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Okay so something's been nagging me for a while. Fluff and codex both tell us that the Imperium is slowly losing the ability to make its machines of war...

My question is why? You'd think with a galaxy spanning empire they'd write stuff down, put them in cogitators or whatever the Mechanicus uses, have a database somewhere central to store all of the plans.

I know the dark age of technology and the Horus heresy probably had lots of information lost but still, that doesn't explain how, according to fluff, the plans for the imperials war machines are in effect fading from memory, which is quite ridiculous if you ask me, if your factory has been makin Leman Russes for the past three thousand years, dont you thing someone would have written it down or at least devoted it to memory?

And that doesn't explain how the Imperium still has such a wide variety of war machines available still. If you cant remember how to make stuff how do new regiments found? With sticks and stones?

Someone want to be cool enough to explain this little anomaly to me? Or do you also think that GW is being a little ridiculous here?

I agree that GW are taking the grimdark a bit too far here

From my interpretation the imperium lost the "majority" of the blueprints (i think there STC's or something in the fluff but i cant quite remember lol) for its greatest creations.

They still have 'some' of the designs and plans (which are guarded like a tramp guards his chips) by the forgeworlds that have managed to find/maintain them such as mars and arkurion.

Thats my way of trying to make the fluff ive read make sense

Dan

I won't bother explaining it in huge detail because even though I know it, there are others here that can do it better. But, fluff wise, for the most part, think of 40k as the dark ages, where innovation is heresy. So people don't even try to figure stuff out for themselves. There are these huge power blocs like the Adeptus Mechanicus who have a vested interest in controlling who has knowledge of how to make vehicles and technology. That's the main reason I reckon for all the, 'we are losing our technology' fluff.

Over to the rest of you dakka!

Oh, hey, read Mechanicum. It's not the best book, but it gives you a better idea of how the whole controlling knowledge thing works in 40k...or rather...30k!

They might be able to build these machines, but some parts people don't even understand how it works. They just copy the blueprint and hope it works. So if someone who deos know how it works dies, than people won't understand what the blueprrints mean. I don't think the loss of technology is that bad, most stuff from the horus heresy.

Some Forge Worlds specialise in certain areas e.g. plasma. They might have an STC that allows them to create more stable plasma guns. However, even the AdMech is politicle and to keep power a Forge World will guard it's biggest secrets. Some of these Forge Worlds have been lost to the enemy in various ways.

You'd think with all the extra organs and genetic engineering there'd be some space marines with the brains to figure stuff out...

or you'd think with all the battles that you could capture and study enough alien technology to learn something or copy something.

Shenra wrote:You'd think with all the extra organs and genetic engineering there'd be some space marines with the brains to figure stuff out...

or you'd think with all the battles that you could capture and study enough alien technology to learn something or copy something.

Handling and studying xeno technology is a big no no inthe imperium.

Shenra wrote:

or you'd think with all the battles that you could capture and study enough alien technology to learn something or copy something.

That would certainly be considered Heresy in the 41st Millennium, which is why it doesn't happen.

If you think about it like the Galaxy is Europe during the Dark Ages after the Fall of the Roman Empire then it does make sense. The people of the Imperium look around at all these magnificent relics of a time long gone with no knowledge or comprehending of how Humans could have built them. Much in the same way the people of Europe during the Dark Ages would look at Aqueducts, Bath houses, Coliseums, Bridges, and even roads built by the Romans and wonder how Humans could ever have made them. It wasn't that all the texts and information on Engineering were lost after the Fall of Rome but those texts that survived either couldn't be read by people or they were closely guarded by the Monks and other Church officials who had access to them out of either fear of the heresy the books contained or out of fear they would lose the precious knowledge to fire or duplication by people outside their control. Sound familiar to any 40k plot lines?

Thats one of those things your suppose to just sweep under the rug. Really, if that were true they would of lost a LONG time ago. Orks certainly have no problem building new vehicles, the Tau do the same and so on. If they couldnt remember (which is odd because SOMEONE fixes the damn things) then they would really lose a tank when it blows up, and not having a way to replace it means your army will dwindle in size. Its just a silly fluff point that makes no sense.

Kind of along the same lines as whatever codex you pick up and read, THOSE GUYS are the baddest mothers walking and Stelek himself couldnt beat them.(unless he wanted to or some other crazy notion he comes up with)

I think overwatch has it. A large part of human knowledge is guarded by a very small proportion of the population, kind of like wealth. So when one of these few people pops it or worse the entire planet is wiped out then stuff gets lost. One of the imperiums biggest flaws is the internal politics it will destroy mankind faster than any xeno.

Hell on top of that you've got good old fashion human error, emperor know what wonders have been misfiled.

Anyone who says that how the Imperium operates isn't feasible either doens't know the game or is rather ignorant of the way humans think and behave. The Warhammer 40,000 universe is not the modern day nations of the West in space and the mentality of the citizens of the Imperium have more in common with earlier ages of man than they do with modern day Westerners, realistically they are as alien to us as the Orks or Eldar would be.

To give some insight into the way technology is presented in the game I've copied out some sections of White Dwarf 93:

Technology is present, but it's not central to the way people think. Most common folk see technology as withcraft - so do the technicians!

The galaxy has been dominated by mankind since the Age of Technology. But that era is noe long gone, a semi-mythical time from which come half-understood and popularly feared ideas and machines known as the old science. The creators of the advanced technology that launched a million voyages of colonisation have been dead for over twenty thousand years. Fragmented over the entire galaxy, human civilisations developed and fell in pan-human wars, interstellar strife, social division and relgious fanatacism.

In Warhammer 40,000 technology takes a definite backseat, but that doesn't mean that there isn't any to be found. In fact, there's a whole range of advanced weapons, armour types and equipment. The range of technology available reflects the diversity of humanity,ranging from the primitive crosbows and slings used on feral worlds to the barely understood digital and force weapons carries by rich and powerful individuals.

Technology permeates the society of the Imperium dispite the mystic aura associated with it. Warp-engines propel spacecraft into the fluid medium of the warp-space whilst the Technomats of the Adeptus Mechanicus preserve the sacred knowledge of centuries etched upon the engineered memory cortexes in their brains. Warhammer 40,000 has all the hardware you'd expect in any futuristic game, but interpreted in a radically different way.


The Adeptus Mechanicus preserve the last remnants of Human scientific and technical knowledge but they do so from a perspective of mysticism and religious reverence. We might talk to our car for example when we think it might break on us but we understand that it is just a lump of metal and plastic. The Mechanicus and the peoples of the Imperium literally believe that the car can hear you, that it possesses a soul and is imbued with the holy spirit of the Omnisiah and that it must be appeased and persuaded to do your will. In some of the more advanced machines this can be seen to have a kernel of truth where organic components are utilised thus lending a living portion to the workings of the machine.

As objects of devotion, often more valued than human life and as sacred relics imbued with the spirit of their god, the Mechanicus don't just dismantle machines to see how they work and accordingly the older and more advnaced the technology the closer it is to the perfection of the Machine God and the less likely it is that they will jeopardise its continued functioning to sate curiosity. These machines are maintained by ritual, not by an understanding of mechanics, Tech Priests are like a cargo cult, radios and antennae re-created from bamboo and leaves because these people observed soldiers using similarly shaped objects to signal planes to drop cargo. They believe that by holding those objects and performing the same routines they will induce cargo to fall from the sky and the Mechancius operates under a similar pretense.

Ever manage a big database of spreadsheets? Like, dozens of books containing a thousand different spread sheets, many of which link to each other or feed into one another?

Inevitably, macros burn out, or links are corrupted, circular references created. If you don't have a technician actively fixing problems, errors simply develop.

That doesn't add to me Gogsnik.
I will freely admit to knowing diddly squit, but if what you say is true, then the Imperium loses.

Either you have a technology that anyone can use, eg peasants with Ak-47's, or you have a technology with enough mechanics and articifers to put it right in the field.
That still may be the case, but I fail to understand how tech being heretical squares up with, we can still maintain our kit.

Ecclesiarchy and the Adeptus Mechanicus are the most to blame.

Keep in mind that the Imperium has been in limbo for 10,000 years now, knowledge gradually disappears from generation to generation and the system of making innovation equate to heresy is contributing to that.

Think of it like this:

The empire of mankind is so vast that as it spread out it was no longer feasible to collate all 'knowledge' into a central location. Instead, as different forgeworlds discovered and invented new things only the local STC stored that information. Therefore as those STC (basically big databases) are lost in warfare, or damaged the information they contain becomes irretrievable.

Now, as I understand it STCs are like big databases of blueprints, but also with a robotic factory attached to it. This explains why no one has committed the blue-print of the Space-Marine jetbike (for example) to memory. Some techmarine just has to press the jetbike button on the console and out pops a jetbike; he doesn't understand how it's made, it's just always been done automatically for him. However, when this STC is destroyed, there goes all ability to make jet-bikes!

(P.s. Mr techmarine never gets curious and looks inside the STC factory, or reverse engineers the jet-bike for three reaons:
1: It would be heresy to try and understand the creations of the ommisiah.
2: He's just not clever enough. He doesn't understand mechanics, just following instructions written down by someone before him.
3: It might displease the Machine Spirit. )

HOWEVER, stuff can be maintained by techpriests, even without understanding it. If they follow detailed instructions left behind by previous people who did understand the technology. This means that common bugs in software or mechanical faults can be fixed because you can look up how to fix it. However, when something goes more seriously wrong (or even just minorly wrong in a way that is undocumented) then Techmarines are screwed.

It's a bad world to be in!

TLDR: They don't remember how to make many things, but they don't need to. STCs will simply churn out the required technology at the press of a button; all done automatically.

The empire of mankind is so vast that as it spread out it was no longer feasible to collate all 'knowledge' into a central location. Instead, as different forgeworlds discovered and invented new things only the local STC stored that information. Therefore as those STC (basically big databases) are lost in warfare, or damaged the information they contain becomes irretrievable.

Internet. Just Grimgoogle to find the info on Wikitek!

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Either you have a technology that anyone can use, eg peasants with Ak-47's, or you have a technology with enough mechanics and articifers to put it right in the field. That still may be the case, but I fail to understand how tech being heretical squares up with, we can still maintain our kit.

I'm not sure what you mean by technology being heretical but it is the case that certain technologies like lasguns for example, are so simplistic and durable that the rituals of maintenance for those technologies are easy to learn and execute. The same cannot be said of plasma weapons which are incredibly difficult to maintain and use complex technology that is not as durable and similarly the machines and processes which make plasma technology are equally complex and difficult to understand and maintain. That is why the Imperium uses easily produced weapons and vehicles and sometimes, certain troops have access to the more rare and advanced forms of technology. I don't see what is so difficult to comprehend about that state of affairs.

As to tech-heresy itself, well certain types of technology are autmatically heretical, AI for example, and then other technologies are so likened with xenos tech they are viewd with suspicion and often outright malice, like jetbikes speciffically. Then of course you have the unwillingness of the keepers of technology to reverse engineer and experiment, not to say that they don't, but most don't and those who do so in a laborious fashion which may takes centuries to produce anything worthwhile.

D.Smith wrote:From my interpretation the imperium lost the "majority" of the blueprints (i think there STC's or something in the fluff but i cant quite remember lol) for its greatest creations.

The Imperium didn't loose anything, the STCs for alot of things were lost before the creation of the IoM.

The cause of the downfall is the removal of the Emperor from ruling day to day, he had the ability to keep everyone, including Mars, on track. Without him the science was replaced with dogma and dogma turned to ritual and in that the true knowledge was lost.

The techpriests can be better percieved as alchemists and not scientists, they guard their knowledge and keep it secret, even among the other techpriests.

Its not very hard to believe, seeing as it has happened several times in human history.

I think my (mis) understanding is to blame Gogsnick.
Erroneously thought all tech was seen as bad.

thanks

Imperium Thought for the Day:

Knowledge is power, guard it well.

I liken it to the Roman Empire. As grand as it was it never had an industrial revolution (mainly because of a slave based economy) so technological innovation and advancement was minor if not non existant. It basically reached a point where it couldn`t go any further. And some things were indeed lost. Take Greek Fire for instance. we know it existed we`re just not sure how they made it (Likely oil and sand). A sword in 450 AD was not that much different than the sword used in 45 BC. Plus the Romans stole a lot of tech. The Gladius, arches etc etc where all things they aquired and put into practice. It was something they were good at. then the dark ages hit and it gets worse because there is an actual regression of knowledge.

It isn`t inconceivable that over 10 000 years the Imperium would forget things. take us right now. Can anyone say for sure how the Egyptians built the pyramids? Or how stonehedge was built? We are only now starting to put that together. Yeah we can use the tech of today to replicate that stuff. But how did they do it?

And yes. The Imperium is losing. slowly, inch by inch. Just like the Romans.

Does anyone here know how to plow a field? This includes building the plow.

I mean we've been doing it for thousands years.

Good point. The average joe does not know how to build a field, break a horse and I doubt most people could start a fire without matches or a lighter. But hey, everyone has an ipod or cell phone.

If the zombie appocalypse hits we`d lose a lot of our tech. production. Think about it. There would be plenty of guns and bullets lying around but we wouldn`t be producing too many new ones. Likely our heirs and successors would be maintaining the ones we passed down to them. Our great grandsons would be using the same shotguns we had and would be canibalising other shotguns for parts. Ammo would become precious rare items.

Crantor wrote:Good point. The average joe does not know how to build a field, break a horse and I doubt most people could start a fire without matches or a lighter. But hey, everyone has an ipod or cell phone.

If the zombie appocalypse hits we`d lose a lot of our tech. production. Think about it. There would be plenty of guns and bullets lying around but we wouldn`t be producing too many new ones. Likely our heirs and successors would be maintaining the ones we passed down to them. Our great grandsons would be using the same shotguns we had and would be canibalising other shotguns for parts. Ammo would become precious rare items.

Once ammo runs out we go back to using axes, sharp metal things and bows.

Gogsnik wrote:Anyone who says that how the Imperium operates isn't feasible either doens't know the game or is rather ignorant of the way humans think and behave. The Warhammer 40,000 universe is not the modern day nations of the West in space and the mentality of the citizens of the Imperium have more in common with earlier ages of man than they do with modern day Westerners, realistically they are as alien to us as the Orks or Eldar would be.

To give some insight into the way technology is presented in the game I've copied out some sections of White Dwarf 93:

Technology is present, but it's not central to the way people think. Most common folk see technology as withcraft - so do the technicians!

The galaxy has been dominated by mankind since the Age of Technology. But that era is noe long gone, a semi-mythical time from which come half-understood and popularly feared ideas and machines known as the old science. The creators of the advanced technology that launched a million voyages of colonisation have been dead for over twenty thousand years. Fragmented over the entire galaxy, human civilisations developed and fell in pan-human wars, interstellar strife, social division and relgious fanatacism.

In Warhammer 40,000 technology takes a definite backseat, but that doesn't mean that there isn't any to be found. In fact, there's a whole range of advanced weapons, armour types and equipment. The range of technology available reflects the diversity of humanity,ranging from the primitive crosbows and slings used on feral worlds to the barely understood digital and force weapons carries by rich and powerful individuals.

Technology permeates the society of the Imperium dispite the mystic aura associated with it. Warp-engines propel spacecraft into the fluid medium of the warp-space whilst the Technomats of the Adeptus Mechanicus preserve the sacred knowledge of centuries etched upon the engineered memory cortexes in their brains. Warhammer 40,000 has all the hardware you'd expect in any futuristic game, but interpreted in a radically different way.


The Adeptus Mechanicus preserve the last remnants of Human scientific and technical knowledge but they do so from a perspective of mysticism and religious reverence. We might talk to our car for example when we think it might break on us but we understand that it is just a lump of metal and plastic. The Mechanicus and the peoples of the Imperium literally believe that the car can hear you, that it possesses a soul and is imbued with the holy spirit of the Omnisiah and that it must be appeased and persuaded to do your will. In some of the more advanced machines this can be seen to have a kernel of truth where organic components are utilised thus lending a living portion to the workings of the machine.

As objects of devotion, often more valued than human life and as sacred relics imbued with the spirit of their god, the Mechanicus don't just dismantle machines to see how they work and accordingly the older and more advnaced the technology the closer it is to the perfection of the Machine God and the less likely it is that they will jeopardise its continued functioning to sate curiosity. These machines are maintained by ritual, not by an understanding of mechanics, Tech Priests are like a cargo cult, radios and antennae re-created from bamboo and leaves because these people observed soldiers using similarly shaped objects to signal planes to drop cargo. They believe that by holding those objects and performing the same routines they will induce cargo to fall from the sky and the Mechancius operates under a similar pretense.

blinkin'eck - what a tome!... but spot on tho - 100% behind that one matey.

WARORK93 wrote:Okay so something's been nagging me for a while. Fluff and codex both tell us that the Imperium is slowly losing the ability to make its machines of war...

My question is why? You'd think with a galaxy spanning empire they'd write stuff down, put them in cogitators or whatever the Mechanicus uses, have a database somewhere central to store all of the plans.

I know the dark age of technology and the Horus heresy probably had lots of information lost but still, that doesn't explain how, according to fluff, the plans for the imperials war machines are in effect fading from memory, which is quite ridiculous if you ask me, if your factory has been makin Leman Russes for the past three thousand years, dont you thing someone would have written it down or at least devoted it to memory?

And that doesn't explain how the Imperium still has such a wide variety of war machines available still. If you cant remember how to make stuff how do new regiments found? With sticks and stones?

Someone want to be cool enough to explain this little anomaly to me? Or do you also think that GW is being a little ridiculous here?

welll they dont tend to rely on the machine spirits, because the dark age of technology teaches them to be careful about that issue..
Relying on too much to the machine spirit is too a heresy..May the emperor protects,

The imperium is almost one huge cult. Blind loyalty till death (for most) the inquisition says something is heresy then it is...... no questions. You dont want a power-sword up your ass for coming up with a new tank design when you dont live on mars. This said, its safe to assume 99% of the imperium has had a glass of the kool-aid

Honestly, the "wonders" that are slowly being forgotten seem to be mostly the hideously impractical things, like plasma weapons, so it stands to reason it's less "we're losing this valuable technology forever" and more "we're stopping production on this garbage because we have more important things to manufacture." The same principle explains why terminator armor and land raiders are so rare: they're impractical novelty items that are far more expensive to produce than their alternatives.


The Mechanicus does conduct research. In Dark Adeptus, I believe it was, it's stated that the Mechanicus maintains isolated facilities where new technology can be developed and properly vetted to ensure that it wasn't heretical. In other books, both the Mechanicus and Inquisition study and make use of xenos artifacts, and techpriests in particular are portrayed as psychotically willing to endanger themselves and others to get their hands on any form of unknown technology. I believe the techpriests justify reverse engineering xenotech with something along the lines of "if xenos can do it, obviously the Omnissiah did first, and just forgot to write it down for us, so it's really just recovering our old tech when you think about it," while Inquisitors just outright don't care, seeing themselves as above the petty Imperial creed.

xXSir MontyXx wrote: You dont want a power-sword up your ass for coming up with a new tank design when you dont live on mars.

Oh that is just awesome.

Contrary to popular opinion, the IoM is NOT losing Technology.

the Ad Mech does conduct research on Mars(albiet at a rate that would put a snail to sleep)



the reason many think the IoM loses technology is because of the destruction/loss of STCs.


an STC is a Standard Template Construct. a machine that is capable of replicating all known pieces of Human technology.

when the Old Night fell, most of the STCs were damaged and only capable of producing the blueprints of a few designs. each one would know different tech.



If an STC is destroyed, or a piece of Tech made by a lost STC is destroyed, it can't be replaced. the Ad Mech desires to examine all pieces of Technology to attempts to record the way it's made before it might be lost.

and just because an STC is lost doesn't mean the Tech can't be made. the Titan STC was destroyed because it was posessed by a Deamon in Information form. they are capable of making titans because they have copies of all the Titan schematics.


the Ad Mech is also constantly finding lost technology. the Land Raider and Land Speeder designs were found deep in the bowels of Mars shortly after the start of the great crusade.