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nomotog wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:
But he can. Talos does quite a lot of sneaking in both Night Lords book. The only sound he emits is the buzz of his armour whilst powered on, and even then most humans aren't going to think its from someone sneaking up on them.

He makes a buzzing sound and he still is trying to sneak? 8' tall, clad in metal, and now they buzz. SMs are not meant to be foot padding around. That doesn't men they can't sneak. In a battle field you can be quite sneaky well firing full auto on a rifle. (fog of war and what not) They just wouldn't be good at sneaking/infiltration. If a SM sneaks into your base, you will know it.

He sneaks around in a penal colony prison in the dark, the buzz is the only noise. Talos and most of the other Claws aboard the ship infiltrate a fortress monastery whilst its scanners are down. They then sneak around killing servants for a few days, completely undetected.

nomotog wrote:I actually I wonder how much it cost to train a SM. They seem to do most of that themselves. They also seem to craft an maintain there own equipment. Almost like they are a self sustaining force.

They're not self sustaining, they don't manufacture their own armor, weapons, ammunition or vehicles, they depend on the Imperium for all of their mechanical toys. While they can repair most of their gear (and therefore have gear that has a longer service life), they still depend on the Imperium for resources.

Like all economic choices, there is no free lunch. How much time and energy is spent on a world dedicated to producing Space Marines that could be better spent training, equipping, or feeding Guardsmen?

However, there are other reasons for training and keeping Space Marines. Most importantly, because they're a different tool than the Guard and are better at certain things. A million guardsmen may be able to land on a planet and take out the planetary governor to enforce compliance, or you could just drop a squad of SM in the governor's mansion and take out the problem at it's source. If the planet is beyond saving, then it doesn't make sense to try to occupy the planet with SM.

biccat wrote:

nomotog wrote:I actually I wonder how much it cost to train a SM. They seem to do most of that themselves. They also seem to craft an maintain there own equipment. Almost like they are a self sustaining force.

They're not self sustaining, they don't manufacture their own armor, weapons, ammunition or vehicles, they depend on the Imperium for all of their mechanical toys. While they can repair most of their gear (and therefore have gear that has a longer service life), they still depend on the Imperium for resources.

Like all economic choices, there is no free lunch. How much time and energy is spent on a world dedicated to producing Space Marines that could be better spent training, equipping, or feeding Guardsmen?

However, there are other reasons for training and keeping Space Marines. Most importantly, because they're a different tool than the Guard and are better at certain things. A million guardsmen may be able to land on a planet and take out the planetary governor to enforce compliance, or you could just drop a squad of SM in the governor's mansion and take out the problem at it's source. If the planet is beyond saving, then it doesn't make sense to try to occupy the planet with SM.

I doubt that the amount of equipment that is produced for the Spess Muhreens is particularly high. Many chapters can produce their own basic vehicles as well as guns and probably even power armour.
Even those who can't do this won't need particularly large amounts of equipment ( i mean, look at their pitiful vehicles numbers. a few dozen Rhinos + Razorbacks, perhaps 2-3 dozen tanks and a few thousand guns....that's laughable ) In fact i am fairly certain that a single Forgeworld would be able to produce all the equipment ( with the exception of a chapter's naval assets of course ) for every single marine chapter and still has plenty of industrial resources left.

Why are we comparing space marines to guardsmen? Thats like hulk hogan with a chainsaw and an mp5 vs the biggest nerd on your local school.
Imperial guard is the only army with iron disciplin and looks like the nazis and sovjets. Stylish

lolman112 wrote:Why are we comparing space marines to guardsmen? Thats like hulk hogan with a chainsaw and an mp5 vs the biggest nerd on your local school.
Imperial guard is the only army with iron disciplin and looks like the nazis and sovjets. Stylish

We are also comparing them to cats. And the cats have the most votes.

Vaktathi wrote:Or they turn and snap fire at point blank range and burn him down.

Why does everyone assume that guardsmen panic, lose their minds, and become unable to fight back when anything scary looking gets close?

I mean seriously...do these guys look like they're gonna do anything besides shoot the piss or bayonet anything that gets close, much less panic and flee?

It's not so much that, it's more like the average guardsman is a piece of crap compared to anything short of a Gretchin on the battlefields of 40k.

Las-rounds aren't even particularly likely to kill an Ork Boy in the fluff unless they get a headshot, in CC the Marine is easily the more dominant foe compared to the guardsmen.

Vaktathi wrote: Or they turn and snap fire at point blank range and burn him down.

Why does everyone assume that guardsmen panic, lose their minds, and become unable to fight back when anything scary looking gets close?

I mean seriously...do these guys look like they're gonna do anything besides shoot the piss or bayonet anything that gets close, much less panic and flee?

Those guys happen to be the most bad arsed IG out there, hardly average.

your typical guardsmen was recruited without his consent(although he is often willing), given several months of target practice and drills in the hold of a space ship, and then arrives at a battlefield where his chance of surviving his first battle is fairly slim. those that do survive learn fast, but they hardly make up the majority.


and I don't know about you, but if a half ton Demi-god wielding a chainsaw suddenly slammed down besides me I would probably either run away like an olympic champ or faint dead away.

A bit stronger than I like my coffee.

It takes a couple of hours to get it down. Usually, after brewing it, the coffee takes flight and tries to get outside. The last time, it managed to get out one of the open windows and mangled a few bike riders down the street. I arrived just before it got to the Little League field, and managed to bring it down with a couple of rounds from my elephant gun.

Nowadays, we usually just stick a claymore mine in front of the pot. It's remarkable how well we're now able to quickly remove the shrapnel.

biccat wrote:

daedalus-templarius wrote:Whatever, if you are going to boil it down to numbers in any way at all, one SM to 10 guardsmen is a gross misallocation of resources.

They'd be way better off just using the resources for the Space Marines to train more guardsmen.

Yup.

Training space marines doesn't make sense from a perspective of simple resource allocation. Therefore, there must be other reasons why the Imperium uses Space Marines.

Well, the whole premise of the thread is a bit naff.

How many Guardsmen would it take to topple a well defended hive city? Hundreds of thousands, inlcuding armour and support mechanisms and Imperial Navy resources.

How many Marines would it take to topple the same city?

Ten.

The 'value' of the Astartes rests in their deployment methods and ability as shock troopers. Where the Guard have to bludgeon their way in through the front gates the Marines can deploy directly onto their target. At range, they are just another grunt with a gun, worth maybe a handful of Imperial Guard troopers. But deployed to the right place at the right time, they are worth more than entire regiments.

It's the difference between an Imperial cruiser battering down the shields of an enemy ship, then slowly pummelling it into pieces, or a single squad of Terminators teleporting directly onto the enemy bridge.

Thats why this thread doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because its not giving the question any frame of reference.

biccat wrote:


Like all economic choices, there is no free lunch. How much time and energy is spent on a world dedicated to producing Space Marines that could be better spent training, equipping, or feeding Guardsmen?
.

zero time and zero energy.
Plus, we know that the IoM has billions of regiments of IG and these are enough so they are free to spent whatever they please somewhere else. Is there a reason to ignore the independece of organzations in the IoM?

When you think about it, the IoM's recrutement rate isn't one of an entitiy on a war footing at all.
Why should the crappy take on scale the authors seem to have be different when it comes to economy?

I'd say the picture of the adeptus astartes in the HH series is closer to the "reality" than some other sources.

Hows a marine gonna survive a hundred guardsman shooting his genetically modified a** of?

Personslly, I was borrowing a SM from a friend for referance, and my cat walks into my room. now normally, all of my models, even my gory nids, or communist guardsmen don't even phase her, she was transfixed by this one, crappily painted SM, then she failed her morale check and fled into another room. so I have to give it to one excited cat.

On the question of how strong I -like- my Space Marines?

Very strong. If I'm reading about a Space Marine, or a squad or even Chapter of Space Marines, I don't want to know about that one guy who got blown apart by the sniper with a lasgun and alot of luck. I want to read about a squad descending on high on jump-packs into a large group and ripping them apart with chainsword, combat knife and bolter, or whatever the hell else they've got. I want to hear about the Space Marine who climbed a Carnifex and slammed his chainsword through the top of it's head (The Assault Marine sync-kill in DoWII), not that guy who's armor wasn't properly maintained, failed, and he took a round straight through his brain.

Admittedly, I am a Space Marine 'fanboi'. I legitimately enjoy their fluff (Coming from a DnD background, I always enjoyed the crusading knight, although I enjoyed the powerful Mage more, and the Marines satisfy both those), and find them far more fascinating than anything else out there in the Warhammer Universe (Although I do enjoy the other aspects, just not as much).

On the question of how strong I -think- Space Marines are in a comparison to the Imperial Guard (Based on fluff, not tabletop):

It depends on the regiment, the situation, and far too many other things for me to give a flat number.

In a straight out firefight? It would depend on the regiment, and the training. If it's a regiment of unseasoned men, or men with no real training...a single marine could probably easily take a couple of squads no problem. I imagine there would be a severe breakdown in disciplined fire as that 7+ foot tall guy in massive armor you've been trying to bring down for the last hundred meters or so just keeps on coming, while blowing your friends and squadmates apart all around you with a gun that he totes around in one hand but it looks like it would take two for you to even lift, let alone fire, and a roaring chainsword in the other hand. A regiment of seasoned men trained from a young age (I.E Cadians)? Probably a squad, maybe slightly more. Their fire would be all around better, and I doubt they'd lose too much discipline while the rest of the squad went down, but they are still kicking around a lasgun which doesn't have a large chance of doing anything against ceramite, against a moving target who can probably read their shots quite well...and once he makes close-combat it's all over.

Pitting one man against an indeterminate amount of guardsmen in a city-sprawl over a longer period of time? Once again, it depends on the regiment and the length and depth of their training, but I'd say at least 30-40 men no matter the regiment for a rank and file Astartes. Running around picking off small groups, weakening morale.....even if at the beginning he's picking off stragglers from patrols, that guy who needs to take a piss, that shot from the window 500m down the road and he's gone before you even get close....the more mounting deaths, the greater the apprehension becomes, the easier job he has of it against disheartened and dis-spirited men. Some regiments would obviously fare better than others, but I think even Cadians/Mordians/Catachans/etc. can feel fear.

Of course, these numbers change again if you place a squad against a set amount of Guardsmen, the ratio going up, and even more if it's a company against a regiment.

On the question of why would the Imperium train Astartes if they're only the stand-up equal of 10-20 well-trained Guardsmen?

There's numerous reasons.

First, they're training someone to the point where they can guarantee they won't run in fear, they won't lose potency as the enemy approaches, they won't lose their minds fighting daemons and other horrors....and they're giving all this training to a man who was already the pinnacle of human physical perfection and has been further enhanced into a super-human killing machine, a killing machine who can withstand things that would kill a normal human, get up and keep fighting. Then they're training this killing machine to an absurd level where it can make shots we would deem impossible, and kill a man in a single well placed blow with a fist.

Then they're giving these guys who will stand their ground and fight everytime all their best toys. They're giving them the best armor, the best weapons, great ships....further enhancing their bad-assery, and just what they're capable of.

Then, finally, they're training their minds. They're using those enhanced cognitive functions of their minds to teach them tactics that would baffle 99.9% of Imperial Commanders, and how to process battlefield information in a heartbeat and plan the most efficient use of resources. They're training them in shock tactics, in using a single squad inserted in the right position to fulfill an objective that would take hundreds of guardsmen, to fall out of the sky in drop-pods/jump-packs/Thunderhawks etc. that will get them past most conventional air-defenses and sow havoc in the middle of an enemy camp, slaughtering large portions of the force before they even begin to respond.....they're being trained in tactics that use Astartes in such a way that it doesn't matter if they could only take 10 or so in a standup firefight...the entire strikeforce is hitting on section of the line and hitting it fast, punching through and wiping it out before the rest of the force can even respond...and then moving in as the line falls apart.

They are the scalpel to the Imperial Guards Hammer. You can beat a man to death with your fists but it takes alot less effort and is alot more efficient to open up the jugular, any other major artery or any major organ, and alot quicker with less damage to yourself.

Regardless of how strong they are, they can't climb stairs or fit through most tunnels. I mean, just make an entire underground heretical bunker for humans and you'll never have to worry about space marines.
Oh and put it in the second floor.

A Melta will sort that out. Or a fist. Walls offer little opposition.

Enjoy having to melta every inch you intend to walk through.

They don't have to, they don't even need to use a meltagun. By simply placing krak grenades or melta bombs at proper locations on the bunker they can collapse the entire thing and kill everyone inside. So really, it is not a very good defense against Space Marines.

Where does it say marines cannot climb stairs?

I could have sworn in Nightbringer, Uriel was in the nosebleed seats in the Pavonis Congress room.

People assume that because Space Marines are so heavy, they would be unable to climb stairs meant for humans.

I'm in the 15-30 range because I think it marks a nice balance between the range and melee. In melee The marine is likely to defeat more, at range however I give the multitude of shots the advantage.

Fluff thinking:

We have plenty of fluff showing guard fighting chaos marines, there was a group of 3 or 4 in one of the Cain novels, Cain was "lucky" even the book admits to that when he killed two of them, and a small group of Chaos SM plowed through 100+ cultists before death final overtook them.

On the other hand we have stories of Marine Units holding out despite all, thinking "Rynn's World" where the guard were almost useless but a hand full of Marines and an unmanned Landraider won the day...sort of. ( I doubt Cantor thought of it as a win.)

But a cultist isn't a guardsman.

Game thinking:

Its just hard to figure on these because of the unit thinking. One marine on his own is not unstoppable, I would not put one marine up against a guard unit in a game. One unit of marines however is very difficult to bring down an I have seen them wipe off a full guard unit in one turn. Guard are the same, 1 character is a dead-man, a unit can take heavy losses and still be effective.

Lyzin Locrian wrote:They don't have to, they don't even need to use a meltagun. By simply placing krak grenades or melta bombs at proper locations on the bunker they can collapse the entire thing and kill everyone inside. So really, it is not a very good defense against Space Marines.

Same goes for against any troops adequately equipped with demolition devices. However, they have to get to the bunker in one piece which is usually the hard part, especially considering bunkers usually are in groups together with other bunkers/pillboxes/etc that can cover each other. Krak grenades won't hurt a solid bunker unless they're already inside it and they're wiring up a ton of them.

Do you not think that the point is irrelevant? If you want to gauge a ratio of Space Marines to guard, putting the latter in a defensible bunker isn't exactly fair.

iproxtaco wrote:Do you not think that the point is irrelevant? If you want to gauge a ratio of Space Marines to guard, putting the latter in a defensible bunker isn't exactly fair.

Well we could always go a naked SM with his combat knife versus a naked guardsman with his combat knife. But that would just be embarrassingly one sided. After all the SM combat knife is probably the same length as the guardsman torso and head

I like them strong enough to pick up a Sister of Battle in power armor and carry her wounded body away from the fighting as bullets fly past, pinging off his armor, and explosions tear holes in the ground all around them. His Brother Marines and her Sisters of Battle cover their retreat. The Sister of Battle would of course be killing things with her bolter one-handed as she's carried. All this happens in slow motion, of course. ^_^ And maybe some down-tempo music playing, like Mondo Bongo. The whole scene would be a la the final battle scene of the movie, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

Pouncey wrote:I like them strong enough to pick up a Sister of Battle in power armor and carry her wounded body away from the fighting as bullets fly past, pinging off his armor, and explosions tear holes in the ground all around them. His Brother Marines and her Sisters of Battle cover their retreat. All this happens in slow motion, of course. ^_^ And maybe some down-tempo music playing, like Mondo Bongo. The whole scene would be a la the final battle scene of the movie, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

What?

Void__Dragon wrote:

Pouncey wrote:I like them strong enough to pick up a Sister of Battle in power armor and carry her wounded body away from the fighting as bullets fly past, pinging off his armor, and explosions tear holes in the ground all around them. His Brother Marines and her Sisters of Battle cover their retreat. All this happens in slow motion, of course. ^_^ And maybe some down-tempo music playing, like Mondo Bongo. The whole scene would be a la the final battle scene of the movie, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

What?

I don't understand the question.

Neither do I.

iproxtaco wrote:Do you not think that the point is irrelevant? If you want to gauge a ratio of Space Marines to guard, putting the latter in a defensible bunker isn't exactly fair.

Given that people seem to likely be assuming that SM's are always having teleport/drop pod abilities, meltabombs, etc, not so much

Vaktathi wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:Do you not think that the point is irrelevant? If you want to gauge a ratio of Space Marines to guard, putting the latter in a defensible bunker isn't exactly fair.

Given that people seem to likely be assuming that SM's are always having teleport/drop pod abilities, meltabombs, etc, not so much

The two will never be on even footing, the SM is designed to be better from the ground up. You give each a one shot pistol put them in a duel at ten paces at highnoon and the marine will still win, he may end up with an injury but he will survive, I can't be certain about the guard.

I generally like my SM's with two cream and three sugar, to answer the thread title.

But fluff-wise, probably 50 GEQ depending on who they are.
Tabletop-wise, 5-6 GEQ.