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In another thread, it was raised that the numbers GW gives us are completely disproportionate to what is conceivably practical. Specifically, that 1000 chapters of 1000 Space Marines is nowhere near enough to perform the apparent duties of the Space Marines as elite shock troops. The suggestion put forward was to bump Chapter size up to one million, for a total of one billion Space Marines. I'd like to try and expand this, if not to the rest of the Galaxy, to the more general aspects of the Imperium. Note that I am referring primarily to body count, not things like technology.

I'll begin by giving a baseline from which to start. According to Lexicanum, there are approximately 32,000 Hive Worlds in the Imperium, averaging out to about a trillion humans per world. This obviously does not represent every world in the Imperium, but it does represent a large chunk of the population; it's enough to tell us that we're dealing with a total population well into the tens of quadrillions. Let's say 50 quadrillion for simplicity's sake.

If we use the US Marines as an example from which to work , we can see that they come in at about 200,000, or .066% of the population of ~300 million. However, if we look at the corps when the nation was in a state of war (WWII, in this case), the peak number was nearly 500,000, or .35% of the population.

A large number of bald assertions and speculative estimates follow. You have been warned.

The Imperium is in a state of constant war, so I think we can safely double the Marine Participation Rate to .7% of the population. This gives us about 350 trillion Storm Troopers (as equivalents to US Marines) serving the Emperor extrapolating WWII data.

Going by 1945 again, the US Army had about 8 million in service, which ends up being around 6% of the population. If we double this to account for the constant warfare, we end up with 6 quadrillion Guardsmen.

Given the long training time, selectiveness of recruitment, scarcity of geneseed, and the fluff capitalizing on how rarely they are seen, it's clear that Space Marines make up a small, small, part of the forces of the Imperium. Even if we say that the Adeptus Astartes are a thousand times rarer than Storm Troopers, that leaves an expected 350 billion Marines running around the Imperium. Meeting this figure would require either increasing Chapter size to ~100 million--which seems too large, even by 40k standards--or increasing the number of Chapters to a hundred thousand, and cite the missing ones as the Administratum being the Administratum.


Thoughts on this? Any values you would like to add?

I just want to point out that 21 million military men died in the second world war. That war was not a conflict to take over the world, nor was that conflict a conflict of annihilation. That is also the lower estimate of military deaths. We can add civilian losses and the total sky rockets.

The amount who took part in the war would have been huge.

Now imagine we faced a war where if we lost we ALL DIED. According to GW fluff this is the case. Now imagine a galaxy where whole armies can vanish when traveling. Imagine fighting on a planetary scale. Imagine the huge amount of issues these huge galactic scale events bring with them too.

You are gonna need a lot of men for every conflict that takes place. I can't give you a number simply because there is no framework to build up on it. But I know 1 million Marines spread out across the empire is nothing. You mentioned the Marines of WW2, they didn't fight over much land mass and nor was their enemy very effective. The amount of Marines who died from combat was very small while the enemy they killed was incredibly high. However if those Marines had to fight in other theaters around the world their numbers would have been very small indeed. Thats why the Army was planned to invade Japan. Marines simply lacked a meaningful number of soldiers for the invasion of a country.

I guess the main issue is using the USA to base your numbers on. I think it would be better to take a nation that suffered an actual invasion, who attempted to fight off the invasion and then had to take it's land back. You will get a better idea of the losses and manpower involved in a conflict like that I think.

The USSR LOST 13% of it's people due to the more brutal nature of that huge conflict. China lost around 3% as did Japan, Germany around 8% and Poland around 13% also. When dealing with invasions and full scale conflict the numbers are astronomical. Imagine if the war in Russia was on a planetary scale. The devastation would be huge and that's not the impression I get from 40k fluff at all.

Thinking back from my Guard codex I can't even find anything of detail abut their conflicts aside from "X regiment suffers high losses here" or "Necrons lost here" etc. Simply because citing actual numbers would be incredibly difficult.

If you want to know how much 13% of the USSR is, it's 27 million people roughly. That is for just a fight over 1 area of the world with losses from only one side. According to online places the battle of Terra (being the earth) had only 10s of millions of dead across Terra... to me that is way out of scale and is how I think GW fluff is usually written.

I have always thought that the fluff should fall a bit more in line with itself and the game. From the HH series we see that space marines were the shock troops, but were deployed in mass, sometimes as many as a hundred thousand fighting one planet, or rare cases where several legions deployed at the same time, meaning MILLIONS of astartes in one area. I would be fine with Chapters getting boosted to 10,000 individuals, that would make them about the size of a Division and would make it a lot more reasonable for them to do some of the more extravagant things they are given credit for. How can it be possible for a squad of space marines to take over a planet when all it takes is 10 lucky lascannon/melta/plasma/rending shots to kill the lot of them? And then increase the number of chapters to 100,000. that gives you about 1billion marines.

 Ghazkuul wrote:
I have always thought that the fluff should fall a bit more in line with itself and the game. From the HH series we see that space marines were the shock troops, but were deployed in mass, sometimes as many as a hundred thousand fighting one planet, or rare cases where several legions deployed at the same time, meaning MILLIONS of astartes in one area. I would be fine with Chapters getting boosted to 10,000 individuals, that would make them about the size of a Division and would make it a lot more reasonable for them to do some of the more extravagant things they are given credit for. How can it be possible for a squad of space marines to take over a planet when all it takes is 10 lucky lascannon/melta/plasma/rending shots to kill the lot of them? And then increase the number of chapters to 100,000. that gives you about 1billion marines.

A billion Marines is still pretty small by Imperial standards, though chapters of 10,000 sounds appealing. Even by my rather conservative estimates, you would need 100 billion Marines total to meet demand.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Swastakowey wrote:
I just want to point out that 21 million military men died in the second world war. That war was not a conflict to take over the world, nor was that conflict a conflict of annihilation. That is also the lower estimate of military deaths. We can add civilian losses and the total sky rockets.

The amount who took part in the war would have been huge.

Now imagine we faced a war where if we lost we ALL DIED. According to GW fluff this is the case. Now imagine a galaxy where whole armies can vanish when traveling. Imagine fighting on a planetary scale. Imagine the huge amount of issues these huge galactic scale events bring with them too.

You are gonna need a lot of men for every conflict that takes place. I can't give you a number simply because there is no framework to build up on it. But I know 1 million Marines spread out across the empire is nothing. You mentioned the Marines of WW2, they didn't fight over much land mass and nor was their enemy very effective. The amount of Marines who died from combat was very small while the enemy they killed was incredibly high. However if those Marines had to fight in other theaters around the world their numbers would have been very small indeed. Thats why the Army was planned to invade Japan. Marines simply lacked a meaningful number of soldiers for the invasion of a country.

I guess the main issue is using the USA to base your numbers on. I think it would be better to take a nation that suffered an actual invasion, who attempted to fight off the invasion and then had to take it's land back. You will get a better idea of the losses and manpower involved in a conflict like that I think.

The USSR LOST 13% of it's people due to the more brutal nature of that huge conflict. China lost around 3% as did Japan, Germany around 8% and Poland around 13% also. When dealing with invasions and full scale conflict the numbers are astronomical. Imagine if the war in Russia was on a planetary scale. The devastation would be huge and that's not the impression I get from 40k fluff at all.

Thinking back from my Guard codex I can't even find anything of detail abut their conflicts aside from "X regiment suffers high losses here" or "Necrons lost here" etc. Simply because citing actual numbers would be incredibly difficult.

If you want to know how much 13% of the USSR is, it's 27 million people roughly. That is for just a fight over 1 area of the world with losses from only one side. According to online places the battle of Terra (being the earth) had only 10s of millions of dead across Terra... to me that is way out of scale and is how I think GW fluff is usually written.

Thank you for the feedback. What are your thoughts on my final estimate for Astartes in the Imperium being 100 billion? Too small?

Space marines are far more elite than US Marines, though. If Army=IG, then I'd say Marine Corps=Stormtroopers. I would think the numbers of Space Marines relative to the rest of the Imperial forces would be closer to SEALs, Green berets, or more likely Delta Force. I don't have numbers of SOF for you, since it's likely classified.
Yes, the Imperium is in a constant state of war, but I don't think the US in WW2 is a measuring stick in terms of manpower. The USSR may be closer since it was closer to "total war" where everything was geared towards fighting the Germans, but they relied on US industry and aid for support. 90% of the German casualties were on the eastern front. The size/scale of armies and casualties from the US standpoint is much smaller than what the USSR had. So, while some worlds may be like the Soviets and dedicate most of what they have towards the war, other worlds must be like the US, and send industrial and agricultural aid to the other worlds/IG regiments. Fighting a war of extinction requires lots of manpower. The Nazis spent much of their resources maintaining concentration/death camps and the Gestapo/death squads in occupied areas. Resources that could've been spent on the front.
As Swastakowey pointed to, it's extremely difficult to try to find numbers that would make it feasible. I'd argue the USSR wasn't in a "total war" state like the Imperium supposedly is, and even that wasn't feasible in the long-term. They lacked the industry, workers, and farmland to feed and equip their army while fighting the Germans, relying on the allies for aid. I'm sure some of these planets use servitors and automatons for these functions which frees up manpower, but I still don't think it's feasible.

 Flanker wrote:
Space marines are far more elite than US Marines, though. If Army=IG, then I'd say Marine Corps=Stormtroopers. I would think the numbers of Space Marines relative to the rest of the Imperial forces would be closer to SEALs, Green berets, or more likely Delta Force. I don't have numbers of SOF for you, since it's likely classified.
Yes, the Imperium is in a constant state of war, but I don't think the US in WW2 is a measuring stick in terms of manpower. The USSR may be closer since it was closer to "total war" where everything was geared towards fighting the Germans, but they relied on US industry and aid for support. 90% of the German casualties were on the eastern front. The size/scale of armies and casualties from the US standpoint is much smaller than what the USSR had. So, while some worlds may be like the Soviets and dedicate most of what they have towards the war, other worlds must be like the US, and send industrial and agricultural aid to the other worlds/IG regiments. Fighting a war of extinction requires lots of manpower. The Nazis spent much of their resources maintaining concentration/death camps and the Gestapo/death squads in occupied areas. Resources that could've been spent on the front.
As Swastakowey pointed to, it's extremely difficult to try to find numbers that would make it feasible. I'd argue the USSR wasn't in a "total war" state like the Imperium supposedly is, and even that wasn't feasible in the long-term. They lacked the industry, workers, and farmland to feed and equip their army while fighting the Germans, relying on the allies for aid. I'm sure some of these planets use servitors and automatons for these functions which frees up manpower, but I still don't think it's feasible.

I think he was using generalizations because he was comparing real life to a fictional universe. That aside I think that his numbers are closer to the truth. And as far as Space Marines being US Marines. IM ok with that Comparison We are more badarse then the navy/army/Airforce after all

 Ghazkuul wrote:

I think he was using generalizations because he was comparing real life to a fictional universe. That aside I think that his numbers are closer to the truth. And as far as Space Marines being US Marines. IM ok with that Comparison We are more badarse then the navy/army/Airforce after all

More badass, absolutley. but utility? This ain't 40K, no bolter porn here. Air superiority wins overall.
I might be biased though. cough* Airforce cough*
Big ups to what Marines do though.


As far as the initial question I absolutly believe that the numbers need to be upscaled 100-200 million SM might be more acceptable.
That being said any kind of fluff change to that degree will be met with friction. Look at the Newcrons lore.

Flanker wrote:Space marines are far more elite than US Marines, though. If Army=IG, then I'd say Marine Corps=Stormtroopers. I would think the numbers of Space Marines relative to the rest of the Imperial forces would be closer to SEALs, Green berets, or more likely Delta Force. I don't have numbers of SOF for you, since it's likely classified.
Yes, the Imperium is in a constant state of war, but I don't think the US in WW2 is a measuring stick in terms of manpower. The USSR may be closer since it was closer to "total war" where everything was geared towards fighting the Germans, but they relied on US industry and aid for support. 90% of the German casualties were on the eastern front. The size/scale of armies and casualties from the US standpoint is much smaller than what the USSR had. So, while some worlds may be like the Soviets and dedicate most of what they have towards the war, other worlds must be like the US, and send industrial and agricultural aid to the other worlds/IG regiments. Fighting a war of extinction requires lots of manpower. The Nazis spent much of their resources maintaining concentration/death camps and the Gestapo/death squads in occupied areas. Resources that could've been spent on the front.
As Swastakowey pointed to, it's extremely difficult to try to find numbers that would make it feasible. I'd argue the USSR wasn't in a "total war" state like the Imperium supposedly is, and even that wasn't feasible in the long-term. They lacked the industry, workers, and farmland to feed and equip their army while fighting the Germans, relying on the allies for aid. I'm sure some of these planets use servitors and automatons for these functions which frees up manpower, but I still don't think it's feasible.

That's actually what I did in the OP. I assumed US marines=Tempestus, then arbitrarily made Astartes a thousand times more rare than Tempestus forces.

I absolutely agree that the chapter size should be changed to 10,000. Of course, the fluff has hinted and outright said more than once that the 1,000 is often ignored. The Ultramarines are the extreme example of this. The 1,000 chapter size also does not take into account new but not complete marines, their supporting crew (regular humans who do all the mundane day-to-day maintenance, etc.), and servitors. I think if they moved the baseline to 10,000 then we could comfortably be looking at roughly 50,000 total strength of a standard chapter including their dependents and place the larger chapters that are stretching the restrictions at 100,000+.

Either way, I support the idea that the total size of the space marine force should be changed and the OP suggestion that you blame it on the failings of the administration would work perfectly fine. I have always though of it that way anyways.

Proper Scale railguns of the Tau would be shooting around the curvature of the Earth. You think it's bad now with how far away it can shoot? In real life it would be able to shoot from 220/354 miles/kilometers away and that's a first generation human railgun being built and going to be installed on ships in the near future. With enough force to pierce through and explode a Cruisers hull armor like it's made of tissue paper. Naturally once inside the hull a proximity detonator will explode because why not. With the accuracy to aim and hit a human on a small propeller boat. They expect to be able to hit humans heads in a few more generations of the targeting software (this is with capital ship sized weaponry on modern day vessels). Imagine what a space ship with quantum computers could do.

Edit
A single Hammerhead would basically one shot kill every time it fires. It would be able to take down thousands of Leman Rus battle tanks without even breaking a sweat. Then in lore HH can speed around at several hundred miles per hour and skim around. The LE would never have a chance in hell to catch it. It's like sending 5000 T-34's against a few modern day Abrams tanks. Want to see what happens when a WW2 tank tried to fight a then modern Abrams tank? Lion of Babyolon tank. Google it.

Edit
The LOB tank was made in the 1980's and was decimated by American tanks. It managed to damage a few here and there but that was it. Now imagine an WW2 tank? How gakky they would be tryinng to fight a Abrams. It would be like making the Bob Sempleton tank fight the Abrams. The Bob Sempleton would have been hard pressed to stop a mob with hunting rifles.

I think the chapter size should actually be 1,000,000 or even 10,000,000-100,000,000. Galaxies are huge. Weapons like titans or nukes or whatever Xenos have can kill 10K marines on accident. Dante being in charge of millions of BA and thousands of ships and tanks and vehicles makes a lot more sense than someone like him being in charge of basically a tree-house club.

Comparing space marines to US marines is absurd.

US marines are maybe MAYBE comparable to IG veterans (how many US marines fought superhuman alien forces?)

A space marine, in scale, is equal not to even the most elite units, but the most elite individuals. The one in a few millions kind that no amount of training in the real world limits can replicate, people like freaking Simo Hayha, ranking kills in the hundreds with simple guns. And then you add superpowers.

These guys in fluff are walking tanks. The tactical value of modern jet fighters.
If you compare jet fighter per population, you might get a good estimate.

In the lore it says we can make a friggen manta every six ish or so months due automation revolution the Imperium could only hope to have.

A single Manta could easily kill a Titan which takes centuries to make if not more. If we lose a single Manta taking out even 1+ Titans it's a worth while effort for us to do it. Eventually our enemy is not going to have any more of their strongest weapon, and we can always make more Manta's. This only gets worse the more planets we conquer and set to the production of anything really. Now imagine how long range its guns are since they're so much larger and more powerful than the HH's.

All right, I've decided to redo my numbers using the USSR as a baseline.

The Red Army's peak size during WWII was 34 million. That's a whopping 17% of the population at the time, which was 196 million. This gives us an Imperial Guard size of 8 and a half quadrillion, which isn't far off from my first estimate, which called for doubling the relative size of US forces.

The Naval Infantry (US Marine equivalent) of the USSR was 350,000 strong during WWII. This ends up being .18% of the population, or only about half the relative size of the US Marines. Understandable, given that the Soviets were waging a primarily terrestrial war. The Milatarum Tempestus don't have that restriction, however, so I'll stick to using the US as a baseline for these. Once again, this gives us a Militarum Tempestus size of 350 trillion.

Because I based my Spess Mehreen calcualtions on Storm Troopers, this still calls for ~350 billion Astartes. I'll list some possible configurations below:

Chapters of 100,000, needing in excess of 3 million chapters to hit that number.

Chapters with a strength of 1 million, needing around 300,000 chapters to hit the predicted size

Chapters that number 10 million, needing 30,000 chapters to hit the extrapolated total.

All things considered, I prefer 300,000 chapters of a million. Each chapter is an army in its own right, but there are still few enough that each one can be distinct.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BoomWolf wrote:
Comparing space marines to US marines is absurd.

US marines are maybe MAYBE comparable to IG veterans (how many US marines fought superhuman alien forces?)

A space marine, in scale, is equal not to even the most elite units, but the most elite individuals. The one in a few millions kind that no amount of training in the real world limits can replicate, people like freaking Simo Hayha, ranking kills in the hundreds with simple guns. And then you add superpowers.

These guys in fluff are walking tanks. The tactical value of modern jet fighters.
If you compare jet fighter per population, you might get a good estimate.

As said before, I was comparing US marines to Militarum Tempestus. I calculated Astartes population by assuming Space Marines were 1,000 times less common than a Storm Trooper.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Comparing space marines to US marines is absurd.

US marines are maybe MAYBE comparable to IG veterans (how many US marines fought superhuman alien forces?)

A space marine, in scale, is equal not to even the most elite units, but the most elite individuals. The one in a few millions kind that no amount of training in the real world limits can replicate, people like freaking Simo Hayha, ranking kills in the hundreds with simple guns. And then you add superpowers.

These guys in fluff are walking tanks. The tactical value of modern jet fighters.
If you compare jet fighter per population, you might get a good estimate.

But the fluff is already absurd and to be ignored. In practice, the Eldar could exterminate 10 chapters a week with star cannons if we went by fluff numbers. There must be more than 1K marines per chapter. It is necessarily true due to the size of a galaxy. Asorel's numbers sound reasonable for a GALACTIC conflict.

Martel732 wrote:
I think the chapter size should actually be 1,000,000 or even 10,000,000-100,000,000. Galaxies are huge. Weapons like titans or nukes or whatever Xenos have can kill 10K marines on accident. Dante being in charge of millions of BA and thousands of ships and tanks and vehicles makes a lot more sense than someone like him being in charge of basically a tree-house club.

That was part of my inspiration as well. Not just Dante, but all of the Chapter Masters. My personal canon right now is Chapters of 1-10 million, with the Legions pre-Heresy numbering in the billions.

Martel732 wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
Comparing space marines to US marines is absurd.

US marines are maybe MAYBE comparable to IG veterans (how many US marines fought superhuman alien forces?)

A space marine, in scale, is equal not to even the most elite units, but the most elite individuals. The one in a few millions kind that no amount of training in the real world limits can replicate, people like freaking Simo Hayha, ranking kills in the hundreds with simple guns. And then you add superpowers.

These guys in fluff are walking tanks. The tactical value of modern jet fighters.
If you compare jet fighter per population, you might get a good estimate.

But the fluff is already absurd and to be ignored. In practice, the Eldar could exterminate 10 chapters a week with star cannons if we went by fluff numbers. There must be more than 1K marines per chapter. It is necessarily true due to the size of a galaxy. Asorel's numbers sound reasonable for a GALACTIC conflict.

^ Well this is the problem of the fluff.

If you take fluff as an example a lone marine would be able to defeat a few thousand average humans. Originally the pre-horus legions numbered about 10,000, now it goes from 10,000 all the way to 250,000 for Ultramarines. Games workshop like usualy has it's fluff all over the place.

Now space marines being used is suppose to be quite rare, with most campaigns not even using entire chapters, with most using a few companies. The main problem is, even with the fluff as it is, as soon as they start facing armies in their millions they would struggle (never mind tens of millions). For any realistic number, for a lone campaign, they need companys with tens of thousands of space marines. Overall requiring a chapter of 100,000. However that would bring us to pre-horus numbers, which obviously causes issues.

Basically Games Workshop from the very beginning messed up the SM scale in fluff when creating the 40k universe.

 Gamgee wrote:
In the lore it says we can make a friggen manta every six ish or so months due automation revolution the Imperium could only hope to have.

A single Manta could easily kill a Titan which takes centuries to make if not more. If we lose a single Manta taking out even 1+ Titans it's a worth while effort for us to do it. Eventually our enemy is not going to have any more of their strongest weapon, and we can always make more Manta's. This only gets worse the more planets we conquer and set to the production of anything really. Now imagine how long range its guns are since they're so much larger and more powerful than the HH's.

Is this new fluff - previously Mantas and those Titans deployed against - mostly Warhounds - were an even match and until the deployment of new specialist aifcraft the only thing that the Tau could throw into the fray that would surivive agianst such war machines. Even when reluectantly deployed without air cover - several Warhounds and Astartes support shattered Tau forces on Taros - they had better range and almost unsailable protection. Of course the Tau did in fact empoy a very cool "Titan" Killer - sort of a super A10 but both that craft and the US aircraft must haev air superiroity in order to be effective........

If the Imperium could deploy a full Titan Legion with intergral support including anti-air defences there is little that could stand before it. But the Impeium can't and won't

Titans dont take that long to make as far as I am aware - although to be fair the fluff flutctuate on their rareity and difficulty of construction. So the entire industrial capacity of the Tau Empire can produce just one super heavy flyer every six months? Remember these also serve as the primary "fighter" cover and "attack craft" for Tau navy.......

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Gamgee wrote:
In the lore it says we can make a friggen manta every six ish or so months due automation revolution the Imperium could only hope to have.

A single Manta could easily kill a Titan which takes centuries to make if not more. If we lose a single Manta taking out even 1+ Titans it's a worth while effort for us to do it. Eventually our enemy is not going to have any more of their strongest weapon, and we can always make more Manta's. This only gets worse the more planets we conquer and set to the production of anything really. Now imagine how long range its guns are since they're so much larger and more powerful than the HH's.

Is this new fluff - previously Mantas and those Titans deployed against - mostly Warhounds - were an even match and until the deployment of new specialist aifcraft the only thing that the Tau could throw into the fray that would surivive agianst such war machines. Even when reluectantly deployed without air cover - several Warhounds and Astartes support shattered Tau forces on Taros - they had better range and almost unsailable protection. Of course the Tau did in fact empoy a very cool "Titan" Killer - sort of a super A10 but both that craft and the US aircraft must haev air superiroity in order to be effective........

If the Imperium could deploy a full Titan Legion with intergral support including anti-air defences there is little that could stand before it. But the Impeium can't and won't

Titans dont take that long to make as far as I am aware - although to be fair the fluff flutctuate on their rareity and difficulty of construction. So the entire industrial capacity of the Tau Empire can produce just one super heavy flyer every six months? Remember these also serve as the primary "fighter" cover and "attack craft" for Tau navy.......

My theory is that the Mechanicus greatly exaggerates the rarity and difficulty of manufacturing Titans (among other things). Didn't humanity 'nobly sacrifice' an Emperor-class battleship and a metric f*ckton of Titans when the Tyranids first showed up in Ultramar? If we assume the Imperial generals and admirals aren't completely stupid (yes, I know), it would seem to me that they wouldn't just throw away irreplaceable relics in this fashion.

Basically, most of the higher-ups are well aware of the true difficulty of manufacturing these, and the AdMech know they know, but they do it anyways to keep up appearances.

Indeed - during the Gothic War a Fereal world with sky temples in orbit was able to produce a fully operational Lunar class Crusier in 11 years! - given that this class can be prouduced quickly (several years) by industralised worlds - the production of maybe five or six Manta's by the entire Tau empire sounds less impressive

(Source - Battlefleet Gothic)

As it stands according to the fluff, the number of LRBT's vastly outnumber the space marines, which makes you think, about how effective would a legion really be in such small numbers when you can match each space marine against a tank, not even including all the other troops. I would totally agree with a much larger chapter size.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Indeed - during the Gothic War a Fereal world with sky temples in orbit was able to produce a fully operational Lunar class Crusier in 11 years! - given that this class can be prouduced quickly (several years) by industralised worlds - the production of maybe five or six Manta's by the entire Tau empire sounds less impressive

(Source - Battlefleet Gothic)

And in Battlefleet Gothic the Manta had a 4+ save and could be mass produced in the thousands? Depends on how many ground factories are assigned to it. We know that there are entire production planets in the Tau Empire, but all of their planets have at least one large production area assigned that spreads across the surface. It was basically our fighter craft. Quite capable of causing mayhem among larger ships and its relatively cheap to make. Also you don't seem to realize the Tau Empire probably has hundreds of thousands of worlds within it. I don't think you realize how big SPAAAACE is. Not to mention they can terraform an entire planet if need be. So a lot more of the worlds in their space will be usable. Where as in the Imperium only a few worlds will be true production worlds. Where as almost every Tau world has that capacity. Also a single factory when the Tau factories can spread across the entire planet alongside Earth Caste factories and science labs to further develop and test things.

Their space ships are built in orbit. The manta is easily built on the planet and fly up to dock with bigger vessels. So yes it is a marvel of efficiency. Imagine how fast they spit out their capital ships. Only a few years for the largest of them. Not to mention we can always improve out technology if need be.

UrsoerTheSquid wrote:
As it stands according to the fluff, the number of LRBT's vastly outnumber the space marines, which makes you think, about how effective would a legion really be in such small numbers when you can match each space marine against a tank, not even including all the other troops. I would totally agree with a much larger chapter size.

You can't match SM against Russes.

The Marines can get where the tank can't, and much much faster.

I agree, the marines are much more adaptable,able to actually enter buildings and such, but with regards to numbers 1000 space marines seems a little low on the number scale when they can send in 10,000 russ' to attack a position. The numbers need to be much higher.

I do not agree with you logic at all, because we do not have military personnel that compares to the space marines. If you wanted to look at the space marines I would think of them maybe as the top .01 percent of the delta force or specialist seal teams... we are talking 1 in a billion, and you have to remember that 99% of the humans in the imperium are essentially living in third world conditions thus making it impossible to turn them into a space marine because of their baseline health.

Marines are pulled from feral and fuedal worlds, where the citizens live a harsh life, however, it is a life that promotes health... meaning that even though there are trillions of people really less than 5%-10% of them would even be in the pool of possible candidates to become a marine.

Thyhadras wrote:
I do not agree with you logic at all, because we do not have military personnel that compares to the space marines. If you wanted to look at the space marines I would think of them maybe as the top .01 percent of the delta force or specialist seal teams... we are talking 1 in a billion, and you have to remember that 99% of the humans in the imperium are essentially living in third world conditions thus making it impossible to turn them into a space marine because of their baseline health.

Marines are pulled from feral and fuedal worlds, where the citizens live a harsh life, however, it is a life that promotes health... meaning that even though there are trillions of people really less than 5%-10% of them would even be in the pool of possible candidates to become a marine.

5% of several quadrillion is still an enormous number. I stand by the idea that there would have to be millions, or even billions of marines to be significant on a galactic scale. Functionally, they aren't that much better than humans in mass combat.

To be honest though they are not functional on a galactic scale, I mean really if they were functional and doing what you are making them out to be then there would be no strife.

Thyhadras wrote:
To be honest though they are not functional on a galactic scale, I mean really if they were functional and doing what you are making them out to be then there would be no strife.

There would still be a TON of strife. Given how the firepower of Tau/Eldar for starters, marines would have to be replaced by the thousands each month.

Also, if they are not functional on a galactic scale, there's no reason to even keep them around.

Thyhadras wrote:
I do not agree with you logic at all, because we do not have military personnel that compares to the space marines. If you wanted to look at the space marines I would think of them maybe as the top .01 percent of the delta force or specialist seal teams....

Except that's almost exactly what I did. My assumption was that an Astartes was 1000 times less common than a Storm Trooper, which is to say that elite force of the Imperial Guard. Technically that's 0.1 percent instead of 0.01 percent, but even if I use your estimate, we're still looking at 35+ billion Astartes.

When the population is in the quadrillions, things get big.