How many Space Marines are supposed to be in each Chapter? 1000?

 deviantduck wrote:
How many Space Marines are supposed to be in each Chapter? 1000?

1000, plus or minus a few in the motor pool and the HQ staff (Librarians, Chaplains, that dude that orders all of the cake for birthday parties...)

Yeah, the 1000 is the line infantry (100 per company, generally, across the ten companies), but it doesn't factor in the Command squads and Honour Guards, Librarius, Chaplains, Captains, Chapter Masters, Apothecaries, Techmarines, drivers, gunners and pilots and the fleet staff.

I think the updated interpretation of an entire Chapter was something like 1200-1500?

That said, that only applies for Codex Adherant chapters, and Chapters are rarely at full strength.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Yeah, the 1000 is the line infantry (100 per company, generally, across the ten companies), but it doesn't factor in the Command squads and Honour Guards, Librarius, Chaplains, Captains, Chapter Masters, Apothecaries, Techmarines, drivers, gunners and pilots and the fleet staff.

I think the updated interpretation of an entire Chapter was something like 1200-1500?

That said, that only applies for Codex Adherant chapters, and Chapters are rarely at full strength.

^This. 1000 is just the line companies. Going by the figures given in the codex a chapter has around 1200-1500 marines. Assuming full strength of course.

the 1000 space marines account for the Veterans (including terminators), Tacticals, Assault marines (which includes bikers), Devastators and (ideally) 100 scouts.

The tank crews (part of the Chapter Armory and techmarines-in-training), Apothecarion, Chaplains, Librarius, Dreadnoughts, and Chapter Command, as well as the chapter serfs and such, are not counted in this.

Also note that this is the "ideal" number. Generally each company would be suffering casualties during campaigns and the Scout Company is rarely, if ever, at full strength. Generally even the most codex-compliant chapters "eyeball" it while codex-deviant ones give it gork's rightous finger.

Yeah, as some have pointed out, you've got various Chapters who are closer to the original legion strength then Codex Astartes strength. Space Wolves, and Black Templar's are notable examples.

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah, as some have pointed out, you've got various Chapters who are closer to the original legion strength then Codex Astartes strength. Space Wolves, and Black Templar's are notable examples.

Neither of them are remotely close to Legion strength. Black Templars are around 1,500 and the Space Wolves are just over 2,000.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah, as some have pointed out, you've got various Chapters who are closer to the original legion strength then Codex Astartes strength. Space Wolves, and Black Templar's are notable examples.

Neither of them are remotely close to Legion strength. Black Templars are around 1,500 and the Space Wolves are just over 2,000.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
the 1000 space marines account for the Veterans (including terminators), Tacticals, Assault marines (which includes bikers), Devastators and (ideally) 100 scouts.

Odd, I had the idea that Company Veterans (except for 1st company) didn't really fall into the 100 per company mark and were outside of that number, since they aren't usually over a couple of combat squads in number.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah, as some have pointed out, you've got various Chapters who are closer to the original legion strength then Codex Astartes strength. Space Wolves, and Black Templar's are notable examples.

Neither of them are remotely close to Legion strength. Black Templars are around 1,500 and the Space Wolves are just over 2,000.

Templars are way more than that. No one knows how big they are as they are scattered across the galaxy in different fleet crusades (which have conveniently never been all in one place at the same time). They could number the size of a small Legion for all we know.

At their largest, there were an estimated 6K BT.

Space Wolves, at the absolute most, barely clear 2K, and that is because we are provided numbers for the entirety of the two largest Great Companies, which don't have "auxiliary Marines", Space Wolves belong to their Great Company entirely.

The answer is not enough.

1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

The sad part is that it's far, far from the stupidest. But it's up there for sure.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

I dont think its the 1000 marines per chapter that's the stupid part, its instead the cap of 1000 chapters. If it was something more like an endless number of chapters, then maybe it might be more plausible. Also don't forget that fluff marines are the equivalent of like 100 tabletop marines, and they merrily go murdering for centuries, each one getting kills in the hundreds of thousands apiece, so ideally this means that an entire company has with the help of throwaway guardsman defeated an entire tyranid invasion (Tarsis Ultra), defeating an entire Waaaggh (Blackreach) or Tau Invasions (Pavonis) and thats just Ultramarines!

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
the 1000 space marines account for the Veterans (including terminators), Tacticals, Assault marines (which includes bikers), Devastators and (ideally) 100 scouts.

Odd, I had the idea that Company Veterans (except for 1st company) didn't really fall into the 100 per company mark and were outside of that number, since they aren't usually over a couple of combat squads in number.

Only Dark Angels have Company Veterans. This is because their 1st Company is made up of Deathwing, which require them to have been inducted into the Inner Circle to be part of. Company Veterans in the Dark Angels are instead distinguished members of their own company, but have not yet been inducted into Ravenwing or Deathwing yet (at least that's how it was in 4th edition, dunno about now).

Other chapters instead "loan" 1st company veterans to other companies on an as-need basis. Individual Companies other than the first are instead made up of either a mix of Tacticals, Assault and Devastator Marines, or marines of a single type (i.e: 100 Devastator Marines in the 9th company if I remember, or it may be 100 assault marines).

Space marines are not, at least not since the Heresy, an invasion and occupation force. They are a force multiplier. They fight by launching a lighting raid of only fifty marines, kill the orc warboss, take out the key necron monolith, form the armoured spear tip rolling through a tau barricade. All of this they do with the assumption there are 10 imperial guard regiments following them to mop up the mess they leave.

Theoretically the breakdown of chapters and companies works, but the limit of a thousand chapters is still dodgy. A few thousand chapters would be good, but the way they are supposed to fight means they shouldn't need to be moving around together above company strength.

They don't usually commit more than one Company to a conflict, most of the fluff just makes it seem like they always commit their entire fighting force to show how serious a conflict is. For every one that nearly caused the chapter to become extinct, they fight a hundred more with maybe just a handful of squads. In fact the 6th-9th companies are Reserve Companies for this specific reason; only the 2nd-5th are suppose to fight in active combat (with the 1st company being loaned out and rarely commited to a single conflict) with any losses restored from the Reserve Companies after a conflict. It's very rare for more than 1 company (especially the entire 1st company) to be committed, and rarer still for an entire chapter to be committed to a conflict.

So there are 100 per company (excluding the tenth), plus 7 (command squad plus chaplain and captain) and say 1 Dread and 6 Rhinos (Or Land Speeders) per company. That's 114 per company x 8=912. Let's assume the Scout company has about 75 scouts at all times, and the first has 100 Marines, the 7 commanders, and 3 Dreads. That is 1029. Meh.

You are not including the command staff, Librarians, Chaplains, Techmarines, and all the marines assigned to the fleet.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
the 1000 space marines account for the Veterans (including terminators), Tacticals, Assault marines (which includes bikers), Devastators and (ideally) 100 scouts.

Odd, I had the idea that Company Veterans (except for 1st company) didn't really fall into the 100 per company mark and were outside of that number, since they aren't usually over a couple of combat squads in number.

Only Dark Angels have Company Veterans. This is because their 1st Company is made up of Deathwing, which require them to have been inducted into the Inner Circle to be part of. Company Veterans in the Dark Angels are instead distinguished members of their own company, but have not yet been inducted into Ravenwing or Deathwing yet (at least that's how it was in 4th edition, dunno about now).

Other chapters instead "loan" 1st company veterans to other companies on an as-need basis. Individual Companies other than the first are instead made up of either a mix of Tacticals, Assault and Devastator Marines, or marines of a single type (i.e: 100 Devastator Marines in the 9th company if I remember, or it may be 100 assault marines).

I do know about the DA company vets (and it's still like that) - I just thought non-DA chapters also had company vets. Thanks for that bit of info

9th is Devs, yes. The assault only comp is the 8th. 6th and 7th are full tacticals iirc.

The problem with any calculations is that the Chapter Armory, Chaplains, Librarium and Apothecarion are effectively different "companies" in their own right, but do not have stated sizes. The Armory is implied to be well over the 100 number, as it includes not only the apprentice Techmarines and senior Techmarines, but also the marine pilots for every vehicle in the chapter's inventory. Considering Rhinos and Razorbacks have a minimum of 2 pilots each (a driver and a gunner at bare minimum), this means that pilots alone would be over 200 (20 drivers per company operating their rhinos, and this doesn't even include the company command's rhino/razorback, land raiders, vindicators, predators and whirlwinds).

EDIT: Said drivers instead of pilots.

Ships also have not insubstantial crew numbers.

Each vessel will at minimum have its Captain and then a squad or two of marines to repel boarders/take part in boarding actions.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Ships also have not insubstantial crew numbers.

Each vessel will at minimum have its Captain and then a squad or two of marines to repel boarders/take part in boarding actions.

I remember reading that usually the Astartes ships will be captained by a Serf when an Astartes captain isn't on board, just dunno where.

As for the boarding/defense marines - aren't those part of whatever squad/company is being deployed/transported by the ship? Or are the permanently there?

It appears they are more or less on permanent assignment, though there might also be a rotation where the squad gets swapped out with a line company squad for some time.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It appears they are more or less on permanent assignment, though there might also be a rotation where the squad gets swapped out with a line company squad for some time.

Sounds like the most reasonable option - rotate the 6th and 7th company squads to give them something to do.

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah, as some have pointed out, you've got various Chapters who are closer to the original legion strength then Codex Astartes strength. Space Wolves, and Black Templar's are notable examples.

Neither of them are remotely close to Legion strength. Black Templars are around 1,500 and the Space Wolves are just over 2,000.

Black Templar maintain several crusade forces no one numbering more than 1500, but in maintaining multiple crusades across the galaxy maintain close to 4 times that. Still not Legion sized, but certainly a formation with Legion era origins.

Each company numbers at around 100 Marines when they're at full strength. This doesn't; however, take into account the command squads for each company, or the dreadnoughts. There's also all the apothecaries, chaplains, and all the Marines in the armory, or even the honour guard. A full strength chapter is now somewhere from 1200-1500 Marines, with some having more than that (Space Wolves, Black Templars, DA depending on who you ask...)

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

Yeah, no they don't because Imperium doesn't have trillion worlds, it has a million worlds.

 Crimson wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

Yeah, no they don't because Imperium doesn't have trillion worlds, it has a million worlds.

The Imperium has over a trillion worlds, each with billions of citizens. Of those trillions of billions, maybe one per world survives recruitment to the Astartes, one in a thousand of those survives to become an Astartes, leaving a million Astartes in service. Which is astoundingly ridiculous in concept, let alone any thinking that that is a useful statistic.

I like the original RT set up for Marines, where a world would fund the creation of a Space Marine Chapter to defend their system and neighbors. The Chapter would recruit from the local population, receive munitions and supplies from the worlds they defend, and in general acted as the elite shock troops they were billed to be. The current incarnation is just unworkable.

SJ

Any concept of rationality with our world went out the window the moment they decided that jumping through a negative space wedgie was the best and safest way to travel long distances. Plus some of those numbers were probably fudged by a bored imperial clerk who couldn't be bothered to check how many 0's went into a billion or a million.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

The Imperium has over a trillion worlds,

No it doesn't. It has a bit over million worlds. You're off by several orders of magnitude.

 Crimson wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

The Imperium has over a trillion worlds,

No it doesn't. It has a bit over million worlds. You're off by several orders of magnitude.

Cite your million world source.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

The Imperium has over a trillion worlds,

No it doesn't. It has a bit over million worlds. You're off by several orders of magnitude.

Cite your million world source.

SJ

Most recent: 7th edition Dark Millennium book, first page. Repeated on page 6. It has been million worlds in every edition.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

Yeah, no they don't because Imperium doesn't have trillion worlds, it has a million worlds.

The Imperium has over a trillion worlds, each with billions of citizens. Of those trillions of billions, maybe one per world survives recruitment to the Astartes, one in a thousand of those survives to become an Astartes, leaving a million Astartes in service. Which is astoundingly ridiculous in concept, let alone any thinking that that is a useful statistic.

I like the original RT set up for Marines, where a world would fund the creation of a Space Marine Chapter to defend their system and neighbors. The Chapter would recruit from the local population, receive munitions and supplies from the worlds they defend, and in general acted as the elite shock troops they were billed to be. The current incarnation is just unworkable.

SJ

Gonna need a good hard quote for that one, buddy (because you're wrong). Never seen it stated as anything other than "over a million worlds" and you need some really good evidence for why that phrase is off by three six orders of magnitude.

Trillion sounds better.

SJ

And because its 40k, Jeff's post is technically correct for his 40k. Although why he doesn't just scale up the Marines too is anyone's guess. Whining rights, probably.

Who knew that Forging the Narrative can include forging new stars/star systems into a galaxy? Here I was thinking world were only destroyed in the grimdark future.

There's not enough stars in the galaxy to have that many worlds, even if every star in the Milky Way had habitable planets circling them that were all human-owned (which they most certainly are not).

It's been fairly consistently a million worlds. The population of the imperium, that's in the trillions.

yea, the 1 million space marines or so, and 1 million worlds or so has been around a long time.

Things to consider: in many cases Marines have helpers from the human population manage lots of the day to day and even run their ships. Ultramar comes to mind, where the Ultramarines have their own empire within the empire. They are the most codex complaint chapter, and with multiple worlds they oversee, it's easy to imagine that they raise significant Imperial Guard regiments and work closely with human population.

Fluffwise, a tactical squad of marines is an army unto itself. Heck, a single marine is. Obviously on the table top this doesn't equate, but in the literature, Space Marines are almost godlike in power and longevity.

Lastly, I think it's the new SM book that says there is less than 1 marine for each world in the imperium, which puts the total number of worlds in the low millions.

riburn3 wrote:
Things to consider: in many cases Marines have helpers from the human population manage lots of the day to day and even run their ships. Ultramar comes to mind, where the Ultramarines have their own empire within the empire. They are the most codex complaint chapter, and with multiple worlds they oversee, it's easy to imagine that they raise significant Imperial Guard regiments and work closely with human population.

Fluffwise, a tactical squad of marines is an army unto itself. Heck, a single marine is. Obviously on the table top this doesn't equate, but in the literature, Space Marines are almost godlike in power and longevity.

Lastly, I think it's the new SM book that says there is less than 1 marine for each world in the imperium, which puts the total number of worlds in the low millions.

Space Marine worlds actually aren't required to provide IG Regiments, but Ultramar is so well ran they actually have several hundred IG quality Regiments on standby to bolster the Imperiums war machine when needed.

10th company doesn't count towards the total, as they are not yet full astartes. A chapter normally has 1000 Marines (9 companies of 100 plus another 100 command, drivers etc), plus 100+ scouts in 10th company. At least that's how I've always interpreted it.

Though, fluff-wise, a Scout is not on par with a Battle Brother, lacking both the wargear and the experience.

The Ultramarines have 1001 without Dreadnoughts, 1027 with Dreadnoughts.

came here hoping to find out how many space marines are in the entire imperium

axisofentropy wrote:
came here hoping to find out how many space marines are in the entire imperium

One million, give or take one million.

SJ

I suspect that they simply forgot the scale when they set that number.

Dev 1: 'You know those super-powerful Space Marines, man?'

Dev 2: 'Yeah? Wow, they're so awesome.'

Dev 1: 'You know, the Imperium has one million of them.'

Dev 2: 'One million?! Imagine that, one million of them coming at ya! No one would be able to stop them.'

Dev 1: 'Yeah! The Imperium's greatest defenders, for sure.'

It is a well documented fact that sifi writers don't understand scale.

The guard suffer from this problem too really. They are mostly presented as several regiments of one to ten thousand men being sent to deal with a whole planet when in WWII d day involved about one hundred and fifty thousand men on the allies side. So fifty thousand guard being sent to take a planet it equally as dumb as only 100 marines being sent.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I suspect that they simply forgot the scale when they set that number.

Dev 1: 'You know those super-powerful Space Marines, man?'

Dev 2: 'Yeah? Wow, they're so awesome.'

Dev 1: 'You know, the Imperium has one million of them.'

Dev 2: 'One million?! Imagine that, one million of them coming at ya! No one would be able to stop them.'

Dev 1: 'Yeah! The Imperium's greatest defenders, for sure.'

I always thought the one million number was supposed to highlight the hopelessness of the fight, rather than being a sign of scale-blindness.

If so, they probably wouldn't depict that million performing as well as they are.

The million Marines fluff is a lot older than the godlike Marines fluff.

 jonolikespie wrote:
It is a well documented fact that sifi writers don't understand scale.

The guard suffer from this problem too really. They are mostly presented as several regiments of one to ten thousand men being sent to deal with a whole planet when in WWII d day involved about one hundred and fifty thousand men on the allies side. So fifty thousand guard being sent to take a planet it equally as dumb as only 100 marines being sent.

Vraks cost 14 million guardsmen (34 regiments)

 Crimson wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

Yeah, no they don't because Imperium doesn't have trillion worlds, it has a million worlds.

The statement of the Imperium having a million worlds is a stylistic statement at the start of every 40k novel. The Imperium certainly has more planets than this, simply by the amount of sectors of space they control. FFG and other novels put them at billions- but trillions is a bit much. Of course the number changes daily thanks to Administratum rounding errors and Orks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 aka_mythos wrote:
It's been fairly consistently a million worlds. The population of the imperium, that's in the trillions.

No, the population of the Imperium is in the quadrillions just from the Hive Worlds. It has trillions of guardsmen.

1000 marines, but keep in mind that they also have chapter serfs, who are human servants.
I don't think serfs are used in combat though. Probably has something to do with the heresy.

 Wyzilla wrote:


The statement of the Imperium having a million worlds is a stylistic statement at the start of every 40k novel. The Imperium certainly has more planets than this, simply by the amount of sectors of space they control. FFG and other novels put them at billions- but trillions is a bit much.

Citation needed.

What Crimson said. I have seen no indication that they number more than a million. Indeed, the 'one Marine per world' thing is something they've been big on.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:
It is a well documented fact that sifi writers don't understand scale.

The guard suffer from this problem too really. They are mostly presented as several regiments of one to ten thousand men being sent to deal with a whole planet when in WWII d day involved about one hundred and fifty thousand men on the allies side. So fifty thousand guard being sent to take a planet it equally as dumb as only 100 marines being sent.

Vraks cost 14 million guardsmen (34 regiments)

FW know what they are talking about (most the time). GW less so.

14 million is still very low. But it's at least better than what GW puts out.

So is the 1000 per Chapter the current #? Why does all of the Horus Heresy novels refer to marines being in such larger numbers? For instance, in Deliverence Lost, Corax notes that he lost 77,000 marines on Istvaan.

Legions were much bigger than chapters are now.

After the heresy one of the first things they did was break up the legions so that they'd never have hundreds of thousands of marines turn traitor at the same time. They also reduced the numbers of marines - immediately after the 2nd founding numbers were WAY lower then during the crusade and they've gradually been allowed to increase since then.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

Yeah, no they don't because Imperium doesn't have trillion worlds, it has a million worlds.

The statement of the Imperium having a million worlds is a stylistic statement at the start of every 40k novel. The Imperium certainly has more planets than this, simply by the amount of sectors of space they control. FFG and other novels put them at billions- but trillions is a bit much. Of course the number changes daily thanks to Administratum rounding errors and Orks.

A Million truly habitable worlds is probably more realistic... There are billions when you include the pseudo-habitable and uninhabitable.

Astartes divisions pre Heresy were Legion > Chapter > Company > Squad > Combat Squad > individual Marine. Terms can be swapped for Great Companies, Maniples, etc., but the general break down was Legion to Chapter to Company to Squad. Post Heresy removed Legions as the largest division.

SJ

There was some fluff a while back that the Grey Knights number roughly 3000. Though this is because they take constant attrition, and are often only a squad or two attached to inquisitorial armies spread throughout the galaxy.

Shame. Would be fun to read about 3000 Grey Knights taking the field at once.

Also, the Salamanders are rumoured to be around only 700-800 strong, as their recruitment processes are much slower and training takes longer. Though their companies tend to be 120 marines strong.

And as someone said - I think it was in the old Templars codex that their numbers were said to be roughly 6000 spread throughout their crusade fleets

Wait a Minute, how many Marines did the big 9 have after the Heresy?

The Grey Knights are 1,000, not 3,000.

 Matthew wrote:
Wait a Minute, how many Marines did the big 9 have after the Heresy?

There were 38 chapters (that we have definite confirmation of) created in the 2nd founding from what was left of the 9 loyal legions.

That would suggest less than 47 thousand marines (approximately 40,000? ).

Some of the original legions were extremely depleted. There were so few Salamanders left that they didn't split them at all, for example.

At the height of the crusade the 18 legions were approx 2 million marines.

 Matthew wrote:
Wait a Minute, how many Marines did the big 9 have after the Heresy?

size amongst the legions varied but most were between 81,000 to 270,000

regarding the black templar size I believe that its number was somewhere between 1200- 3000. this is becouse the black templar section of the deathwatch rpg book describes their organisation as having three main crusade fleets with smaller crusades being lauched from the big three for independent campaigns. there is also fluff regarding how there are only 10 black swords that the emperors champions wield and that they are brought along with every crusade, meaning that there can only really be 10 official crusade fleets at a time. finally the book enternal crusade had High Marshal Helbrecht purposefully exaggerate the size of his forces from 400 marines to 900 in order to gain overall command of the Astartes forces present at Armageddon

 Vandire651 wrote:

 Matthew wrote:
Wait a Minute, how many Marines did the big 9 have after the Heresy?

size amongst the legions varied but most were between 81,000 to 270,000

That would be pre-heresy.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Vandire651 wrote:

 Matthew wrote:
Wait a Minute, how many Marines did the big 9 have after the Heresy?

size amongst the legions varied but most were between 81,000 to 270,000

That would be pre-heresy.

sorry, misread the question.
the Ultramarine numbered at the start above the 270,000 mark and were for the most part stuck in ultramar for the duration of the Horus heresy with there only action being the betrayal at Calth, the shadow crusade and the lifting of the siege of Terra, so it can be reasoned the the Ultramarine would still have a lot of marines at about the 100,000 mark

They did lose something like 100,000 at Calth so that was still a blow.

 Vandire651 wrote:

the Ultramarine numbered at the start above the 270,000 mark and were for the most part stuck in ultramar for the duration of the Horus heresy with there only action being the betrayal at Calth, the shadow crusade and the lifting of the siege of Terra, so it can be reasoned the the Ultramarine would still have a lot of marines at about the 100,000 mark

15 2nd founding chapters (that we know of) were created from the Ultramarines so they were presumably significantly more depleted than that.

 Ashiraya wrote:
They did lose something like 100,000 at Calth so that was still a blow.

Yep, 100K at Calth and then who know how many at Terra.

The siege of Terra was a meat grinder.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

That's what you have the Guard for, and has been mentioned, it's in the millions of planets. Now, the SMs serve, as has been mentioned, as a spearhead or special ops.

But yeah, their numbers are still way too low.

 ChazSexington wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

That's what you have the Guard for, and has been mentioned, it's in the millions of planets. Now, the SMs serve, as has been mentioned, as a spearhead or special ops.

But yeah, their numbers are still way too low.

Whilst loads of marines is obviously useful you can see why the heresy would make folks a bit nervous about having too many of them around the place...

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Vandire651 wrote:

the Ultramarine numbered at the start above the 270,000 mark and were for the most part stuck in ultramar for the duration of the Horus heresy with there only action being the betrayal at Calth, the shadow crusade and the lifting of the siege of Terra, so it can be reasoned the the Ultramarine would still have a lot of marines at about the 100,000 mark

15 2nd founding chapters (that we know of) were created from the Ultramarines so they were presumably significantly more depleted than that.

 Ashiraya wrote:
They did lose something like 100,000 at Calth so that was still a blow.

Yep, 100K at Calth and then who know how many at Terra.

The siege of Terra was a meat grinder.

I agree that the ultramarine lost 100,000 marines at Calth but they started at the number of 270,000 marines, lowering the new figure to 170,000, still a lot more then 16,000 marines that would fit into the new 15 2nd founding chapters .
as for the siege of terra the Ultramarines weren't there till after it ended with horus being killed by the emperor and the other legions scattering away due to them losing horus as a rallying figure, knowing that the two largest legions, the Ultramarines and the dark angels were about to arrive(the dark angels were also blocked by the Ruinstorm for most of the horus heresy) and due to partially succeeding with there initial goal of killing the emperor.

this meant that to get to the 16,000 number you mentioned they would have to lose 154,000 marines in the shadow crusade, not counting the new recurits.

The thing is, the Ultramarines would stand for 170 new chapters if you use those numbers...

 Matthew wrote:
The thing is, the Ultramarines would stand for 170 new chapters if you use those numbers...

i'm not saying they didn't take causulties after the betrayal of Calth during the shadow crusade and they probably also took loses during the great scouring which was the aftermath of the horus heresy where the loyalist pushed the tratiors out of the imperium propoer and forced them to flee to the eye of terror. I am just saying that there are a lot more ultramarines then 16,000.

also with the size of the imperium i don't really have a problem with there being 50,000 to 100,000 ultramaines left after the horus heresy as they would be so diluted amongst the uncountable number of worlds throughout the galaxy that it wouldn't make much of a difference and they would still be ridiculously outnumbered

If you look at the known Chapters currently in the setting, roughly half are Ultramarine chapters. If all of them sided with Ultramar in a new civil war, it would be approximately 500,000 Ultras versus the fragmented remainder. Just saying.

SJ

 Psienesis wrote:
There's not enough stars in the galaxy to have that many worlds, even if every star in the Milky Way had habitable planets circling them that were all human-owned (which they most certainly are not).

Yeah, their are aroudn 100 billion stars int he milk way. And there are supposed to be around a 'mere' 40 billion habitable worlds. Now, the imperium, if it's as mighty as some would have us believe, defiantly have more than 1M worlds, but nowhere close to the trillions.

 Vandire651 wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Vandire651 wrote:

the Ultramarine numbered at the start above the 270,000 mark and were for the most part stuck in ultramar for the duration of the Horus heresy with there only action being the betrayal at Calth, the shadow crusade and the lifting of the siege of Terra, so it can be reasoned the the Ultramarine would still have a lot of marines at about the 100,000 mark

15 2nd founding chapters (that we know of) were created from the Ultramarines so they were presumably significantly more depleted than that.

 Ashiraya wrote:
They did lose something like 100,000 at Calth so that was still a blow.

Yep, 100K at Calth and then who know how many at Terra.

The siege of Terra was a meat grinder.

I agree that the ultramarine lost 100,000 marines at Calth but they started at the number of 270,000 marines, lowering the new figure to 170,000, still a lot more then 16,000 marines that would fit into the new 15 2nd founding chapters .
as for the siege of terra the Ultramarines weren't there till after it ended with horus being killed by the emperor and the other legions scattering away due to them losing horus as a rallying figure, knowing that the two largest legions, the Ultramarines and the dark angels were about to arrive(the dark angels were also blocked by the Ruinstorm for most of the horus heresy) and due to partially succeeding with there initial goal of killing the emperor.

this meant that to get to the 16,000 number you mentioned they would have to lose 154,000 marines in the shadow crusade, not counting the new recurits.

There a number of possible explanations:

There are lots (100+) of 2nd founding chapters that we've never heard of.
UM's took a whole bunch of causalities during the post-terra mop up actions and the shadow crusade (to be covered in a future HH novel?).
Marneus let the new chapters that he demanded were created grossly violate the rules that he put into place to govern them.
Marneus had (has?) a huge secret army in direct violation of the rules that he put into place to stop people having huge armies.

The second one seems the most likely.


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 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
There's not enough stars in the galaxy to have that many worlds, even if every star in the Milky Way had habitable planets circling them that were all human-owned (which they most certainly are not).

Yeah, their are aroudn 100 billion stars int he milk way. And there are supposed to be around a 'mere' 40 billion habitable worlds. Now, the imperium, if it's as mighty as some would have us believe, defiantly have more than 1M worlds, but nowhere close to the trillions.

How many of those are sufficiently accessible by warp travel to be useful?

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Vandire651 wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Vandire651 wrote:

the Ultramarine numbered at the start above the 270,000 mark and were for the most part stuck in ultramar for the duration of the Horus heresy with there only action being the betrayal at Calth, the shadow crusade and the lifting of the siege of Terra, so it can be reasoned the the Ultramarine would still have a lot of marines at about the 100,000 mark

15 2nd founding chapters (that we know of) were created from the Ultramarines so they were presumably significantly more depleted than that.

 Ashiraya wrote:
They did lose something like 100,000 at Calth so that was still a blow.

Yep, 100K at Calth and then who know how many at Terra.

The siege of Terra was a meat grinder.

I agree that the ultramarine lost 100,000 marines at Calth but they started at the number of 270,000 marines, lowering the new figure to 170,000, still a lot more then 16,000 marines that would fit into the new 15 2nd founding chapters .
as for the siege of terra the Ultramarines weren't there till after it ended with horus being killed by the emperor and the other legions scattering away due to them losing horus as a rallying figure, knowing that the two largest legions, the Ultramarines and the dark angels were about to arrive(the dark angels were also blocked by the Ruinstorm for most of the horus heresy) and due to partially succeeding with there initial goal of killing the emperor.

this meant that to get to the 16,000 number you mentioned they would have to lose 154,000 marines in the shadow crusade, not counting the new recurits.

There a number of possible explanations:

There are lots (100+) of 2nd founding chapters that we've never heard of.
UM's took a whole bunch of causalities during the post-terra mop up actions and the shadow crusade (to be covered in a future HH novel?).
Marneus let the new chapters that he demanded were created grossly violate the rules that he put into place to govern them.
Marneus had (has?) a huge secret army in direct violation of the rules that he put into place to stop people having huge armies.

The second one seems the most likely.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
There's not enough stars in the galaxy to have that many worlds, even if every star in the Milky Way had habitable planets circling them that were all human-owned (which they most certainly are not).

Yeah, their are aroudn 100 billion stars int he milk way. And there are supposed to be around a 'mere' 40 billion habitable worlds. Now, the imperium, if it's as mighty as some would have us believe, defiantly have more than 1M worlds, but nowhere close to the trillions.

How many of those are sufficiently accessible by warp travel to be useful?

actually I find the 1st option more believable, after all the chapters that we know about are only the ones that games workshop decided to focus on and there are tons of extra chapters we do not know about due to either not needing to know, to allow the creation of home brew chapters or due to the imperiums general incompetence(a tad understandable due to the 2nd founding being 10,000 years ago by this point)

regarding your second point regarding war travel, the imperium has generally expanded to everywhere it reasonably can over it's 10,000 year old history(wiether or not it can keep the worlds it claims is anouther story), if a sector can't keep in contact with a planet then that planet just gains more autonomy.

Most of them I'd assume? I'm not really an expert on warp travel.

The Ultramarines did a lot of the heavy lifting during the Scouring. They were spread across the Imperium and likely took very heavy casualties. So I would not expect 170 Second Founding chapters.

On the flip side, there are only 16 named Ultramarines successors in the second founding, which is probably too low. The Second Founding, in-universe, is steeped in mystery (the way the entire Heresy should have stayed, in my opinion) and definitive names and numbers aren't really available for any chapter. For an example of said vagueness, there's the in-universe Apocrypha of Skaros, an ancient copy of the Codex Astartes that mentions there being at least 23 Ultramarines successors but doesn't name them.

GW, in a display of the sort of occasional wisdom they used to possess with regards to the fluff, kept things vague on purpose to avoid tying players' hands (and also perhaps because the more specific they get, the less their universe tends to make sense).

Anyway, if you want a number, we can work with these two sources. Given the number of named chapters and the number of unnamed chapters in the Apocrypha, depending on how much they overlap, we can say the Ultramarines legion was split into between 17 and 50 chapters, which seems reasonable.

 Vandire651 wrote:


I agree that the ultramarine lost 100,000 marines at Calth but they started at the number of 270,000 marines, lowering the new figure to 170,000, still a lot more then 16,000 marines that would fit into the new 15 2nd founding chapters .
as for the siege of terra the Ultramarines weren't there till after it ended with horus being killed by the emperor and the other legions scattering away due to them losing horus as a rallying figure, knowing that the two largest legions, the Ultramarines and the dark angels were about to arrive(the dark angels were also blocked by the Ruinstorm for most of the horus heresy) and due to partially succeeding with there initial goal of killing the emperor.

this meant that to get to the 16,000 number you mentioned they would have to lose 154,000 marines in the shadow crusade, not counting the new recurits.

This is because in the older fluff legions were much smaller and the number of second founding chapters originate from that era. In the beginning of HH series Black Library decided to multiply the legion sizes by ten, creating this discrepancy.

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
The Ultramarines did a lot of the heavy lifting during the Scouring. They were spread across the Imperium and likely took very heavy casualties. So I would not expect 170 Second Founding chapters.

On the flip side, there are only 16 named Ultramarines successors in the second founding, which is probably too low. The Second Founding, in-universe, is steeped in mystery (the way the entire Heresy should have stayed, in my opinion) and definitive names and numbers aren't really available for any chapter. For an example of said vagueness, there's the in-universe Apocrypha of Skaros, an ancient copy of the Codex Astartes that mentions there being at least 23 Ultramarines successors but doesn't name them.

GW, in a display of the sort of occasional wisdom they used to possess with regards to the fluff, kept things vague on purpose to avoid tying players' hands (and also perhaps because the more specific they get, the less their universe tends to make sense).

Anyway, from the number of named chapters and the unnamed number, depending on how much they overlap, we can say the Ultramarines legion was split into between 17 and 50 chapters, which seems reasonable.

like I said before, I never claimed that there where 170 2nd founding ultramarine chapters, i also just saying that there were more then 16 2nd founding ultramaine chapters and definitely more then the 47,000 loyalist marines left after the horus heresy that scott originally implied. I do agree that 50 ultramarine chapters does sound reasonable however

 Vandire651 wrote:

actually I find the 1st option more believable, after all the chapters that we know about are only the ones that games workshop decided to focus on and there are tons of extra chapters we do not know about due to either not needing to know, to allow the creation of home brew chapters or due to the imperiums general incompetence(a tad understandable due to the 2nd founding being 10,000 years ago by this point)

Hopefully when they finally get done with the HH novels we'll have some more insight into the aftermath. We're in an odd limbo state at the moment where the fluff covering the heresy itself is brand-new but the fluff covering the aftermath and 2nd founding is really old.

Of course, it's also quite possible that the answer will be a combination of all four possible explanations..


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 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Most of them I'd assume? I'm not really an expert on warp travel.

We're never given anything concrete but we know that some places are especially easy to get to, some are difficult and some are impossible.

What the split is like in terms of the total number of systems we don't know.

 aka_mythos wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

Yeah, no they don't because Imperium doesn't have trillion worlds, it has a million worlds.

The statement of the Imperium having a million worlds is a stylistic statement at the start of every 40k novel. The Imperium certainly has more planets than this, simply by the amount of sectors of space they control. FFG and other novels put them at billions- but trillions is a bit much. Of course the number changes daily thanks to Administratum rounding errors and Orks.

A Million truly habitable worlds is probably more realistic... There are billions when you include the pseudo-habitable and uninhabitable.

Wat.

The estimate of Earth-Like planets in the Milky Way is forty BILLION. This number actually increases if DAOT humanity teraformed any uninhabitable planets, and we also know from books like Eisenhorn that Imperial civilizations manage to carve out living spaces in things like frozen worlds courtesy of hibernation pods.

Also for the billions of worlds, I'll have to check, but I'm pretty sure it's from Rogue Trader.
EDIT

Heart of Rage makes reference of "billions of hive worlds" alone.

War was fading away in the Imperium of Mankind. The purposes for which the likes of the Adeptus Astartes had been engineered were dying out. They had done their job. Peace prevailed across a billion worlds. Only distant skirmishes and half-hearted wars boiled along the hem of the frontier, most of them the endless campaigns of suppression against the ubiquitous greenskins.

From I am Slaughter.

The Imperium of Man is vast, and amongst billions of inhabited worlds there are countless forge worlds, factories, craftsman, artificers and blacksmiths turning out weapons and armour. As can be imagined this produces a practically limitless variety of makes, patterns and brands. It would be impossible to detail each and every different make of weapon in the Imperium (or even a small fraction of them), so the weapons, armor and equipment represented in this chapter represent the most common designs and designations. You can, of course, create the makes and patterns for your weapons as you see fit; after all, having a Gorgon-Pattern H-12 Widowmaker is far cooler than just having a stub revolver."

DARK HERESY: CORE RULEBOOK

Chapter V, page 127.

Ok, that's yet another example of FFG not knowing what the hell they're doing.

 Crimson wrote:
Ok, that's yet another example of FFG not knowing what the hell they're doing.

Having talked with HMBC, FFG has oversight from GW on what they can and cannot write, and billions already appears in the Black Library.

well, per company we have 100 line, 2 command (captain and Chaplain) and a command squad for the 2 of them (going based off of double demi-company), so companies 1-9 are sitting on 112
Total: 1008

Then we have scouts, and again, assuming 100 scouts (could easily be more for 90% of chapters), 2 command, and a command squad for each
Total: 1120

Now we have high command: A chapter master, Head Librarian, Head chaplain, Head apothecary, and 10-30(going to go with 30) honor guard,
Total: 1154

Now we have the rest of the librarius, counting both combat and non-combat psykers, it's probably around 15-20 men
Total: 1174

Tech marines are an odd one, I'm going to assume around 50, because both command elements, elements piloting ships, thunderfire cannons, etc.
Total: 1224

Dreadnoughts! their marines, going based on the 6th edition book (memory is rough, correct me if i'm wrong) roughly 20 dreadnoughts per chapter, probably more for most

Total: 1244

SERFS! not really space marines, but who cares, probably around 2-3 per marine, so another ~3000 dudes, comin' up!
PILOTS! someone drives the ships, and who knows how many dudes there are per, so were not gonna count them!

Final Totals: Marines: 1244, serfs included: 4976

This is for fairly codex compliant chapters, and most of the 1000 chapters probably have more.

Total marines in the Imperium: ~1,300,000, serfs included: ~5,200,000
There is an extra 56,000 marines in there from black templars, space wolves, and other chapters that said: screw the codex!

The Imperium would be better of if they didn't limit to 1000 chapters, but again, in the fluff, 100 tabletop marines = 1 fluff marine

 jonolikespie wrote:
Space marines are not, at least not since the Heresy, an invasion and occupation force. They are a force multiplier. They fight by launching a lighting raid of only fifty marines, kill the orc warboss, take out the key necron monolith, form the armoured spear tip rolling through a tau barricade. All of this they do with the assumption there are 10 imperial guard regiments following them to mop up the mess they leave.

Theoretically the breakdown of chapters and companies works, but the limit of a thousand chapters is still dodgy. A few thousand chapters would be good, but the way they are supposed to fight means they shouldn't need to be moving around together above company strength.

By way of example, in the old fluff, a squad of Deathwing terminators wiped out a Genestealer infestation of a planet.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
There's not enough stars in the galaxy to have that many worlds, even if every star in the Milky Way had habitable planets circling them that were all human-owned (which they most certainly are not).

Yeah, their are aroudn 100 billion stars int he milk way. And there are supposed to be around a 'mere' 40 billion habitable worlds. Now, the imperium, if it's as mighty as some would have us believe, defiantly have more than 1M worlds, but nowhere close to the trillions.

That 40 billion number is just the number of planets which would be in the habitable zone of their star. It does not mean the planet is fit for humans to colonize. A huge huge chunk of these worlds will be inaccessible by warp travel, too toxic, subject to other environmental factors which make it uninhabitable, not have any resources to make the world viable to settle, be controlled by alien species, be as yet undiscovered, be controlled by humans who have still not been reunited with humanity since the Dark Age of Technology, etc...

The Imperium is the largest united faction in the galaxy. But they are far from controlling a majority of the total worlds available. If you control 5% of something, and nobody else owns more than 0.000001%, you are the big fish in the pond.