most vehicles and such are mystical to the normal Space Marine.

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
Without any help whatsoever, absolutely not. A typical codex chapter is 1,000 battle brothers. The only thing they'd conquer alone are moons and space stations. But if it's a world, then they'd definitely need local PDF or IG to help flex their muscles. Otherwise, they're losing the numbers game really bad, and even as superhuman as they are, it wouldn't be hard for a capable rebel commander to eliminate them.

Exactly !

I don't think people actually understand how small a number a 1000 men is to hold an ENTIRE planet.

Losing 10 battle brothers in a battle could already be a crippling loss for a force numbering a mere 1000 men no matter how superhuman they are.

godking wrote:

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
Without any help whatsoever, absolutely not. A typical codex chapter is 1,000 battle brothers. The only thing they'd conquer alone are moons and space stations. But if it's a world, then they'd definitely need local PDF or IG to help flex their muscles. Otherwise, they're losing the numbers game really bad, and even as superhuman as they are, it wouldn't be hard for a capable rebel commander to eliminate them.

Exactly !

I don't think people actually understand how small a number a 1000 men is to hold an ENTIRE planet.

Losing 10 battle brothers in a battle could already be a crippling loss for a force numbering a mere 1000 men no matter how superhuman they are.

that is my point too, man to SM the SM will always win out 1,000 men to a space marine and the space marine will lose out, or even 100 men to 1 space marine, each space marine I would put equivalent to 10 men.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Hrm, we have capabilities in modern militaries that the Tau could only dream of. The Tau have nothing analagous to radar or GPS guided artillery, their aircraft are all built around WW2 style dogfighting with nothing resembling the beyond visual range engagement capabilities modern aircraft have, they have nothing like an AWACS capable of detecting, tracking, and disseminating targeting data on dozens of targets to friendly fighter aircraft to engage from over a hundred miles away, and descriptions of the effects of Railsguns against Leman Russ tanks merely match what modern APFSDS rounds do to tanks, hell we even widely distribute Blacksun filter equivalent equipment to basic infantry en-masse as opposed to just on heavy equipment like tanks/suits/etc, and it's standard issue on literally everything instead of some sort of special upgrade.

When reading this I cannot help but think of Star Wars with its space planes that seem to be designed in a way that ignores zero gravity.

Maybe in the case of planet vs planet combat ground based military forces are so irrelevant that they can be designed badly and still perform their role.

Asterios wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:


Bringing in real life stuff came in as a result of pointing out how Space Marines really do lack lots of capabilities and couldn't function on the scales they're often represented in once any bit of non-tactical concerns were introduced.

If you are going to bring in all the 'Land Raiders would not work in real life' and so into the discussion, it kind of makes the entire subject moot because the fight could never happen to begin with. Many things in 40k simply physically cannot exist in real life, and bringing them here would create a metaphysical paradox that would spell the end of all life.

IOW, a draw?

oh Land Raiders could work no doubt about that, but they are not that great of a vehicle, you have to remember that the 40K universe lost a lot of its tech and technical knowledge over the past 10 millenia to the point that working on a vehicle is tantamount to a religion almost, most vehicles and such are mystical to the normal Space Marine.

No, I mean things like the ammunition pocket dimensions used by Marines and Leman Russes alike.

godking wrote:

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
Without any help whatsoever, absolutely not. A typical codex chapter is 1,000 battle brothers. The only thing they'd conquer alone are moons and space stations. But if it's a world, then they'd definitely need local PDF or IG to help flex their muscles. Otherwise, they're losing the numbers game really bad, and even as superhuman as they are, it wouldn't be hard for a capable rebel commander to eliminate them.

Exactly !

I don't think people actually understand how small a number a 1000 men is to hold an ENTIRE planet.

Losing 10 battle brothers in a battle could already be a crippling loss for a force numbering a mere 1000 men no matter how superhuman they are.

Entire Planet = ???

Agri-World = a few thousand "farmers". Vs 1000 SM. Who wins?

 Ashiraya wrote:

Asterios wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:


Bringing in real life stuff came in as a result of pointing out how Space Marines really do lack lots of capabilities and couldn't function on the scales they're often represented in once any bit of non-tactical concerns were introduced.

If you are going to bring in all the 'Land Raiders would not work in real life' and so into the discussion, it kind of makes the entire subject moot because the fight could never happen to begin with. Many things in 40k simply physically cannot exist in real life, and bringing them here would create a metaphysical paradox that would spell the end of all life.

IOW, a draw?

oh Land Raiders could work no doubt about that, but they are not that great of a vehicle, you have to remember that the 40K universe lost a lot of its tech and technical knowledge over the past 10 millenia to the point that working on a vehicle is tantamount to a religion almost, most vehicles and such are mystical to the normal Space Marine.

No, I mean things like the ammunition pocket dimensions used by Marines and Leman Russes alike.

bah then its just like Hollywood and their 100 round revolver.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 1hadhq wrote:

godking wrote:

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
Without any help whatsoever, absolutely not. A typical codex chapter is 1,000 battle brothers. The only thing they'd conquer alone are moons and space stations. But if it's a world, then they'd definitely need local PDF or IG to help flex their muscles. Otherwise, they're losing the numbers game really bad, and even as superhuman as they are, it wouldn't be hard for a capable rebel commander to eliminate them.

Exactly !

I don't think people actually understand how small a number a 1000 men is to hold an ENTIRE planet.

Losing 10 battle brothers in a battle could already be a crippling loss for a force numbering a mere 1000 men no matter how superhuman they are.

Entire Planet = ???

Agri-World = a few thousand "farmers". Vs 1000 SM. Who wins?

even Agri-Worlds have more then a few thousand "farmers" more like a few million.

Asterios wrote:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 1hadhq wrote:

godking wrote:

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
Without any help whatsoever, absolutely not. A typical codex chapter is 1,000 battle brothers. The only thing they'd conquer alone are moons and space stations. But if it's a world, then they'd definitely need local PDF or IG to help flex their muscles. Otherwise, they're losing the numbers game really bad, and even as superhuman as they are, it wouldn't be hard for a capable rebel commander to eliminate them.

Exactly !

I don't think people actually understand how small a number a 1000 men is to hold an ENTIRE planet.

Losing 10 battle brothers in a battle could already be a crippling loss for a force numbering a mere 1000 men no matter how superhuman they are.

Entire Planet = ???

Agri-World = a few thousand "farmers". Vs 1000 SM. Who wins?

even Agri-Worlds have more then a few thousand "farmers" more like a few million.

Rulebook 3rd edition, page 114-115 :

Agri - World = min pop at 15000 , max at 1000000. Examples: BellisXIV, Chiros,, Kabaal II, Silvanos II, Verdan III
Death World = min pop at 1000 , max at 15000000. Examples: Canak, Catachan, Lost Hope, Miral, Piscina IV.


So NO, Worlds may have only a few thousand Humans living there.
A range is given, not precise numbers. And it has not been replaced by more recent info IIRC.

 1hadhq wrote:

Asterios wrote:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 1hadhq wrote:

godking wrote:

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
Without any help whatsoever, absolutely not. A typical codex chapter is 1,000 battle brothers. The only thing they'd conquer alone are moons and space stations. But if it's a world, then they'd definitely need local PDF or IG to help flex their muscles. Otherwise, they're losing the numbers game really bad, and even as superhuman as they are, it wouldn't be hard for a capable rebel commander to eliminate them.

Exactly !

I don't think people actually understand how small a number a 1000 men is to hold an ENTIRE planet.

Losing 10 battle brothers in a battle could already be a crippling loss for a force numbering a mere 1000 men no matter how superhuman they are.

Entire Planet = ???

Agri-World = a few thousand "farmers". Vs 1000 SM. Who wins?

even Agri-Worlds have more then a few thousand "farmers" more like a few million.

Rulebook 3rd edition, page 114-115 :

Agri - World = min pop at 15000 , max at 1000000. Examples: BellisXIV, Chiros,, Kabaal II, Silvanos II, Verdan III
Death World = min pop at 1000 , max at 15000000. Examples: Canak, Catachan, Lost Hope, Miral, Piscina IV.


So NO, Worlds may have only a few thousand Humans living there.
A range is given, not precise numbers. And it has not been replaced by more recent info IIRC.

you do realize those numbers are no where realistic? if you went by those numbers you would have a very small agri-world or essentially like having a lot farm in a big city. very small and very useless to the empire. then you have Agri-worlds like "Iocanthos Segmentum Obscurus, Calixis Sector Golgenna Reach Unknown 5,000,000,000" thats 5 Billion people on it, and there are several of them with millions of people on them, the info is out there, you are basing yours on old schematics and such. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Agri_World so yes there is more updated info out there that proves you wrong, you just did not look for it or ignored it.

Asterios wrote:



you do realize those numbers are no where realistic? if you went by those numbers you would have a very small agri-world or essentially like having a lot farm in a big city. very small and very useless to the empire. then you have Agri-worlds like "Iocanthos Segmentum Obscurus, Calixis Sector Golgenna Reach Unknown 5,000,000,000" thats 5 Billion people on it, and there are several of them with millions of people on them, the info is out there, you are basing yours on old schematics and such. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Agri_World so yes there is more updated info out there that proves you wrong, you just did not look for it or ignored it.

Realistic? in 40k ??

You sir, run with 3rd party FFG material. I for one, used GW main product line. How could some licensed stuff prove anything wrong if said company can loose that license tomorrow? Are we going to delete it when its OOP?


Yes , 3rd is very old and maybe GW could update it all. But it did not. Thus, 3rd is the only edition where you get the classification , sizes, tithes etc all on 1 page. If you don't like that, fine.
Do you expect people to buy all this little offerings, 3rd party, BL "novels" and whatever and look it all up just to "be right"?
But, at least , read the lexicanum listing. How many of the entries are pop = unknown? 90% ? Don`t you think there is reason for this?

Maybe, just maybe, accept the fact you deal with GW, an inconsistent and semi-pro at getting any scale wrong company.

10000 SM are a Legion....oh wait, nobody buys that anymore so.... lets make them 100000.

Same for your 5.000.000.000. FFG may deem it a size people can believe in. But it isn't compatible with 1000 SM, which is older than 3rd ed as an idea.
Its possible the classification by GW and FFG differ, too....
At least, the data I have used is compatible, is found in one and the same source.

And yes, I am going to ignore short term licensed stuff if I have no copy to look it up to make sure the data is correct. Plus, there is this "disclaimer" known as IIRC... at the end of my post.

All you are going to get with this silly "must have billions on every planet" idea is, the use of WMD to clear the path. Hey, after that virus bomb, the stragglers are easy to deal with, even a company of SM should be overkill.
Or worse, M.W. and his Beloved Ultras do the "conquering" in no time. Because poster boys.

 1hadhq wrote:

Asterios wrote:



you do realize those numbers are no where realistic? if you went by those numbers you would have a very small agri-world or essentially like having a lot farm in a big city. very small and very useless to the empire. then you have Agri-worlds like "Iocanthos Segmentum Obscurus, Calixis Sector Golgenna Reach Unknown 5,000,000,000" thats 5 Billion people on it, and there are several of them with millions of people on them, the info is out there, you are basing yours on old schematics and such. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Agri_World so yes there is more updated info out there that proves you wrong, you just did not look for it or ignored it.

Realistic? in 40k ??

You sir, run with 3rd party FFG material. I for one, used GW main product line. How could some licensed stuff prove anything wrong if said company can loose that license tomorrow? Are we going to delete it when its OOP?


Yes , 3rd is very old and maybe GW could update it all. But it did not. Thus, 3rd is the only edition where you get the classification , sizes, tithes etc all on 1 page. If you don't like that, fine.
Do you expect people to buy all this little offerings, 3rd party, BL "novels" and whatever and look it all up just to "be right"?
But, at least , read the lexicanum listing. How many of the entries are pop = unknown? 90% ? Don`t you think there is reason for this?

Maybe, just maybe, accept the fact you deal with GW, an inconsistent and semi-pro at getting any scale wrong company.

10000 SM are a Legion....oh wait, nobody buys that anymore so.... lets make them 100000.

Same for your 5.000.000.000. FFG may deem it a size people can believe in. But it isn't compatible with 1000 SM, which is older than 3rd ed as an idea.
Its possible the classification by GW and FFG differ, too....
At least, the data I have used is compatible, is found in one and the same source.

And yes, I am going to ignore short term licensed stuff if I have no copy to look it up to make sure the data is correct. Plus, there is this "disclaimer" known as IIRC... at the end of my post.

All you are going to get with this silly "must have billions on every planet" idea is, the use of WMD to clear the path. Hey, after that virus bomb, the stragglers are easy to deal with, even a company of SM should be overkill.
Or worse, M.W. and his Beloved Ultras do the "conquering" in no time. Because poster boys.

actually the Lexicanum is used of official GW canon:

Please note that the wiki is for 'official canon only'.

which also comes with info to back it up from Official canon:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Iocanthos

furthermore SM armies are made up of only 1K troops now because to prevent them from taking over planets and such like they did when they were larger legions.

and when it comes down to it, if the SM's want a planet, they exterminate the entire population if they deem them Heretics and such. and they do such from orbit.

Sorry, using the words official canon isn't a good idea....
Cannons, you can have as many as you want. But canon?

Wouldn't trust fluff that gets the classification wrong.
Is it an agri World or a feudal one? By GW, there is no "and" there is an "or" as the correct answer. 1 class. Not 2.

Am pretty sure someone either classified your example wrongly or added a few 0 . Because it isn't one of many, it is the one standing out. So I don't trust it.



The use of official material is what any contributor to lexi is meant to do and I would always support this approach.
But, there is no certificate or proof by GW of "canon" ´.
At Lexi they Can't stop anything but fanwank if GW itself doesn't mark their works as "true" or "very possible".

 1hadhq wrote:
Sorry, using the words official canon isn't a good idea....
Cannons, you can have as many as you want. But canon?

Wouldn't trust fluff that gets the classification wrong.
Is it an agri World or a feudal one? By GW, there is no "and" there is an "or" as the correct answer. 1 class. Not 2.

Am pretty sure someone either classified your example wrongly or added a few 0 . Because it isn't one of many, it is the one standing out. So I don't trust it.



The use of official material is what any contributor to lexi is meant to do and I would always support this approach.
But, there is no certificate or proof by GW of "canon" ´.
At Lexi they Can't stop anything but fanwank if GW itself doesn't mark their works as "true" or "very possible".

and i repeat the info is based off of official GW info, it is an Agri-World because they farm a product there, it is used by the Imperium it has one use, but still a use. and the way the Imperium handles it, prevents the planet from becoming one force and an issue.

The common duty of agri worlds is to make more than they consume to feed the worlds who cannot.
Like Agri worlds running mostly on farming and feeding hive worlds.

Again , old fluff, basically the rather barbaric worlds with low tech and small pop's and the civilized ones won't need the agri worlds products, but the over industrialized and overpopulated hives do, so this setup seems to make sense.

Beeing an agri world because it grows "drugs", or better said it does have a product which is collected and beeing fought over, can't help but this sounds a bit weird..to me.

Farmers and/or ranchers who export food, sure agri world I'd say. But your example seem to be unable to control the "farming", to have to search for and to "collect". Isn't that a hunter/collector culture and not settled agricultural?

 1hadhq wrote:
The common duty of agri worlds is to make more than they consume to feed the worlds who cannot.
Like Agri worlds running mostly on farming and feeding hive worlds.

Again , old fluff, basically the rather barbaric worlds with low tech and small pop's and the civilized ones won't need the agri worlds products, but the over industrialized and overpopulated hives do, so this setup seems to make sense.

Beeing an agri world because it grows "drugs", or better said it does have a product which is collected and beeing fought over, can't help but this sounds a bit weird..to me.

Farmers and/or ranchers who export food, sure agri world I'd say. But your example seem to be unable to control the "farming", to have to search for and to "collect". Isn't that a hunter/collector culture and not settled agricultural?

you have pretty much a limited view of agri-worlds, agri-worlds consist of any type of food and natural drug collection which includes fishing, hunting, psychadelic drugs, and plant based and tree based foods. all things required to make the Imperium keep on moving.

 Formosa wrote:
As a side note, people need to stop using the TT rules for ranges and how accurate and army is in the fluff, the fluff influences the rules, but the rules are not representative of the actual fluff, we know marines could take this planet out easily because... guess what, they do, against tech levels both greater and lesser than ours.

You're arguing when the fluff says the SMs win, they win; but if the fluff says they die, they don't?

Nope. All of the fluff is valid, and so are the rules. SMs are clearly vulnerable to the basic artillery, machine guns, shotguns and (sniper) rifles as of100+ years ago in WW1, and they would die that much faster to today's weapons. Especially as our weapons are far more accurate, at far longer ranges. And that's the difference between Imperial dogma vs modern practice. The SMs don't actually use any of the embedded technology in their suits or weapons. They shoot from the hip, not even using the iron sights, much less the autorangefinder tools. Our guys use the laser sights and computer fire control on our vehicles. They use the manual override and hand crank the elevation and traverse. That's why they miss 1/3 of the time, no matter what the gun or the tech. Plus, they're all meathead morons.

Everyone saying and arguing over the fluff and TT is valid, and as such that's why modern weapons will win.

Well, heres validity for you, all those air bases that would be used to launch all those fighter jets to give air superiority to earth... You don't need to destroy the air craft to make them useless, all you need to do is orbital bombard the runways. Let's see how good your abrahm tank is when it being attacked from air, or having assault marines air dropped behind and having melta bombs strapped to it or fusion nuked at short range with melta guns and then escaping fast back to their thunder hawks or storm ravens to attack the next targets.


All those anti air sites that are around to take out the drop pods, yep, you just launch empty drop pods (legit tactic used) and again, you just bombard those sites. That artillery that will take out the marines on the ground and fire at the pods that make it, yep, you've just revealed your position, bye bye.

Fact of the matter is, orbital stationed marines in our world are a ideal of future warfare capability, ramped up super humans in armour that can shrug off most small weapons fire? Yep, even more scary. Lastly, those snipers that will shoot through the marines, how many of them are in the world? And how many of them do you expect to be in the right place at the right time? Marines can just board their thunder hawks and live to fight another day from their strike cruisers and battle barges before letting those snipers reach their position...

All your patriotic (idiotic) MERICA folk need to chill out, if you were that great a force you wouldn't have ballsed up Nam, Irag both times, Afghan and you are now making a pigs ear of Syria....

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Everyone saying and arguing over the fluff and TT is valid, and as such that's why modern weapons will win.

Well, heres validity for you, all those air bases that would be used to launch all those fighter jets to give air superiority to earth... You don't need to destroy the air craft to make them useless, all you need to do is orbital bombard the runways.

and the question then goes back to...how do the SM's know where all of these are...?

Let's see how good your abrahm tank is when it being attacked from air

Thats already a thing in real life and why tanks are deployed with AA support and air cover. Likewise, a Marine chapter wont have very many aircraft, a few dozen at best, which are irrelevant against a foe who has thousands like China, Russia, and the NATO nations do.

or having assault marines air dropped behind and having melta bombs strapped to it

Yeah...that doesnt work terribly well in real life. Tanks move very fast, have tons of machine guns to knock off infantry, and quite frankly can and will crush and grind infantry in ways that 40k rules dont allow for. Historically grenade attacks on tanks have been exceedingly dangerous and essentially pointlessly suicidal outside heavily built up urban areas or dense forest for a reason.

And again, there's a couple hundred assault marines in a Chapter...there are tens of thousands of main battle tanks on earth.

or fusion nuked at short range with melta guns and then escaping fast back to their thunder hawks or storm ravens to attack the next targets.

which is no different than the threats that tanks face and successfully overcome today...helicopter borne infantry and RPG's exist and dont need to be within rock throwing distance to kill a tank

ll those anti air sites that are around to take out the drop pods, yep, you just launch empty drop pods (legit tactic used) and again, you just bombard those sites.

Yes, because that works 100% effectively every time...

Thats a rare tactic even in 40k, SM's dont have tons of disposable pods, and while you might get some AA sites...youre not going to get huge numbers of them that way.

Such tactics are used in real life and are far from surefire ways of defeating enemy AA defenses, otherwise AA defenses wouldnt be worth squat today if they were just that easy to bypass.

That artillery that will take out the marines on the ground and fire at the pods that make it, yep, you've just revealed your position, bye bye.

And the Marines find that out...how? I dont recall radar guided counterbattery fire to be a thing in 40k...ever. Likewise, if its self propelled artillery, then the guns are already moving and gone by the time return fire comes their way.

Fact of the matter is, orbital stationed marines in our world are a ideal of future warfare capability

In 40k theyre a medeival knight Fantasy trope in a scifi skin. Something like Starship Troopers has truly terrifying power armored infantry with much more realistic functionality.

ramped up super humans in armour that can shrug off most small weapons fire? Yep, even more scary.

Sure...until you realize that small arms are responsible for a minimal number of casualties in a conventional conflict...

Lastly, those snipers that will shoot through the marines, how many of them are in the world? And how many of them do you expect to be in the right place at the right time? Marines can just board their thunder hawks and live to fight another day from their strike cruisers and battle barges before letting those snipers reach their position...

And yet so often (and more usually in fact in most fluff) they dont just hop right back on the Thunderhawk. And again...we have real life equivalents like helicopter borne infantry.

Likewise, given how few in number the marines are, especially relative to modern armies, and the targets theyd need to hit, one could probably predict many targets and station specialists there ahead of time...operational planning 101.

All your patriotic (idiotic) MERICA folk need to chill out, if you were that great a force you wouldn't have ballsed up Nam, Irag both times, Afghan and you are now making a pigs ear of Syria....

Nobody is going off on some patriotic 'Murica rant, but rather comparing 40k's Fanatsy/WW2 underpinnings to real world functionality.

Methinks you are projecting a whole lot of other issues and perceptions onto the argument here than others are bringing into it, as revealed by this last statement.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
All your patriotic (idiotic) MERICA folk need to chill out, if you were that great a force you wouldn't have ballsed up Nam, Irag both times, Afghan and you are now making a pigs ear of Syria....

And with this particular bit, the SM side just lost the entire debate.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Everyone saying and arguing over the fluff and TT is valid, and as such that's why modern weapons will win.

Well, heres validity for you, all those air bases that would be used to launch all those fighter jets to give air superiority to earth... You don't need to destroy the air craft to make them useless, all you need to do is orbital bombard the runways. Let's see how good your abrahm tank is when it being attacked from air, or having assault marines air dropped behind and having melta bombs strapped to it or fusion nuked at short range with melta guns and then escaping fast back to their thunder hawks or storm ravens to attack the next targets.


All those anti air sites that are around to take out the drop pods, yep, you just launch empty drop pods (legit tactic used) and again, you just bombard those sites. That artillery that will take out the marines on the ground and fire at the pods that make it, yep, you've just revealed your position, bye bye.

Fact of the matter is, orbital stationed marines in our world are a ideal of future warfare capability, ramped up super humans in armour that can shrug off most small weapons fire? Yep, even more scary. Lastly, those snipers that will shoot through the marines, how many of them are in the world? And how many of them do you expect to be in the right place at the right time? Marines can just board their thunder hawks and live to fight another day from their strike cruisers and battle barges before letting those snipers reach their position...

All your patriotic (idiotic) MERICA folk need to chill out, if you were that great a force you wouldn't have ballsed up Nam, Irag both times, Afghan and you are now making a pigs ear of Syria....

well lets see many american craft don't even need a runway to take off, furthermore you think it will take more then one anti-air missile site to take out some drop pods? and oh wait if enough drop pods taken out doubt they will have anymore to drop in, not counting mobile anti-air units, as to the Abram tank, congrats you took one out, the other thousand just took out your space marines, yeah we have more Abrams then in several SM chapters something on the number 5K total or so and about 9K of the M1A1 which is also a version of the Abrams. as to Snipers I will bet on my rifle against some smurf trooper any day of the week. as to how many snipers in the world? competent one several thousand, very good ones hundreds, odds still do not favor the SM's. as to why we lost or did not do so well in those wars well for the same reason the SM's will lose, guerilla tactics and such.

Also we were good enough to take out another more advanced force and better trained one at that, then us during our Revolutionary war.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Everyone saying and arguing over the fluff and TT is valid, and as such that's why modern weapons will win.

Well, heres validity for you, all those air bases that would be used to launch all those fighter jets to give air superiority to earth... You don't need to destroy the air craft to make them useless, all you need to do is orbital bombard the runways. Let's see how good your abrahm tank is when it being attacked from air, or having assault marines air dropped behind and having melta bombs strapped to it or fusion nuked at short range with melta guns and then escaping fast back to their thunder hawks or storm ravens to attack the next targets.

Let's see how great those Thunderhawks are when they are hit by missiles fired at them by aircraft they can't even see. Let's see how great those marines are when they are struck with precision munitions.

All your patriotic (idiotic) MERICA folk need to chill out, if you were that great a force you wouldn't have ballsed up Nam, Irag both times, Afghan and you are now making a pigs ear of Syria....

Just cleaning up the mess you Europeans made of the Middle East.

I guess I am American now

The Space Marines win through the power of FRIENDSHIP.

Or rather, brotherhood. It is a very special kind of friendship.

But haven't you heard

Friendship is magic and magic is heresy.

 Ashiraya wrote:
The Space Marines win through the power of FRIENDSHIP.

Or rather, brotherhood. It is a very special kind of friendship.

Burn the Heretic.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
All your patriotic (idiotic) MERICA folk need to chill out, if you were that great a force you wouldn't have ballsed up Nam, Irag both times, Afghan and you are now making a pigs ear of Syria....

Just cleaning up the mess you Europeans made of the Middle East.

Indeed, given that the vastly overwhelming majority of Middle Eastern conflict traces directly and completely to Great Britain.

Asterios wrote:

godking wrote:

 Lord Tarkin wrote:
Without any help whatsoever, absolutely not. A typical codex chapter is 1,000 battle brothers. The only thing they'd conquer alone are moons and space stations. But if it's a world, then they'd definitely need local PDF or IG to help flex their muscles. Otherwise, they're losing the numbers game really bad, and even as superhuman as they are, it wouldn't be hard for a capable rebel commander to eliminate them.

Exactly !

I don't think people actually understand how small a number a 1000 men is to hold an ENTIRE planet.

Losing 10 battle brothers in a battle could already be a crippling loss for a force numbering a mere 1000 men no matter how superhuman they are.

that is my point too, man to SM the SM will always win out 1,000 men to a space marine and the space marine will lose out, or even 100 men to 1 space marine, each space marine I would put equivalent to 10 men.

Thats assuming that they will fight the marines man to man in open combat.

If out of a population of lets say 1 billion even 1 % decides to fight a guerrila war avoiding direct combat and using snipers and IEDs to take out space marines holding the planet already becomes untenable.

And yes space marines are vunerable to ieds and snipers.

IEDs (S8 AP3 Ordnance) auto-wins against SMs *and* their flat-bottomed vehicles.

It's important to always remember that the Space Marines are as competent as the narrative requires them to be, lol.

In practice, though? No. Ammunition consumption alone will be a major factor, since bolters have a limited ammunition supply. Without frequent and constant resupply, the amount of firepower a Space Marine has is actually fairly limited. That's why Space Marines are best for quick, decisive actions, rather than long, drawn out ones. Space Marines themselves are plenty tough. But then their supply lines have to be equally durable to survive resupplying them in a high-threat environment.

After ammunition concerns, you have simple power-projection issues. Space Marines come in small groups of 100-1000 or so. Their battlespace footprint is very small. Again why you hit specific targets with Space Marines, and fight campaigns with the IGuard. A squad of Space Marines can apply a lot of firepower and to a small area, and withstand a fair amount of punishment, but in the end, it's just 10 guys fighting, and are limited to the amount of area 10 guys can cover, meaning Space Marines can be easily flanked or maneuvered around if needed.

Space Marines, aren't the hammer, or the anvil. They're basically a big, hefty nail. You drive it into whatever you need it for, but don't expect it to do the whole job by itself.

You know, unless the fluff needs them to conquer the whole planet. Then it should work out fine.

Yeah, I mean, I thought the role of Astartes being tools of conquest had ended when Guilliman broke up the Legions. There's a reason that Space Marines don't use as much heavy equipment as their predecessors did. Ex. The rarity of the Typhon Siege Tank. They can still make new Typhons but there isn't much of a demand for them except for very specific circumstances.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I thought the role of Astartes being tools of conquest had ended when Guilliman broke up the Legions.

There's a reason that Space Marines don't use as much heavy equipment as their predecessors did. Ex. The rarity of the Typhon Siege Tank. They can still make new Typhons but there isn't much of a demand for them except for very specific circumstances.

Pretty much. Post-Heresy, the Imperium doesn't want any individual Chapter to be able to easily conquer an entire planet on its own. SMs are now more heavily reliant on Imperial Navy and Imperial Guard to provide support and numbers compared to the pre-Heresy Legions.

Of all the current Chapters, I think only the Black Templars would still have a shot at conquering an entire planet, and that's only because they told Robbie to go feth himself with his Codex Astartes rules. Taped to a brick. Sideways. Even then, they're not even half of a pre-Heresy Legion in fighting strength...

It's not clear that a legion could really do it, either. Using logic outside of the fluff, I mean.

Martel732 wrote:
It's not clear that a legion could really do it, either. Using logic outside of the fluff, I mean.

The OLD Ultramarine Legion could. But they were HUGE, the largest Legion of them all.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
All those anti air sites that are around to take out the drop pods, yep, you just launch empty drop pods (legit tactic used) and again, you just bombard those sites. That artillery that will take out the marines on the ground and fire at the pods that make it, yep, you've just revealed your position, bye bye.

Quite a lot of modern AA and artillery is mounted on vehicles that can shoot-and-scoot. Using different elevation on the arty you can shoot several shots at different angles so they all land about simultaneously. Put out a barrage and the whole platoon is elsewhere before the munitions even hit their target. That's become necessary because our modern armies are quite upset at getting shelled and have developed counters to let them locate and fire back on far-away attackers.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
As a side note, people need to stop using the TT rules for ranges and how accurate and army is in the fluff, the fluff influences the rules, but the rules are not representative of the actual fluff, we know marines could take this planet out easily because... guess what, they do, against tech levels both greater and lesser than ours.

1:You're arguing when the fluff says the SMs win, they win; but if the fluff says they die, they don't?

2: Nope. All of the fluff is valid, and so are the rules.

3: SMs are clearly vulnerable to the basic artillery, machine guns, shotguns and (sniper) rifles as of100+ years ago in WW1

4:and they would die that much faster to today's weapons. Especially as our weapons are far more accurate, at far longer ranges.

5: And that's the difference between Imperial dogma vs modern practice.

6: The SMs don't actually use any of the embedded technology in their suits or weapons

7:They shoot from the hip, not even using the iron sights, much less the autorangefinder tools

8: Our guys use the laser sights and computer fire control on our vehicles. They use the manual override and hand crank the elevation and traverse.

9: That's why they miss 1/3 of the time, no matter what the gun or the tech.

10: Plus, they're all meathead morons.

"No, you look at the whole and not little snipets of the fluff"

Because you clearly didn't read the entire thing, literally the first thing I said, but hey, take one line out of context and quote it, I don't mind lol.

I will address all of your points though, as that's how it should be done.

1: no, I'm not arguing that, I'm saying that marines beat higher tech levels than ours all the time, so they can and would beat ours.

2: no, the rules are not valid in a fluff discussion because they have little to no bearing on the fluff, the fluff influences the rules on a small scale, but that's it, otherwise we would have marine armies of 30 movie marines, a single terminator squad would wipe whole nid armies etc. add to that the the rules don't represent a whole swath of things in the fluff.

3: yes marines are vunerable to artillery, that's true, small arms weapons such as those you have mentioned are all but useless against marines, as shown in the fluff multiple times, no, the weapons used take the asthetic of WW1, but are not WW1 weapons, they are 41st M weapons, you know this, I can only assume that you are being wilfully ignorant or trolling with that statement.

4: no they wouldn't as shown in multiple instances of fluff, marines being hit by missiles and living, laser rounds and ballistic rounds bouncing off them "like rain" and doing next to nothing, again shown in multiple instances of fluff, you assumption that we have more accurate weapons is also wrong, I know of no human at a run that can fire a round through an eye lense of an enemy at even 100 metres, let alone longer ranges, we are told that marines are incredible shots.

5: the game is written by people with no military experience, so don't expect them to know what target indication, fire and manoeuvre, vehicle drills etc. are, we can only assume that all forces in 40k use appropriate training, in spite of the writers not knowing how to write it in.

6: Do you even read the fluff at all??? yes they do, a few examples, multi spectrum sensor suite embedded in the marines helm, enhanced audio receptors, direct weapon cams, audio dampeners in the main armour (some chapters), ECM suite in the armour (some chapters), embedded fusion reactor in back pack, integrated ammo hoppers in the armour to house various grenades and ammunition, I can go on, but I strongly suggest you actually go and find this info for yourself.

7: No they don't, they sometimes shoot from the hip, and are extremely accurate in doing so, because guess what, they have target range finders, auto tracking software, they can tag enemies for priority shooting etc. again AS SHOWN IN THE FLUFF, that you clearly haven't read or even looked into.

8: they have bodily integrated systems, literal living within the machine using MIU (iron hands) to pilot the vehicles, they also have computer (machine spirit is an advanced AI) control, in addition to servitor controlled weapons, space marines don't use hand cranked systems, they are electric, the challe 2 has a hand crank system in case the electric system goes down, having it, doesn't mean its the only thing it can use.

9: no they don't, they miss as much as they miss in the fluff, rules have no bearing on this discussion.

10: no they are not, they are all very intelligent, have idetic memories, able to adapt and learn at an insane rate compared to us, no marine is a meathead by design.

so in closing, every point you made, is in fact made out of either ignorance of the fluff or a troll, I'm hoping its the ignorance myself.

 Formosa wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
As a side note, people need to stop using the TT rules for ranges and how accurate and army is in the fluff, the fluff influences the rules, but the rules are not representative of the actual fluff, we know marines could take this planet out easily because... guess what, they do, against tech levels both greater and lesser than ours.

1:You're arguing when the fluff says the SMs win, they win; but if the fluff says they die, they don't?

2: Nope. All of the fluff is valid, and so are the rules.

3: SMs are clearly vulnerable to the basic artillery, machine guns, shotguns and (sniper) rifles as of100+ years ago in WW1

4:and they would die that much faster to today's weapons. Especially as our weapons are far more accurate, at far longer ranges.

5: And that's the difference between Imperial dogma vs modern practice.

6: The SMs don't actually use any of the embedded technology in their suits or weapons

7:They shoot from the hip, not even using the iron sights, much less the autorangefinder tools

8: Our guys use the laser sights and computer fire control on our vehicles. They use the manual override and hand crank the elevation and traverse.

9: That's why they miss 1/3 of the time, no matter what the gun or the tech.

10: Plus, they're all meathead morons.

"No, you look at the whole and not little snipets of the fluff"

Because you clearly didn't read the entire thing, literally the first thing I said, but hey, take one line out of context and quote it, I don't mind lol.

I will address all of your points though, as that's how it should be done.

1: no, I'm not arguing that, I'm saying that marines beat higher tech levels than ours all the time, so they can and would beat ours.

2: no, the rules are not valid in a fluff discussion because they have little to no bearing on the fluff, the fluff influences the rules on a small scale, but that's it, otherwise we would have marine armies of 30 movie marines, a single terminator squad would wipe whole nid armies etc. add to that the the rules don't represent a whole swath of things in the fluff.

3: yes marines are vunerable to artillery, that's true, small arms weapons such as those you have mentioned are all but useless against marines, as shown in the fluff multiple times, no, the weapons used take the asthetic of WW1, but are not WW1 weapons, they are 41st M weapons, you know this, I can only assume that you are being wilfully ignorant or trolling with that statement.

4: no they wouldn't as shown in multiple instances of fluff, marines being hit by missiles and living, laser rounds and ballistic rounds bouncing off them "like rain" and doing next to nothing, again shown in multiple instances of fluff, you assumption that we have more accurate weapons is also wrong, I know of no human at a run that can fire a round through an eye lense of an enemy at even 100 metres, let alone longer ranges, we are told that marines are incredible shots.

5: the game is written by people with no military experience, so don't expect them to know what target indication, fire and manoeuvre, vehicle drills etc. are, we can only assume that all forces in 40k use appropriate training, in spite of the writers not knowing how to write it in.

6: Do you even read the fluff at all??? yes they do, a few examples, multi spectrum sensor suite embedded in the marines helm, enhanced audio receptors, direct weapon cams, audio dampeners in the main armour (some chapters), ECM suite in the armour (some chapters), embedded fusion reactor in back pack, integrated ammo hoppers in the armour to house various grenades and ammunition, I can go on, but I strongly suggest you actually go and find this info for yourself.

7: No they don't, they sometimes shoot from the hip, and are extremely accurate in doing so, because guess what, they have target range finders, auto tracking software, they can tag enemies for priority shooting etc. again AS SHOWN IN THE FLUFF, that you clearly haven't read or even looked into.

8: they have bodily integrated systems, literal living within the machine using MIU (iron hands) to pilot the vehicles, they also have computer (machine spirit is an advanced AI) control, in addition to servitor controlled weapons, space marines don't use hand cranked systems, they are electric, the challe 2 has a hand crank system in case the electric system goes down, having it, doesn't mean its the only thing it can use.

9: no they don't, they miss as much as they miss in the fluff, rules have no bearing on this discussion.

10: no they are not, they are all very intelligent, have idetic memories, able to adapt and learn at an insane rate compared to us, no marine is a meathead by design.

so in closing, every point you made, is in fact made out of either ignorance of the fluff or a troll, I'm hoping its the ignorance myself.

now let me respond to your points:

1: yes Marines have beaten higher tech then ours, but then again they have fallen to more simpler tech then ours like bone claws and such, have to remember Tyranids for all the excitement are just like us, nothing really fancy just a lot of us.

2: fluff makes SM's powerful, rules make them wimps. (just watched the SM movie again where a squad of UM's took out a whole bunch of Chaos Black Legion Marines, go Smurfs)

3: actually WWI weapons are more powerful then you give them credit for a Gatling Gun which is pre-WWI could make short work of a SM but for some reason you think we only recently gotten out of the old flintlock and musket period, got news for you wake up and realize we have had powerful weapons for awhile.

4: beg to disagree being in a shooting range challenges i've seen some heady shots and while moving, you seriously underestimate normal humans while making SM's the gods they aren't.

5: they don't write them in because they are not cool or fun, look at the movies or TV a lot of that gak that goes on would not even be tolerated or permitted in the real world.

6: I've read the Fluff and read it all and most of what they say a SM has he could not have, because reality would set in on storage and such. and shall we talk about their armor? about as useful as Storm Trooper armor, for all the vaunted talk you give their precious armor, it can still be cut by bone claws of all things., but then you will say it is stronger then our bullets, and I say are you sure? where does it say it is? and i'm not talking some SM made up metal, since who says that is stronger then our steel jacketed bullets? you assume it is but assumption is the mother of screw ups.

7: oooh wait I heard about this magical bullet theory(a space marine killed Kennedy), so now their jet-propelled bullets have guidance missiles in them? you know for a society that has forgotten most of its own technology and can barely make tanks and APV's move you sure give them amazing skills in other things.

8: you do realize the machine spirits are just their backwards way of saying why the auto-pilot works right? they don't have AI's since if they did the Computers would have killed the illiterate lot of them a long time ago.

9: ?

10: yes Intelligent to the point they blindlessly follow a dead body and worship it as a god.

Claiming Tyrannies are technologically inferior to us

You mean superior, just think about it, they can adapt on planet to threats they encounter in very little time, forming an army of warrior with custom made weaponry if required. The blade and claw maybe humble compared to a cruise missile, but it's the material that blade and claw is made out of, and secondly what it is attached will dictate how advanced the weapon is.

Also, tell me how your missile that shoots a mile away penetrated adamantium, ceramite and thermoplas (thunder hawk armour)???? Do you know the density? Do you know the forces of the atomic bonds that keep it together? No, no you don't, you don't even know if we possess any weapons on this planet that can penetrate that armour, because you don't know what that armour is.

Seriously, the fluff states they beat us, so they beat us.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Claiming Tyrannies are technologically inferior to us

You mean superior, just think about it, they can adapt on planet to threats they encounter in very little time, forming an army of warrior with custom made weaponry if required. The blade and claw maybe humble compared to a cruise missile, but it's the material that blade and claw is made out of, and secondly what it is attached will dictate how advanced the weapon is.

Also, tell me how your missile that shoots a mile away penetrated adamantium, ceramite and thermoplas (thunder hawk armour)???? Do you know the density? Do you know the forces of the atomic bonds that keep it together? No, no you don't, you don't even know if we possess any weapons on this planet that can penetrate that armour, because you don't know what that armour is.

Seriously, the fluff states they beat us, so they beat us.

one Tyranid doohickies for whatever are still organic material, plain and simple if organic material can cut thru the armor its not that strong, and you do realize you do not need to penetrate armor to take something down? and let us see, we have Adamantium its not a durable material for armor since its fictional, so has no real world equivalent except for maybe a lighter Titanium, GW probably used it cause of Wolverine, Ceramite not impervious its like 1" is equal to 12" of reinforced steel (you know ship hull stuff) and yet we can blow thru 12" of steel pretty easy, or heck lets burn thru it even., thermoplastic, ooh protection from grease and oils, wow really powerful stuff there. one thing you have to remember is if man can make it, man can destroy it., not too mention say a cruise missile hits a SM or a thunderhawk yeah the armor might mostly be there, but hwat is inside is jelly now. and no the fluff does not say they beat us. and SM armor for being so tough can still be taken down by IG weapons and not talking lasguns either.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Claiming Tyrannies are technologically inferior to us

You mean superior, just think about it, they can adapt on planet to threats they encounter in very little time, forming an army of warrior with custom made weaponry if required. The blade and claw maybe humble compared to a cruise missile, but it's the material that blade and claw is made out of, and secondly what it is attached will dictate how advanced the weapon is.

K, you take the most advanced, sharp, and capable sword ever devised, I'll take one of my AK's. Lets see how that works out

Spoiler, they figured out in 1914 that it tends to end very poorly every time for the guy with a sword

And I say that as someone who engages in Longsword and Dussack fencing 3 days a week.

Also, tell me how your missile that shoots a mile away penetrated adamantium, ceramite and thermoplas (thunder hawk armour)???? Do you know the density? Do you know the forces of the atomic bonds that keep it together? No, no you don't, you don't even know if we possess any weapons on this planet that can penetrate that armour, because you don't know what that armour is.

We know weapons that have direct modern day equivalents can and do penetrate and damage these materials, weapons such as Autocannons, Autoguns, Krak Missiles, Battlecannons, etc. These are not sophisticated weapons, they do not utilize advanced materials or scientific principles that are beyond our means. Likewise we know many of the theoretical limits of materials in terms of tensile strengths and melting/sublimation points (physical matter of any type for instance cannot sustain solid form much above 4000*C).

Likewise, as noted above, you dont need to penetrate the armor to destroy what is inside. Hit a WW2 Tiger with an IS2's HE shell and it may not penetrate, but the crew will be dead or badly injured and half the mechanical devices (like the turret ring) will be broken. Shoot someone in a bulletproof vest and you can still break ribs or stop a heart, and a nearby explosion will turn their insides to goo. Maces operated on this principle, fighting an armored opponent with a sword sucks, a mace will transfer energy through armor very well without needing to penetrate.

Seriously, the fluff states they beat us, so they beat us.

The fluff says no such thing directly. The fluff also pays no attention to the major background operations of war that determine victory in 98% of cases. It's also wildly inconsistent with itself.

 Formosa wrote:
so in closing, every point is in fact made out of either ignorance of the fluff or a troll

Actually, that is good summary of all of your posts so far...

 thegreatchimp wrote:
Fluffwise, definately. Game wise, no.

Fluffwise, 10 space marines could conquer a planet
Gamewise 1,000,000 would have trouble.

Asterios wrote:

 1hadhq wrote:
The common duty of agri worlds is to make more than they consume to feed the worlds who cannot.
Like Agri worlds running mostly on farming and feeding hive worlds.

Again , old fluff, basically the rather barbaric worlds with low tech and small pop's and the civilized ones won't need the agri worlds products, but the over industrialized and overpopulated hives do, so this setup seems to make sense.

Beeing an agri world because it grows "drugs", or better said it does have a product which is collected and beeing fought over, can't help but this sounds a bit weird..to me.

Farmers and/or ranchers who export food, sure agri world I'd say. But your example seem to be unable to control the "farming", to have to search for and to "collect". Isn't that a hunter/collector culture and not settled agricultural?

you have pretty much a limited view of agri-worlds, agri-worlds consist of any type of food and natural drug collection which includes fishing, hunting, psychadelic drugs, and plant based and tree based foods. all things required to make the Imperium keep on moving.

My view isn't limited , i just didn't post every product any Imperial world may export.
OtOH, you are stuck with an outlier, something that isn't "standard sized" and the data you wanted to point to is incomplete.
IMO, I am better off with a set of compatible numbers, because I don't have to include the influence of marketing and GW's allegry to scale as much as you have to.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:It's important to always remember that the Space Marines are as competent as the narrative requires them to be, lol.

Space Marines belong into 40k, a fictional place. Real life has limits, it has to follow "rules", we could apply logic to a subject. Again, SM aren't part of real life. So real life forces are still bound by anything they cannot overcome in reality, where fictional forces just need someone to dream up a "solution".

Anyone posted about the possibiltiy of an Invader offering power to a faction on Earth yet? If not, I'd like to add this point here.
The advantage of a force in Orbit is :
- obviously they are where we have a hard time to do anything about them.
- obviously they know how to get there and may have the tools to use their position too
- it is safe to assume that anyone travelling far may be able to gather data about the worlds they encounter.
- they either travel very fast or can handle great time spans.

A force in Orbit could make an offer to a major faction on earth, for example "to rule in the Emperors name" , maybe even trade something for it. Are you sure no one is going to join "the other side" in a conflict of "earth vs conquerorX" ?
Or have their Librarius create a conflict, make the nuke owners believe their counterpart has already his finger at the fire-button... one false step and there is no return.

 1hadhq wrote:

Asterios wrote:

 1hadhq wrote:
The common duty of agri worlds is to make more than they consume to feed the worlds who cannot.
Like Agri worlds running mostly on farming and feeding hive worlds.

Again , old fluff, basically the rather barbaric worlds with low tech and small pop's and the civilized ones won't need the agri worlds products, but the over industrialized and overpopulated hives do, so this setup seems to make sense.

Beeing an agri world because it grows "drugs", or better said it does have a product which is collected and beeing fought over, can't help but this sounds a bit weird..to me.

Farmers and/or ranchers who export food, sure agri world I'd say. But your example seem to be unable to control the "farming", to have to search for and to "collect". Isn't that a hunter/collector culture and not settled agricultural?

you have pretty much a limited view of agri-worlds, agri-worlds consist of any type of food and natural drug collection which includes fishing, hunting, psychadelic drugs, and plant based and tree based foods. all things required to make the Imperium keep on moving.

My view isn't limited , i just didn't post every product any Imperial world may export.
OtOH, you are stuck with an outlier, something that isn't "standard sized" and the data you wanted to point to is incomplete.
IMO, I am better off with a set of compatible numbers, because I don't have to include the influence of marketing and GW's allegry to scale as much as you have to.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:It's important to always remember that the Space Marines are as competent as the narrative requires them to be, lol.

Space Marines belong into 40k, a fictional place. Real life has limits, it has to follow "rules", we could apply logic to a subject. Again, SM aren't part of real life. So real life forces are still bound by anything they cannot overcome in reality, where fictional forces just need someone to dream up a "solution".

Anyone posted about the possibiltiy of an Invader offering power to a faction on Earth yet? If not, I'd like to add this point here.
The advantage of a force in Orbit is :
- obviously they are where we have a hard time to do anything about them.
- obviously they know how to get there and may have the tools to use their position too
- it is safe to assume that anyone travelling far may be able to gather data about the worlds they encounter.
- they either travel very fast or can handle great time spans.

A force in Orbit could make an offer to a major faction on earth, for example "to rule in the Emperors name" , maybe even trade something for it. Are you sure no one is going to join "the other side" in a conflict of "earth vs conquerorX" ?
Or have their Librarius create a conflict, make the nuke owners believe their counterpart has already his finger at the fire-button... one false step and there is no return.

but if you are going by GW fluff, then that is not an option if they do not worship the God Emperor then they are heretics, and sorry to say not many if any on this little blue ball will worship him.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The fluff also pays no attention to the major background operations of war that determine victory in 98% of cases. It's also wildly inconsistent with itself.

The 2% where it does is pretty instructive. I like the story of the Iron Cage, because it rather neatly encapsulates everything iconic about Space Marines, exemplified by idiot Dorn and the rest of his idiot Loyalists... Perturabo got the SMs to drop into a killzone less than 3 miles in total diameter; destroyed their Pods & vehicles with artillery; scattered their orbital fleet via Roman naval boardings; and spent 3-4 weeks just killing SMs who were too stupid and to proud to mount an intelligent response. We learn that SMs have maybe a week's worth of ammo, and will stupidly walk into walls and floors of IEDs.

Also, the 20 square miles of the Iron Cage (<5 miles across) is SMALL. Aleppo is almost 4 times larger. Stalingrad stretched 30 miles along the Volga. Afghanistan and Switzerland (and Luxembourg) are all just versions of the Iron Cage, and none of them would fall to a SM Chapter.

Finally, the problem with the Fluff is that of the unreliable narrator. I would posit that the Imperial Fluff is vastly overstated and exaggerated by the Imperial Ministry of Truth for Imperial Propaganda purposes.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
so in closing, every point is in fact made out of either ignorance of the fluff or a troll

Actually, that is good summary of all of your posts so far...

How dare I use sense and reason, how dare I ask people to respond to all of my points rather than take parts out of context, how dare I back up my statements, and ask others to do so.

Yes, I'm clearly trolling haha

Asterios wrote:
but if you are going by GW fluff, then that is not an option if they do not worship the God Emperor then they are heretics, and sorry to say not many if any on this little blue ball will worship him.

a) sources for your claim that anyone is unjustly accused of beeing a heretic without a chance to be enlightend by the ecclesiarchy ?
b) why would Space Marines insist on worshipping the Big E ? Compliance to the IoM is all they need of you.
c) you surely guarantee that no one is worshipping Big E , right? only a few billions of humans you take responsibility for ....

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Finally, the problem with the Fluff is that of the unreliable narrator. I would posit that the Imperial Fluff is vastly overstated and exaggerated by the Imperial Ministry of Truth for Imperial Propaganda purposes.

Imperial Fluff, quality assured by his Imperial Ministry of Truth, is obviosly at least true.
Where xenos and chaos fluff is just lies.

 1hadhq wrote:
b) why would Space Marines insist on worshipping the Big E ? Compliance to the IoM is all they need of you.

The majority of SM do not recognize the Emprah as a god - this was clearly stated in the GW Fluff several times.

 1hadhq wrote:

Asterios wrote:
but if you are going by GW fluff, then that is not an option if they do not worship the God Emperor then they are heretics, and sorry to say not many if any on this little blue ball will worship him.

a) sources for your claim that anyone is unjustly accused of beeing a heretic without a chance to be enlightend by the ecclesiarchy ?
b) why would Space Marines insist on worshipping the Big E ? Compliance to the IoM is all they need of you.
c) you surely guarantee that no one is worshipping Big E , right? only a few billions of humans you take responsibility for ....

forget where but there is the story of a culture that worshipped and obeyed a computer SM's didn't like it, tried to stop it then wiped them out.

Asterios wrote:

 1hadhq wrote:

Asterios wrote:
but if you are going by GW fluff, then that is not an option if they do not worship the God Emperor then they are heretics, and sorry to say not many if any on this little blue ball will worship him.

a) sources for your claim that anyone is unjustly accused of beeing a heretic without a chance to be enlightend by the ecclesiarchy ?
b) why would Space Marines insist on worshipping the Big E ? Compliance to the IoM is all they need of you.
c) you surely guarantee that no one is worshipping Big E , right? only a few billions of humans you take responsibility for ....

forget where but there is the story of a culture that worshipped and obeyed a computer SM's didn't like it, tried to stop it then wiped them out.

Slight genetic deviance, abhuman, consorting with xenos, and more.

The imperium has wiped out whole civilizations for these things, it's pretty standard for them actually.

Asterios wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
As a side note, people need to stop using the TT rules for ranges and how accurate and army is in the fluff, the fluff influences the rules, but the rules are not representative of the actual fluff, we know marines could take this planet out easily because... guess what, they do, against tech levels both greater and lesser than ours.

1:You're arguing when the fluff says the SMs win, they win; but if the fluff says they die, they don't?

2: Nope. All of the fluff is valid, and so are the rules.

3: SMs are clearly vulnerable to the basic artillery, machine guns, shotguns and (sniper) rifles as of100+ years ago in WW1

4:and they would die that much faster to today's weapons. Especially as our weapons are far more accurate, at far longer ranges.

5: And that's the difference between Imperial dogma vs modern practice.

6: The SMs don't actually use any of the embedded technology in their suits or weapons

7:They shoot from the hip, not even using the iron sights, much less the autorangefinder tools

8: Our guys use the laser sights and computer fire control on our vehicles. They use the manual override and hand crank the elevation and traverse.

9: That's why they miss 1/3 of the time, no matter what the gun or the tech.

10: Plus, they're all meathead morons.

"No, you look at the whole and not little snipets of the fluff"

Because you clearly didn't read the entire thing, literally the first thing I said, but hey, take one line out of context and quote it, I don't mind lol.

I will address all of your points though, as that's how it should be done.

1: no, I'm not arguing that, I'm saying that marines beat higher tech levels than ours all the time, so they can and would beat ours.

2: no, the rules are not valid in a fluff discussion because they have little to no bearing on the fluff, the fluff influences the rules on a small scale, but that's it, otherwise we would have marine armies of 30 movie marines, a single terminator squad would wipe whole nid armies etc. add to that the the rules don't represent a whole swath of things in the fluff.

3: yes marines are vunerable to artillery, that's true, small arms weapons such as those you have mentioned are all but useless against marines, as shown in the fluff multiple times, no, the weapons used take the asthetic of WW1, but are not WW1 weapons, they are 41st M weapons, you know this, I can only assume that you are being wilfully ignorant or trolling with that statement.

4: no they wouldn't as shown in multiple instances of fluff, marines being hit by missiles and living, laser rounds and ballistic rounds bouncing off them "like rain" and doing next to nothing, again shown in multiple instances of fluff, you assumption that we have more accurate weapons is also wrong, I know of no human at a run that can fire a round through an eye lense of an enemy at even 100 metres, let alone longer ranges, we are told that marines are incredible shots.

5: the game is written by people with no military experience, so don't expect them to know what target indication, fire and manoeuvre, vehicle drills etc. are, we can only assume that all forces in 40k use appropriate training, in spite of the writers not knowing how to write it in.

6: Do you even read the fluff at all??? yes they do, a few examples, multi spectrum sensor suite embedded in the marines helm, enhanced audio receptors, direct weapon cams, audio dampeners in the main armour (some chapters), ECM suite in the armour (some chapters), embedded fusion reactor in back pack, integrated ammo hoppers in the armour to house various grenades and ammunition, I can go on, but I strongly suggest you actually go and find this info for yourself.

7: No they don't, they sometimes shoot from the hip, and are extremely accurate in doing so, because guess what, they have target range finders, auto tracking software, they can tag enemies for priority shooting etc. again AS SHOWN IN THE FLUFF, that you clearly haven't read or even looked into.

8: they have bodily integrated systems, literal living within the machine using MIU (iron hands) to pilot the vehicles, they also have computer (machine spirit is an advanced AI) control, in addition to servitor controlled weapons, space marines don't use hand cranked systems, they are electric, the challe 2 has a hand crank system in case the electric system goes down, having it, doesn't mean its the only thing it can use.

9: no they don't, they miss as much as they miss in the fluff, rules have no bearing on this discussion.

10: no they are not, they are all very intelligent, have idetic memories, able to adapt and learn at an insane rate compared to us, no marine is a meathead by design.

so in closing, every point you made, is in fact made out of either ignorance of the fluff or a troll, I'm hoping its the ignorance myself.

now let me respond to your points:

1: yes Marines have beaten higher tech then ours, but then again they have fallen to more simpler tech then ours like bone claws and such, have to remember Tyranids for all the excitement are just like us, nothing really fancy just a lot of us.

2: fluff makes SM's powerful, rules make them wimps. (just watched the SM movie again where a squad of UM's took out a whole bunch of Chaos Black Legion Marines, go Smurfs)

3: actually WWI weapons are more powerful then you give them credit for a Gatling Gun which is pre-WWI could make short work of a SM but for some reason you think we only recently gotten out of the old flintlock and musket period, got news for you wake up and realize we have had powerful weapons for awhile.

4: beg to disagree being in a shooting range challenges i've seen some heady shots and while moving, you seriously underestimate normal humans while making SM's the gods they aren't.

5: they don't write them in because they are not cool or fun, look at the movies or TV a lot of that gak that goes on would not even be tolerated or permitted in the real world.

6: I've read the Fluff and read it all and most of what they say a SM has he could not have, because reality would set in on storage and such. and shall we talk about their armor? about as useful as Storm Trooper armor, for all the vaunted talk you give their precious armor, it can still be cut by bone claws of all things., but then you will say it is stronger then our bullets, and I say are you sure? where does it say it is? and i'm not talking some SM made up metal, since who says that is stronger then our steel jacketed bullets? you assume it is but assumption is the mother of screw ups.

7: oooh wait I heard about this magical bullet theory(a space marine killed Kennedy), so now their jet-propelled bullets have guidance missiles in them? you know for a society that has forgotten most of its own technology and can barely make tanks and APV's move you sure give them amazing skills in other things.

8: you do realize the machine spirits are just their backwards way of saying why the auto-pilot works right? they don't have AI's since if they did the Computers would have killed the illiterate lot of them a long time ago.

9: ?

10: yes Intelligent to the point they blindlessly follow a dead body and worship it as a god.

thanks for the reply.

1:i am not disputing that marines have been beaten by lower tech levels than themselves, merely showing that marines have walked through tech levels much higher than our own.

2: Rules have no bearing on this discussion.

3: I have not mentioned power, no penetration, no range etc. when talking about small arms, I stated that the fluff shows small arms to be ineffective vs power armour, nor have I said anything about thinking we have just left the musket era, don't put words in my mouth, I work with weapons every single day, I fully know what we are capable of using, I very much doubt you do however because....

4: this is total nonsense, you have never, ever seen a person at a run, fire an assault rifle over a hundred metres and hit something the size of an eye lense, I fully know the capabilities of a human in stressful situations and what they are capable of, a lucky shot, sure, intentional, no.

5: this one is more subjective, yes some may not find it cool and fun for marines to speak and act like real soldiers in a combat situation, I would like it though, and yes tv and movies have sooooo many issues with how the military is portrayed, but its the same issue that the GW writers have, they just don't know and haven't got the experience.

6: yes marines will have storage issue in terms of ammo etc. but the tech built into the armour and helm, its all there, autosenses etc. as I stated before, as to the comment regarding the "being cut by bone" no, just no, any instance of a gaunt killing a marine, has the marine being massively overwhelmed and the weakpoints in his armour targeted, or the armour taking so much damage it begins to fail, take a few thousand hammers to it and it may start to lose integrity eventually, genestealers don't have bone claws, and the larger tyranid creatures have an immense amount of strength behind them.

Yes I will say it is stronger than our bullets, because that's what the fluff says, we have multiple instances of autogun fire simply doing nothing to a marine, even instances of the round going through an eye piece and not killing the marine, yes ceramite and plasteel is supposed to be stronger than our current metals, its the whole point of the tech, no you don't get to ignore the fluff and move the goalposts, how do you know that PDF troopers don't use steel jackets? do you really think that if a simple round adaption was good enough to render marines power armour useless, word would not have gotten around, we also do have example of such round in the DW RPG books, but rules are not relevant to this discussion, but they exist in the fluff, and guess what, they do sod all.

7: "oooh wait I heard about this magical bullet theory(a space marine killed Kennedy), so now their jet-propelled bullets have guidance missiles in them? you know for a society that has forgotten most of its own technology and can barely make tanks and APV's move you sure give them amazing skills in other things" Yes, some bolt rounds have guidance systems, no they don't have issues making tanks etc. move, marine vehicles work just fine, sure some tech has been lost, but that has nothing to do with what were talking about, marine weapons contain all the tech I have stated, fact.

8:Yes a machine spirit is an AI, several example exist of this being the case, such as a land raider hunting down orks on a planet, in spite of losing its crew, or a chaos land raider having its AI corrupted to chaos and becoming a deamon in its own right, they do have computers, they are called cogitators.

9: Marines miss as much as they miss in the fluff, because the rules have no bearing on this discussion, however it is hard to gauge how accurate that actually is, we know that individual shots are what we would consider extremely good.

10: irrelevant, some follow the emperor as a god, some don't, they are not designed to be stupid, they are designed to excel at everything, they are humans +1, however they are also designed to be loyal to each other and the emperor, this was not perfect so the later generations of marines receive psychoindotrination, to take away personality and implant information such as language etc. but like any human, some marine brains are better at taking on all of this information than others, but as designed, they are not stupid.

yet again I must question if you know much about the background of this game, as a lot of the mistakes you are making are easily sourced for confirmation, I mean, I thought everyone by this point knew about marine autosenses, the cam in a bolt gun etc. please, prior to responding (if you do) do a little research, if I have made a mistake, by all means point it out and cite it.

 Formosa wrote:

Asterios wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
As a side note, people need to stop using the TT rules for ranges and how accurate and army is in the fluff, the fluff influences the rules, but the rules are not representative of the actual fluff, we know marines could take this planet out easily because... guess what, they do, against tech levels both greater and lesser than ours.

1:You're arguing when the fluff says the SMs win, they win; but if the fluff says they die, they don't?

2: Nope. All of the fluff is valid, and so are the rules.

3: SMs are clearly vulnerable to the basic artillery, machine guns, shotguns and (sniper) rifles as of100+ years ago in WW1

4:and they would die that much faster to today's weapons. Especially as our weapons are far more accurate, at far longer ranges.

5: And that's the difference between Imperial dogma vs modern practice.

6: The SMs don't actually use any of the embedded technology in their suits or weapons

7:They shoot from the hip, not even using the iron sights, much less the autorangefinder tools

8: Our guys use the laser sights and computer fire control on our vehicles. They use the manual override and hand crank the elevation and traverse.

9: That's why they miss 1/3 of the time, no matter what the gun or the tech.

10: Plus, they're all meathead morons.

"No, you look at the whole and not little snipets of the fluff"

Because you clearly didn't read the entire thing, literally the first thing I said, but hey, take one line out of context and quote it, I don't mind lol.

I will address all of your points though, as that's how it should be done.

1: no, I'm not arguing that, I'm saying that marines beat higher tech levels than ours all the time, so they can and would beat ours.

2: no, the rules are not valid in a fluff discussion because they have little to no bearing on the fluff, the fluff influences the rules on a small scale, but that's it, otherwise we would have marine armies of 30 movie marines, a single terminator squad would wipe whole nid armies etc. add to that the the rules don't represent a whole swath of things in the fluff.

3: yes marines are vunerable to artillery, that's true, small arms weapons such as those you have mentioned are all but useless against marines, as shown in the fluff multiple times, no, the weapons used take the asthetic of WW1, but are not WW1 weapons, they are 41st M weapons, you know this, I can only assume that you are being wilfully ignorant or trolling with that statement.

4: no they wouldn't as shown in multiple instances of fluff, marines being hit by missiles and living, laser rounds and ballistic rounds bouncing off them "like rain" and doing next to nothing, again shown in multiple instances of fluff, you assumption that we have more accurate weapons is also wrong, I know of no human at a run that can fire a round through an eye lense of an enemy at even 100 metres, let alone longer ranges, we are told that marines are incredible shots.

5: the game is written by people with no military experience, so don't expect them to know what target indication, fire and manoeuvre, vehicle drills etc. are, we can only assume that all forces in 40k use appropriate training, in spite of the writers not knowing how to write it in.

6: Do you even read the fluff at all??? yes they do, a few examples, multi spectrum sensor suite embedded in the marines helm, enhanced audio receptors, direct weapon cams, audio dampeners in the main armour (some chapters), ECM suite in the armour (some chapters), embedded fusion reactor in back pack, integrated ammo hoppers in the armour to house various grenades and ammunition, I can go on, but I strongly suggest you actually go and find this info for yourself.

7: No they don't, they sometimes shoot from the hip, and are extremely accurate in doing so, because guess what, they have target range finders, auto tracking software, they can tag enemies for priority shooting etc. again AS SHOWN IN THE FLUFF, that you clearly haven't read or even looked into.

8: they have bodily integrated systems, literal living within the machine using MIU (iron hands) to pilot the vehicles, they also have computer (machine spirit is an advanced AI) control, in addition to servitor controlled weapons, space marines don't use hand cranked systems, they are electric, the challe 2 has a hand crank system in case the electric system goes down, having it, doesn't mean its the only thing it can use.

9: no they don't, they miss as much as they miss in the fluff, rules have no bearing on this discussion.

10: no they are not, they are all very intelligent, have idetic memories, able to adapt and learn at an insane rate compared to us, no marine is a meathead by design.

so in closing, every point you made, is in fact made out of either ignorance of the fluff or a troll, I'm hoping its the ignorance myself.

now let me respond to your points:

1: yes Marines have beaten higher tech then ours, but then again they have fallen to more simpler tech then ours like bone claws and such, have to remember Tyranids for all the excitement are just like us, nothing really fancy just a lot of us.

2: fluff makes SM's powerful, rules make them wimps. (just watched the SM movie again where a squad of UM's took out a whole bunch of Chaos Black Legion Marines, go Smurfs)

3: actually WWI weapons are more powerful then you give them credit for a Gatling Gun which is pre-WWI could make short work of a SM but for some reason you think we only recently gotten out of the old flintlock and musket period, got news for you wake up and realize we have had powerful weapons for awhile.

4: beg to disagree being in a shooting range challenges i've seen some heady shots and while moving, you seriously underestimate normal humans while making SM's the gods they aren't.

5: they don't write them in because they are not cool or fun, look at the movies or TV a lot of that gak that goes on would not even be tolerated or permitted in the real world.

6: I've read the Fluff and read it all and most of what they say a SM has he could not have, because reality would set in on storage and such. and shall we talk about their armor? about as useful as Storm Trooper armor, for all the vaunted talk you give their precious armor, it can still be cut by bone claws of all things., but then you will say it is stronger then our bullets, and I say are you sure? where does it say it is? and i'm not talking some SM made up metal, since who says that is stronger then our steel jacketed bullets? you assume it is but assumption is the mother of screw ups.

7: oooh wait I heard about this magical bullet theory(a space marine killed Kennedy), so now their jet-propelled bullets have guidance missiles in them? you know for a society that has forgotten most of its own technology and can barely make tanks and APV's move you sure give them amazing skills in other things.

8: you do realize the machine spirits are just their backwards way of saying why the auto-pilot works right? they don't have AI's since if they did the Computers would have killed the illiterate lot of them a long time ago.

9: ?

10: yes Intelligent to the point they blindlessly follow a dead body and worship it as a god.

thanks for the reply.

1:i am not disputing that marines have been beaten by lower tech levels than themselves, merely showing that marines have walked through tech levels much higher than our own.

2: Rules have no bearing on this discussion.

3: I have not mentioned power, no penetration, no range etc. when talking about small arms, I stated that the fluff shows small arms to be ineffective vs power armour, nor have I said anything about thinking we have just left the musket era, don't put words in my mouth, I work with weapons every single day, I fully know what we are capable of using, I very much doubt you do however because....

4: this is total nonsense, you have never, ever seen a person at a run, fire an assault rifle over a hundred metres and hit something the size of an eye lense, I fully know the capabilities of a human in stressful situations and what they are capable of, a lucky shot, sure, intentional, no.

5: this one is more subjective, yes some may not find it cool and fun for marines to speak and act like real soldiers in a combat situation, I would like it though, and yes tv and movies have sooooo many issues with how the military is portrayed, but its the same issue that the GW writers have, they just don't know and haven't got the experience.

6: yes marines will have storage issue in terms of ammo etc. but the tech built into the armour and helm, its all there, autosenses etc. as I stated before, as to the comment regarding the "being cut by bone" no, just no, any instance of a gaunt killing a marine, has the marine being massively overwhelmed and the weakpoints in his armour targeted, or the armour taking so much damage it begins to fail, take a few thousand hammers to it and it may start to lose integrity eventually, genestealers don't have bone claws, and the larger tyranid creatures have an immense amount of strength behind them.

Yes I will say it is stronger than our bullets, because that's what the fluff says, we have multiple instances of autogun fire simply doing nothing to a marine, even instances of the round going through an eye piece and not killing the marine, yes ceramite and plasteel is supposed to be stronger than our current metals, its the whole point of the tech, no you don't get to ignore the fluff and move the goalposts, how do you know that PDF troopers don't use steel jackets? do you really think that if a simple round adaption was good enough to render marines power armour useless, word would not have gotten around, we also do have example of such round in the DW RPG books, but rules are not relevant to this discussion, but they exist in the fluff, and guess what, they do sod all.

7: "oooh wait I heard about this magical bullet theory(a space marine killed Kennedy), so now their jet-propelled bullets have guidance missiles in them? you know for a society that has forgotten most of its own technology and can barely make tanks and APV's move you sure give them amazing skills in other things" Yes, some bolt rounds have guidance systems, no they don't have issues making tanks etc. move, marine vehicles work just fine, sure some tech has been lost, but that has nothing to do with what were talking about, marine weapons contain all the tech I have stated, fact.

8:Yes a machine spirit is an AI, several example exist of this being the case, such as a land raider hunting down orks on a planet, in spite of losing its crew, or a chaos land raider having its AI corrupted to chaos and becoming a deamon in its own right, they do have computers, they are called cogitators.

9: Marines miss as much as they miss in the fluff, because the rules have no bearing on this discussion, however it is hard to gauge how accurate that actually is, we know that individual shots are what we would consider extremely good.

10: irrelevant, some follow the emperor as a god, some don't, they are not designed to be stupid, they are designed to excel at everything, they are humans +1, however they are also designed to be loyal to each other and the emperor, this was not perfect so the later generations of marines receive psychoindotrination, to take away personality and implant information such as language etc. but like any human, some marine brains are better at taking on all of this information than others, but as designed, they are not stupid.

yet again I must question if you know much about the background of this game, as a lot of the mistakes you are making are easily sourced for confirmation, I mean, I thought everyone by this point knew about marine autosenses, the cam in a bolt gun etc. please, prior to responding (if you do) do a little research, if I have made a mistake, by all means point it out and cite it.

in repost:

1: yes just like we could take on tech levels higher then our own, that has been shown in our own past.

2: but the rules are constantly in disagreement with the fluff in many things.

3: you would be surprised with what I know and/or deal with.

4: didn't mean a fast run but a sprint or jog, and with some of the new technology coming out running fast and hitting your target is not so far fetched.

5: .....

6: What would you call Gene Stealers rending claws? pretty sure they are made of bone in there and those things will gut a marine likes its nothing. even Terminators, lets face it GeneStealers are a nasty piece of work.

7: a 30K army could take out a 40K army any day of the week.

8: but those are in respect to Land Raiders and sometimes I feel like they did a Dreadnought on Land Raiders.

9: yes

10: they may not believe the Emperor is God but they enforce it. kind of like the Crusades here on earth.

didn't want a giant QnA post lol

1: we have never fought a power that is tens of thousands of years more advanced than our own.

2: yes the rules do disagree with the fluff, because they are influenced by the fluff in a small way, for example, an auto rifle is str3, a lasgun is str3, in spite of the fluff showing us that a las rifle is generally more powerful as a weapon system, a las pistol is str3, in spite of the fluff showing us that it should really be str2, all lasguns are ap -, in spite of the fluff showing us that they can and do puncture flak armour, there are more examples if you want them.

3: no I wouldn't, not a competition, I just wouldn't be surprised, id just accept it and crack on.

4: I'm sure tech will make this possible, I'm disinclined to believe it at a run or a job either, without some kind of stability system. either way, marines have been shown to have such systems integrated into there armour.

5: .... agreed

6: gene stealers claws are not bone, they are chitin diamond, an unknown substance that doesn't exist as far as we know, funnily enough the real stuff is a carbohydrate, not a calcium carbonate (think that's what bone is made of, some is made of hair, but its not true bone) and yep, Damn nature.... you nasty

7: agreed, most would, sorry, what is your point?

8: what do you mean?

9: ...

10: some do, some don't, the dark angels for example don't care, neither do the ultras, the Templars (since the retcon) would enforce it with a chainsword, tolerant lot them , so yeah, like the crusades here on earth.