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2015/04/07 18:08:22
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
Edit: As well note that if we are going by fluff. Bolt weapons would be doing FAR more damage to its current 4/5. at least as far as the HH is concerned.
I don't think so. 4/5 seems about right since hardly anything but a SM is better than T3 Sv 5+
HH has bolters rip through rowboat girlyman like its no biggy as well he even stated that a single shot to or near his head would of killed him
da primerib girlyman him self while wearing his armor. edit: (unremembered empire)
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/04/07 18:08:33
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Desubot wrote: What i am saying is that Just because you can equip every single person with Bolters and super special ammunition doesn't mean its always going to be worth it or effective in any sense.
By scope Im saying its easier to ship replacements from only a few sectors away rather than a few star systems.
Economy of scale means bubkis when they have an equal scale of enemies constantly attacking.
Actually, it should still mean something. After all, the wars the IoM fights do have fronts. It's difficult for most enemies to show up in the middle of a peaceful Imperial world with enough force to start sacking other worlds after the first.
... and I'm pretty sure a bolter is always more effective than a lasgun. The only time where they're equally bad is against things that are T8+ or AV11+.
Edit: As well note that if we are going by fluff. Bolt weapons would be doing FAR more damage to its current 4/5. at least as far as the HH is concerned.
I don't think so. 4/5 seems about right since hardly anything but a SM is better than T3 Sv 5+
HH has bolters rip through rowboat girlyman like its no biggy as well he even stated that a single shot to or near his head would of killed him
da primerib girlyman him self while wearing his armor. edit: (unremembered empire)
As has been stated, Eternal Warrior means that regardless of how much sense it makes, single shots can't kill primarchs. If you sat Girlyman in a chair, put a bolter to his head and fired, it'd jam, every single time.
Why? EW.
Nevermind it doesn't make sense, it just happens, no matter how many bolters you shoot at him. They'll keep jamming until he escapes or is rescued.
In 30k, there is no such thing as a direct hit that is direct enough to kill a primarch.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/04/07 18:14:28
Shidank wrote: I'd forgotten that odd bit of trivia. Do you think this trend continued in earnest through all foundings or did it just become apocryphal fact?
No idea; I'm not entirely sure if it's still part of the fluff that that's actually a "true fact", or if its an apocryphal detail that came out of the aftermath of the Heresy and the Scouring.
"How easy is x to make" obviously sits at the center of how easy it is to replace something. As we've stated, every Fire Warrior carries one of two weapons and it isn't often a pulse carbine. In the IoM, only a handful of elite organizations get bolters. Obviously, the Tau are better at making pulse rifles than the IoM is at making bolters, otherwise their rank and file would have bolters instead of flashlights.
As for maintenance, bolters seem to require a lot of regular work to keep them functional.
I'm unaware of any place indicating Tau need a similar amount of time to keep their pulse rifles operational.
Oh sorry then to replace.
As to IoMs capacity for making bolters. you do realize the scopes we are talking about? Every fire warrior may have a Pulse weapon but How many fire warriors are there? compared to the full grunt of the imperial meat shields.
You give your Standard troop a Basic Renewable weapons because there job isnt to run up and kill all the things. the guardsmen are there to sit hold and fortify objectives till they are told to move to the next one. its why only marines have bolters. because they are the ones that are doing in feet first behind enemy lines to get gak done.
Otherwise if every guardsmen had a bolter, think of the logistics and raw material it would take to produce all that.
Edit: Quote fail
It happens to everyone.
I'm guessing that somewhere between .1% and .01% of the IoM is in the Guard, based on modern numbers and the random lack of automation in some areas (and the number of ferral worlds, etc) and the large amount of automation in others.
The Tau, based on their very high level of automation across all areas of society, field at least 1% and maybe as high as 20-25% of their society as troops.
What we know absolutely for certain is that the Tau field a larger % of their population as soldiers.
While doing so, they provide the base-line grunt, the Fire Warrior, with a weapon superior to that issued to the IoM's elite forces.
Given the decentralized nature of Septs compared to the Imperium's Forge World-based production system, it seems fair to say the Tau will maintain their ability to equip their soldiers as well as they acquire more worlds.
If you are arguing that the Tau equip themselves so well because the Imperium is grossly inefficient ("As to IoMs capacity for making bolters. you do realize the scopes we are talking about?") then you probably have a point. The Imperial bureaucracy is beyond incompetent. The Tau Empire isn't. In theory, economy of scale is something that should be working in the Imperium's favor, is it not? Bolters aren't exactly made of unobtanium, are they?
Okay, let's play the number game again:
Imperium is often quoted as a "million worlds". Let's take that as a factual statement, even though the Imperium is very likely a few orders of magnitude larger. Let's say that each world has a population of 1 billion people (a quite conservative average, in fact)
This is a total empire-wide population of 1,000,000,000,000,000; or 1 quadrillion people. We'll lowball things and say that Imperial Guard conscription is 0.01%, or ~1 Guardsman per 100 citizens.
This is still 10 trillion soldiers (!).
The Lasgun is in fact the superior weapon for that many soldiers, because the supply train for the Lasguns consists primarily of "sunlight and/or campfires"- the powerpacks for a Lasgun are field rechargeable by leaving them in the sun! For a force of 10 trillion soldiers spread across a million worlds, the removal of the requirement of supplying ammunition to their basic service rifles is a huge deal.
There's a reason why that thread about "one thing that the modern military would mass-produce from 40K" has established a consensus that it would be the lasgun. Not Power Armor, not Pulse weapons, not Bolters, not Stealthsuits.
Lasguns.
There's an old saying about that- amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics. Or at least something to that effect.
2015/04/07 18:19:14
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
Desubot wrote: What i am saying is that Just because you can equip every single person with Bolters and super special ammunition doesn't mean its always going to be worth it or effective in any sense.
By scope Im saying its easier to ship replacements from only a few sectors away rather than a few star systems.
Economy of scale means bubkis when they have an equal scale of enemies constantly attacking.
Actually, it should still mean something. After all, the wars the IoM fights do have fronts. It's difficult for most enemies to show up in the middle of a peaceful Imperial world with enough force to start sacking other worlds after the first.
... and I'm pretty sure a bolter is always more effective than a lasgun. The only time where they're equally bad is against things that are T8+ or AV11+.
Edit: As well note that if we are going by fluff. Bolt weapons would be doing FAR more damage to its current 4/5. at least as far as the HH is concerned.
I don't think so. 4/5 seems about right since hardly anything but a SM is better than T3 Sv 5+
HH has bolters rip through rowboat girlyman like its no biggy as well he even stated that a single shot to or near his head would of killed him
da primerib girlyman him self while wearing his armor. edit: (unremembered empire)
As has been stated, Eternal Warrior means that regardless of how much sense it makes, single shots can't kill primarchs. If you sat Girlyman in a chair, put a bolter to his head and fired, it'd jam, every single time.
Why? EW.
Nevermind it doesn't make sense, it just happens, no matter how many bolters you shoot at him. They'll keep jamming until he escapes or is rescued.
In 30k, there is no such thing as a direct hit that is direct enough to kill a primarch.
? Why do you keep equating tabletop stats to fluff? I thought it was fairly obvious that the model rules were an abstraction of what they're actually like in the fluff, not direct equivalents. By your logic a Lord Commissar would survive a headshot fluffwise (assuming his refractor field fails) from a pulse fire round because he has 3 wounds and S5 isn't enough to insta-kill him on the TT.
2015/04/07 18:25:46
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
The other thing to remember is that the Imperium follows hide-bound traditions as holy writ. Guardsmen are not equipped with boltguns because those weapons were reserved for the Emperor's Angels of Death, by the words of the Emperor, Himself. The lowly Guardsman doesn't deserve such a weapon, because the Emperor did not say that the Imperial Army was also going to be armed with the mightiest of weapons and gird in the strongest of armor.
It is best to be a pessimist. You are usually right and, when you're wrong, you're pleasantly surprised.
2015/04/07 19:02:22
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
Imperium is often quoted as a "million worlds". Let's take that as a factual statement, even though the Imperium is very likely a few orders of magnitude larger. Let's say that each world has a population of 1 billion people (a quite conservative average, in fact)
This is a total empire-wide population of 1,000,000,000,000,000; or 1 quadrillion people. We'll lowball things and say that Imperial Guard conscription is 0.01%, or ~1 Guardsman per 100 citizens.
This is still 10 trillion soldiers (!).
The Lasgun is in fact the superior weapon for that many soldiers, because the supply train for the Lasguns consists primarily of "sunlight and/or campfires"- the powerpacks for a Lasgun are field rechargeable by leaving them in the sun! For a force of 10 trillion soldiers spread across a million worlds, the removal of the requirement of supplying ammunition to their basic service rifles is a huge deal.
There's a reason why that thread about "one thing that the modern military would mass-produce from 40K" has established a consensus that it would be the lasgun. Not Power Armor, not Pulse weapons, not Bolters, not Stealthsuits.
Lasguns.
There's an old saying about that- amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics. Or at least something to that effect.
In theory, with a number of worlds that large, don't the manufacturing capabilities and raw resources scale up as well?
The Tau are obviously able to supply their smaller army- which constitutes a larger % of its population- with a smaller industrial base and fewer resources- very well.
Because of the square-cube law, the Imperium should also have less space it has to defend, since a larger portion of it is on the inside, away from fronts like the Eye of Terror, the Damocles Gulf, etc.
? Why do you keep equating tabletop stats to fluff? I thought it was fairly obvious that the model rules were an abstraction of what they're actually like in the fluff, not direct equivalents. By your logic a Lord Commissar would survive a headshot fluffwise (assuming his refractor field fails) from a pulse fire round because he has 3 wounds and S5 isn't enough to insta-kill him on the TT.
Can you cite a single example in fluff where an unarmed character with EW was killed by a headshot?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/04/07 19:04:09
Desubot wrote: [
Edit2: As well IF we are talking about Ease of Maintaining and replacing damaged Pulse weapons. do you have some sort of quote of there actual manufacturing practices? turn out and materials consumption? because if all of that is so superior why dont they hand over a butt load of better pulse equipment to the kroot and take over the sector already? they seem like they would be the best with carbine weapons considering they are able to infiltrate into areas and do fantastic hit and run maneuvers.
Kroot deliberately keep themselves low-tech so.it's highly likely they flat out refused pulse carbines, but were persuaded to accept some upgrades to their rifle.
The engineer in me finds higjly unlikely that the bastardized hybrid that kroot rifle currently is (used to be solid shot, now fires pulse, but presumably can still chamber solid sniper rounds) is easier to manufacture than a pulse carbine.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/04/07 19:50:38
2015/04/08 16:45:24
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
"How easy is x to make" obviously sits at the center of how easy it is to replace something. As we've stated, every Fire Warrior carries one of two weapons and it isn't often a pulse carbine. In the IoM, only a handful of elite organizations get bolters. Obviously, the Tau are better at making pulse rifles than the IoM is at making bolters, otherwise their rank and file would have bolters instead of flashlights.
As for maintenance, bolters seem to require a lot of regular work to keep them functional.
I'm unaware of any place indicating Tau need a similar amount of time to keep their pulse rifles operational.
Oh sorry then to replace.
As to IoMs capacity for making bolters. you do realize the scopes we are talking about? Every fire warrior may have a Pulse weapon but How many fire warriors are there? compared to the full grunt of the imperial meat shields.
You give your Standard troop a Basic Renewable weapons because there job isnt to run up and kill all the things. the guardsmen are there to sit hold and fortify objectives till they are told to move to the next one. its why only marines have bolters. because they are the ones that are doing in feet first behind enemy lines to get gak done.
Otherwise if every guardsmen had a bolter, think of the logistics and raw material it would take to produce all that.
Edit: Quote fail
It happens to everyone.
I'm guessing that somewhere between .1% and .01% of the IoM is in the Guard, based on modern numbers and the random lack of automation in some areas (and the number of ferral worlds, etc) and the large amount of automation in others.
Your numbers are way off. Every planet in the Imperium, even the feral ones, has to supply a tithe of manpower (unless they are ranked as Aptus Non, such as SM homeworlds and Forgeworlds) to the Imperial Guard. A tithe being one-tenth of something, implies that every world is supposed to supply one-tenth of its population for the Imperial Guard. This was even mentioned directly in one of the IG codices (5th or 6th iirc)
EmpNortonII wrote: The Tau, based on their very high level of automation across all areas of society, field at least 1% and maybe as high as 20-25% of their society as troops.
What we know absolutely for certain is that the Tau field a larger % of their population as soldiers.
So what?
Look at the size of the Tau Empire:
Compare this to the 500 worlds of Ultramar, or galaxy-spanning Imperium of a million worlds. Even if the Tau had 100% of their population as troops, their forces would still be insignificant next to those of the Imperium.
EmpNortonII wrote: If you are arguing that the Tau equip themselves so well because the Imperium is grossly inefficient ("As to IoMs capacity for making bolters. you do realize the scopes we are talking about?") then you probably have a point. The Imperial bureaucracy is beyond incompetent. The Tau Empire isn't. In theory, economy of scale is something that should be working in the Imperium's favor, is it not? Bolters aren't exactly made of unobtanium, are they?
Give the Tau a galaxy-spanning empire with distances so huge as to be inconceivable, 10,000 years of bureaucracy and constant existential threats, a huge civil war that devastates most of the Tau Empire, takes away the Ethereal caste and destroys much of the technological knowledge the Tau have. Let us see how effective the Tau Empire still is after that. The Imperium has been through all that and still manages to not only keep itself together but even dominate the galaxy. I highly wonder whether the Tau would be just as succesful.
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2015/04/08 19:05:00
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
Give the Tau a galaxy-spanning empire with distances so huge as to be inconceivable, 10,000 years of bureaucracy and constant existential threats, a huge civil war that devastates most of the Tau Empire, takes away the Ethereal caste and destroys much of the technological knowledge the Tau have. Let us see how effective the Tau Empire still is after that. The Imperium has been through all that and still manages to not only keep itself together but even dominate the galaxy. I highly wonder whether the Tau would be just as succesful.
They probably would, as Tau society as a whole is a lot more solidly built than the Imperial one. Tau thrive through cooperation. Imperium thrives through fear of a ruling elite and their means of enforcement (Inquisiton and Space Marines mainly).
Tau is also largely unburdened by counterproductive beliefs like 'thou shalt not innovate' and 'different is bad just because, mkay?'
Edit: The loss of the technologucal knowledge of the Imperium was also due to the inefficient model that had a handful of individuals hoard most of it. To cause significant loss of Tau knowledge you would have to kill off most of the Earth Caste (so the majority of Tau population).
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/04/08 19:15:20
2015/04/08 22:03:25
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
One. Bolters DO require more maintenance than pulse rifles. Aside from the obvious (they contain many moving parts where as Pulse rifles have few) Tau fire warriors spend less time per day in maintenance than SM do.
We know this because it's explained many times in fluff that Tau technology is designed so that parts may be quickly and easily swapped. Thus, unlike a bolter, if a pulse rifle breaks, you don't have to manufacture a whole new pulse rifle, you just remove the broken component. Thus, by nature, less maintenance and a lightened load on your manufacturing capabilities.
Two: there have been pieces of fluff that have litterally said that "The greatest advantage of a boltgun is that it is recoiless, and because of this tremendous recoil and weight, only space marines may use it."
No, seriously, GW contradicts in the same sentence.
One of the few constants is that boltgun ammo of any type is fairly rare, and the manufacture is heavily regulated. ('Blind rounds' is the correct, IIRC, term for an unapproved boltgun round, referring to the fact that each authorized round is hand stamped with an aquilla by a magos or above) . Most specialist boltgun rounds are only made on a few forgeworlds in the entire imperium, and some of those are no longer producing, or require materials esoteric even by 40k standards (psykannon anyone?).
Plasmagun ammunition can be made by any starship fitted with the right equipment. This includes non-warp capable starships.
In theory, this means that it can be produced in amounts greater than the Imperium's capacity to transport it.
Which brings us to 'Why the Lasgun for the guard instead of bolters'?
Simple, it's rechargeable and reasonable dependable. You don't need to transport billions of them to every front, the guardsman can simply recharge the power packs he has on his person.
Fate is in heaven, armor is on the chest, accomplishment is in the feet. - Nagao Kagetora
2015/04/08 23:14:13
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
Give the Tau a galaxy-spanning empire with distances so huge as to be inconceivable, 10,000 years of bureaucracy and constant existential threats, a huge civil war that devastates most of the Tau Empire, takes away the Ethereal caste and destroys much of the technological knowledge the Tau have. Let us see how effective the Tau Empire still is after that. The Imperium has been through all that and still manages to not only keep itself together but even dominate the galaxy. I highly wonder whether the Tau would be just as succesful.
They probably would, as Tau society as a whole is a lot more solidly built than the Imperial one. Tau thrive through cooperation. Imperium thrives through fear of a ruling elite and their means of enforcement (Inquisiton and Space Marines mainly).
Tau is also largely unburdened by counterproductive beliefs like 'thou shalt not innovate' and 'different is bad just because, mkay?'
Edit: The loss of the technologucal knowledge of the Imperium was also due to the inefficient model that had a handful of individuals hoard most of it. To cause significant loss of Tau knowledge you would have to kill off most of the Earth Caste (so the majority of Tau population).
The loss of technological knowledge has nothing to do with Imperial policy, and everything to do with the Age of Strife/Long Night and then the not-that-long-after Horus Heresy.
Keep in mind that the Crusade-Era Imperium was very secular- this whole "no innovate" and "different is bad" thing you're spouting off didn't exist (and really still doesn't). Also keep in mind that the Imperium isn't really a "ruling elite are scary bastards" thing; it's a (surprisingly clever) feudal system. More-or-less, you send goodies up the chain to the bosspeople, and the bosspeople send protection down the chain when you need it. Or they send punishment if you don't send the goodies.
That's not "rule by fear". That's feudalism.
Also, the Earth Caste isn't just scientists/researchers/engineers. The majority of the Earth Caste isn't much different from a manufactorum worker in terms of technical literacy- they probably understand a little bit better the actions they take on the assembly line, but you don't have to understand the theoretical underpinnings of a technical device in order to put it together. So no, having to kill "the majority" of the Earth Caste isn't required to destroy significant amounts of Tau technical aptitude.
So here, have this excellent explanation of Imperial science, and why it doesn't look like modern science (which Tau science resembles a lot more closely). It's not mine, but it's an excellent (if rather long and expletive-laden) explanation:
Spoiler:
The Mechanicus does NOT have the technology. They haven't been living on some fancy paradise planet since pre-Fall. Mars is an anarchic nightmare shithole the moment you leave the safe zones into the kilometres of labyrinthine corridors beneath it full of rogue machinery, self-aware and malevolent AI from before the Fall, and the daemon programs of the Heresy. EVERYTHING in the databases is fethed. The databases are fragmented over the entire surface to the extent that it would be impossible to see one tenth of the total files in the ludicrously extended life of a Magos even assuming that they are completely safe to visit. And they are not.
The files have been corrupted into madness by the Fall, and the unleashing of the most potent informational warfare systems ever to exist to defeat the Iron Men. Nearly all of Mars was rendered uninhabitable, what they live in now is built on the top of the ruins. They send archeotech expeditions in to find gak, nearly all of them never come back. The sheer number of rogue war machine running around in there is sufficient to rape the mind. Then came the Heresy, which was not earth-exclusive. Mars as the second most critical planet in the Imperium was the site of fighting nearly as ferocious as on Terra, with Mechanicus loyalists and Hereteks fighting tooth, nail, and mechadendrite everywhere. Ancient machines were unleashed, viruses both normal and daemonic unleashed into all the computer systems. Nearly every single stored record on Mars was rendered unusable, and those that survived are half the time self-aware and don't like you, or daemonic and actively try to kill you.
If you come back with a schematic, it is almost certainly gibberish, and if it isn't, it's probably corrupted into uselessness. If it does come back whole it was probably malevolently fethed with so that instead of a Lasgun power cell it's a fething grenade set to detonate the second you finish building it. Why do you think they want off-world STCs so damned much if they had them all here? The fething Heresy is why. Off-world they only have to contend with the Fall's war and its effects on the machinery plus twenty thousand years of degradation with no maintenance. But at least off-world it'll probably just not work instead of actively seeking to kill you.
Why do you think they seek to placate the Machine Spirit? It's because it exists. The fragments of trillions of self-aware programs, flourishing during the Dark Age of Technology and shattered by Man in his war with the Iron men, imprisoning the few who had not set themselves irrevocably into the machinery, a prison smashed wide open by the Heresy. Everything that can hold programming in the Imperium has a shard of a program in it. EVERYTHING. And you'd better fething please it or it will do everything in its power to make your day gak. Sure, if it's a Lasgun it'll just not work or start shooting off rounds by itself, but if you piss off a Land Raider you can say bye-bye to half a continent. They apply these principles to things without spirits by habit, since they're so used to dealing with tanks that if not talked to just right might go rogue and annihilate the Manufactorum before they can be killed.
This is why they do not like ANYONE fething with technology, because it is so rare to find anything that just works it is critical it not be compromised. That, and they do not have the actual knowledge to feth with it intelligently, just through experimentation, which inevitably leads to slaughter. Pressing buttons to see what works is fine in a 21st century computer, but it is a very stupid thing to do at the helm of a 410th century starship with the destructive power to end solar systems. The entire knowledge base of humanity was lost. Not forgotten, but outright lost. Everything at all, poof. Nobody knows anything because the Fall fethed everything up and the Heresy double-fethed it. To rebuild the theoretical framework needed to design new technologies that don't kill everyone near them would require starting from the ground up. They don't have the time, they never have, and they never will.
This gets on to the point of war and what it does to technology. Someone will parrot that it makes it go much faster. Yes, it makes practical applications of technology go much faster. It also utterly stops all research on the scientific theories behind those technologies. This means that when war chugs along for a decade or two things get done. It means when it goes on too long you run out of theories to turn into technologies, and then you run out of technologies to apply. You stagnate. When you have been fighting in a war for survival in a drastically overextended empire, this is what happens. You are desperate for any extra materiel that can possibly be produced. Half your entire fething military might went rogue, smashed the half that stayed, leaving you with the tattered shreds of a war machine to keep hold of an empire that was reaching straining point with an army far larger. There is no time for the sort of applied research programs that took Man twenty five thousand years to develop, in a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity.
This is also why the Adeptus Mechanicus insists on cargo cultism. It's because when you are dealing with things you barely understand because everything you knew about them was destroyed it is the safest and most reliable option. The rituals do not exists for mysticism, they exist because they are the most practical means of building, repairing and maintaining the equipment they have with the knowledge surviving. You don't understand why pressing that button makes it go, because the manual tried to take over your brain and the copies are all unreadable and the research base that would let you reverse-engineer it does not exist and cannot be built.
Why are the Tau doing so well with their technology? Because they had peace. Eight thousand years unmolested by any enemy and they were helped the entire time by the most advanced biological race in the galaxy. Give the Imperium eight thousand years of peace and I can guarantee you it will be harder than it was during the Great Crusade.
Since some still don't get the idea, try this:
Build a library, fill it with all human knowledge. You take it elsewhere when you need a book from it, but the book is only a simplified copy. You don't understand the real book, and you don't need to. Nobody takes the real books anywhere because why would you, when there's a whole library there?
Now that library goes rogue and the maintenance machinery starts killing everyone any-fething-where near it. Where the feth did they all come from, you swear to god there weren't this many, and there weren't because they're using the library's information to fight their war. The government fights a battle that destroys the planet against these robots and tears apart the library to stop them using it, only to be destroyed in the process. The library is leveled, cast into flames, every book burned and every computer virus-laden.
Then comes a man who worked there. He talks to the few surviving library workers, assembles their information, and starts rebuilding a city around the library and expanding it as the librarians find little scraps of paper and fragmented bits of files that stuck together just right read something. They rebuild a library from scrap on the ashes of the old. It isn't a shadow on the glory of the old, but it is all they have.
Then the city turns on itself, kills its master, and the librarians turn to rage. Half of them kill the other half and destroy the remnants of the library because where they're going they won't need science. Everything burns, and the city is left to a scattered few survivors, walls open to the world, with the hungry predators circling.
The Adeptus Mechanicus is the sole surviving librarian, desperately scrabbling through the ashes of paper and splinters of hard drives for anything to help him and the city he needs to survive just a second longer.
The Imperium isn't grim because things suck by choice and could be fine if a sensible person came along. That sensible person wouldn't survive fifty seconds of the reality. The Imperium is grim because every single gak decision, every single sacrifice, every single death, every single man woman and child suffering a gak life in the worst conditions imaginable, is the absolute best that can be done. It is a study of the worst happening to everyone and what part of your humanity must be sacrificed today just to stand a chance of survival, and all it asks is whether or not it would have perhaps been better to die.
And here's one that explains Mechanicus religion (shorter but also expletive-laden):
Spoiler:
Children, I'm fething fed up with your gak. Cult Mechanicus IS NOT a replacement of rational thought with religion for the sake of operating machines.It's a (in-universe) developed philosophy of collective rationalism. AdMechs don't throw their critical thinking out of the window. They just already took this thinking, put it on a pedestal, brought it to it's apex (Dark Age), suffered for it, suffered for it again (HorusHeresy, Schism of Mars), then looked at it and asked : "What do we do now?" Every Mechanicum is a rationalist, in a meaning that when he goes through all the critical thinking to the basic reason of his existence, he takes on the dogma of Quest for Knowledge. That he exists to Rationalize the Universe, move towards learning and understanding the Universe and it's laws. It's also a collective quest - adept doesn't seek knowledge just for himself, he sees all the Adeptus Mechanicus as one single huge Gnostical Engine, a Machine of Comprehension designed to learn. He's just a single little gear in the heart of enormous Over-Intellect gathering and producing knowledge.
For what sake? AdMechs thought a lot about this question, and took one answer.
For the sake of Mankind.
Now THIS is where gak gets religious.
As of it now, humanity utilizes science for egoistical purposes of survival (scientists need something to eat) and/or domination, which can be understood by every human through his instincts. Society of Mars, however, got devoid of this motivators, as they dropped their human instincts, so they had to find new goals. This is where the Schism takes roots, as well as the "Cult" part. Every rational human can tell you that objectively life has no meaning. Accepting that fact is what brought the galaxy Necrons and Iron Men. AdMechs knew that this is what they wish to avoid. And the most effective way to avoid that is to walk the irrational way and put a sense for your existence through Faith.
This is what they did.
They are the fanatics in the sense that they BELIEVE that Universe CAN be comprehended, while they have 0 proof of that. They BELIEVE that critical thinking works, while living in a Galaxy that laughs at any attempts of rationalization. They BELIEVE that Quest for Knowledge can be completed. And it this faith, they are being paradoxical and irrational. And they know it. Lets have a look at Universal Laws, that Mechanicum use as the foundation of their philosophy.
The Mysteries
01. Life is directed motion.
This gives a definition to "life", as existence of individual. A definition that basically says "Only that thing which irrationally takes a (faith) direction for it's way can be called a Living Thing".
02. The spirit is the spark of life.
Here they recognize the illogical existence of Souls and Warp, and their defining roles in being representation of one's beliefs.
03. Sentience is the ability to learn the value of knowledge.
04. Intellect is the understanding of knowledge.
05. Sentience is the basest form of Intellect.
Here they define ability for rational thinking.
06. Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.
07. Comprehension is the key to all things.
And HERE they put this thinking as their Way to exist.
08. The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.
And establish an ideal, to which they are heading.
At which point we see that there's a lot of very good reasons as to why the AdMech does the things that it does.
One. Bolters DO require more maintenance than pulse rifles. Aside from the obvious (they contain many moving parts where as Pulse rifles have few) Tau fire warriors spend less time per day in maintenance than SM do.
We know this because it's explained many times in fluff that Tau technology is designed so that parts may be quickly and easily swapped. Thus, unlike a bolter, if a pulse rifle breaks, you don't have to manufacture a whole new pulse rifle, you just remove the broken component. Thus, by nature, less maintenance and a lightened load on your manufacturing capabilities.
Two: there have been pieces of fluff that have litterally said that "The greatest advantage of a boltgun is that it is recoiless, and because of this tremendous recoil and weight, only space marines may use it."
No, seriously, GW contradicts in the same sentence.
One of the few constants is that boltgun ammo of any type is fairly rare, and the manufacture is heavily regulated. ('Blind rounds' is the correct, IIRC, term for an unapproved boltgun round, referring to the fact that each authorized round is hand stamped with an aquilla by a magos or above) . Most specialist boltgun rounds are only made on a few forgeworlds in the entire imperium, and some of those are no longer producing, or require materials esoteric even by 40k standards (psykannon anyone?).
Plasmagun ammunition can be made by any starship fitted with the right equipment. This includes non-warp capable starships.
In theory, this means that it can be produced in amounts greater than the Imperium's capacity to transport it.
Which brings us to 'Why the Lasgun for the guard instead of bolters'?
Simple, it's rechargeable and reasonable dependable. You don't need to transport billions of them to every front, the guardsman can simply recharge the power packs he has on his person.
GeeDubs inconsistency aside, Bolters are also not a weapon that consists of "if it breaks, replace it". If anything, it'd probably be the other way around- Astartes Bolters have to be sturdy enough to handle the 7-8' tall posthuman supersoldiers manhandling them into things that aren't necessarily part of the user's manual.
Moreover, part of the reason that an Astartes spends a lot of time maintaining his own bolter, is because that's basically most of his day. Remember, Space Marines have only one job: kill things. So they spend most-to-all of their times getting really good at that. That includes a lot of time on a shooting range, which would in turn require a lot of weapon maintenance. There's also the slight tidbit that Brother Genericus the Generic Marine maintains his own gun. Fire Warriors... AFAIK Fire Warrior's don't maintain their own weapons to nearly the same degree that a Marine would.
2015/04/09 00:05:25
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
GeeDubs inconsistency aside, Bolters are also not a weapon that consists of "if it breaks, replace it". If anything, it'd probably be the other way around- Astartes Bolters have to be sturdy enough to handle the 7-8' tall posthuman supersoldiers manhandling them into things that aren't necessarily part of the user's manual.
My point about it breaking still stands though. Example, A Tiger can take a bigger beating from bigger guns than a Sherman can and remain functional. But a Sherman can have the transmission blown entirely out of the tank and be operational again in four or five hours, depending on how far you are from the nearest supply dump that has the parts. A Sherman is four bolts from a transmission transplant.
The Tiger taking a similar hit is done. You'd have to put it on a train to someplace that can rebuild the tank, because the same repair requires that the tank be totally torn down and rebuilt. As in totally disassembled.
Moreover, part of the reason that an Astartes spends a lot of time maintaining his own bolter, is because that's basically most of his day. Remember, Space Marines have only one job: kill things. So they spend most-to-all of their times getting really good at that. That includes a lot of time on a shooting range, which would in turn require a lot of weapon maintenance. There's also the slight tidbit that Brother Genericus the Generic Marine maintains his own gun. Fire Warriors... AFAIK Fire Warrior's don't maintain their own weapons to nearly the same degree that a Marine would.
Nor would they have to. And quite a few chapters might contest that first supposition, that the only purpose of Space Marines is to kill things. Mind you, they're really, really good at it. but they do have other roles. (much like real special forces do things besides kill).
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/04/09 00:06:52
Fate is in heaven, armor is on the chest, accomplishment is in the feet. - Nagao Kagetora
2015/04/09 02:22:48
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
The burning pits of Hades, also known as Sweden in summer
Space Marines have one job, and that is war.
Killing, capture, psychological warfare, recon, guard duty, it's all war in the end. And that's what they are made for. Which is why they are so good at it.
Give the Tau a galaxy-spanning empire with distances so huge as to be inconceivable, 10,000 years of bureaucracy and constant existential threats, a huge civil war that devastates most of the Tau Empire, takes away the Ethereal caste and destroys much of the technological knowledge the Tau have. Let us see how effective the Tau Empire still is after that. The Imperium has been through all that and still manages to not only keep itself together but even dominate the galaxy. I highly wonder whether the Tau would be just as succesful.
They probably would, as Tau society as a whole is a lot more solidly built than the Imperial one. Tau thrive through cooperation. Imperium thrives through fear of a ruling elite and their means of enforcement (Inquisiton and Space Marines mainly).
Tau is also largely unburdened by counterproductive beliefs like 'thou shalt not innovate' and 'different is bad just because, mkay?'
Edit: The loss of the technologucal knowledge of the Imperium was also due to the inefficient model that had a handful of individuals hoard most of it. To cause significant loss of Tau knowledge you would have to kill off most of the Earth Caste (so the majority of Tau population).
The loss of technological knowledge has nothing to do with Imperial policy, and everything to do with the Age of Strife/Long Night and then the not-that-long-after Horus Heresy.
Keep in mind that the Crusade-Era Imperium was very secular- this whole "no innovate" and "different is bad" thing you're spouting off didn't exist (and really still doesn't). Also keep in mind that the Imperium isn't really a "ruling elite are scary bastards" thing; it's a (surprisingly clever) feudal system. More-or-less, you send goodies up the chain to the bosspeople, and the bosspeople send protection down the chain when you need it. Or they send punishment if you don't send the goodies.
That's not "rule by fear". That's feudalism.
The no.innovation thing was definitely in effect during the Great Crusade, although less enforced. In 'Mechanicum', Dalia Cythera was about to be executed for improving a Cogitator and the book explicitly states a law against that (Law of Divine Purity or something like that).
'Different is bad' was also a.thing during the Great Crusade, at least in regard to xenos and psykers. Oddly enough I've yet to find a mutant in a Horus Heresy novel.
You're right about the Imperium being somewhat feudal (not entirely though), which still means it's based on a system that history has proven ineffective and highly oppressive on the people.
2015/04/09 04:22:52
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
LordBlades wrote: The no.innovation thing was definitely in effect during the Great Crusade, although less enforced. In 'Mechanicum', Dalia Cythera was about to be executed for improving a Cogitator and the book explicitly states a law against that (Law of Divine Purity or something like that).
Did you read the excerpts about why the AdMech is the way it is? The sort of thing where they're basically stuck with an apparatus that works, and they're not entirely sure why it works, but all the usual ways to find out tend to result in really bad things happening? As in, "that chair is actually a murderbot that hates all the things and also got possessed by a daemon that wants to eat out souls" kind of bad.
Dalia Cythera's improvements were going to get her executed because the Martian Priesthood does not possess the interest or apparatus to figure out if the improvement is actually beneficial. Which goes back to the whole "Age of Strife/Old Night (really bad)-> Great Crusade (pretty good) ->Horus Heresy (all the bad ever) ->Scouring & Post-Heresy (scrabbling to hold together in the wake of all the bad)".
LordBlades wrote: 'Different is bad' was also a.thing during the Great Crusade, at least in regard to xenos and psykers. Oddly enough I've yet to find a mutant in a Horus Heresy novel.
The anti-xenos sentiment is primarily due to the Imperial ideology being centralized around the concept that Man has the manifest destiny of ruling the stars; many xeno species were also overtly hostile to humanity, and most/all of the xeno species humans worked with ended up enslaving and/or killing the humans.
LordBlades wrote: You're right about the Imperium being somewhat feudal (not entirely though), which still means it's based on a system that history has proven ineffective and highly oppressive on the people.
Feudalism failed historically because empires got "smaller" even though they were geographically bigger. A central mechanism of why feudalism worked was due to the highly distributed, slow and not necessarily reliable communications and mass transit of the time. Because of that slow, semi-unreliable communications, it was necessary for a ruler to invest authority in vassals who could extend the ruler's authority over a larger area, without said ruler spreading their assets too thinly. Not only did the ruler gain an increased amount of subjects (and thus a larger taxable population and a larger group of individuals from which to levy troops), but also access to more resources and the aforementioned potential for larger bodies of troops. In exchange, a vassal often received the support of the better-equipped military forces of the central rule.
Oh, and the quality of life of feudal nations also has more to do with the fact that the era in which feudalism dominated was one in which everything was pretty gakky all around.
40K Imperial feudalism works because it's the only system that works. There's too many people for even a republic method of government, and it's far too big to manage in a dictatorial/autocratic fashion. The feudal system of what is more or less delegated authority is what works... and so it's what the Imperium is.
2015/04/09 07:08:24
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
I do understand why the Mechanicus and Imperium at large is the way it is. I just don't consider it 'successful', merely slowing down the.unavoidable descent into darkness. Mankind is only going in one direction: down, while their competition is either going up ( Tau) or staying the same (everybody else).
The catastrophic loss of knowledge is also IMO the effect of some unknown underlying flaw in Mankind's technology and/or social structure, as other races have endured far bigger ordeals with less effects (technology-wise).
Necrons awoke after 40 million years and in a time when most of their race is still sleeping/has been destroyed they are still the most technologically advanced species in the galaxy.
Eldar survived the almost total annihilation of their race in much better shape (from a technological standpoint) than Mankind.
Also, Tau never enjoyed much peace in their history. Even after they stopped fighting among themselves past thelearly expansion they were more or less constantly fighting off orks, and more recently Tyranids and IoM.
Als, at the core, feudalism is ruled by fear, because it's not really beneficial for those very low on the totem pole (which do form the majority of population).
The only real benefit that a peasant could gain from his lord was protection. Protection was only worthwile if there was a real or perceived outside threat for the peasants to fear.
The rest of it was fear: fear of retribution (the lord had laws, prifessional soldiers and knights to reinforce them if the peasant didn't do his part) and fear of divine punishment (the king was presented as God's emmissary on Earth after all). When these constant sources of fear could not be maintained, the regime would collapse.
This is how Imperium works too. Systems stay loyal mainly because:
- They feel they need protection from real or perceived Xeno threats
- They believe turning away from the Emperor is heresy
- They fear the Imperium's retribution
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/04/09 07:09:05
2015/04/09 11:44:30
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
«Feudalism failed historically because empires got "smaller" even though they were geographically bigger. A central mechanism of why feudalism worked was due to the highly distributed, slow and not necessarily reliable communications and mass transit of the time. Because of that slow, semi-unreliable communications, it was necessary for a ruler to invest authority in vassals who could extend the ruler's authority over a larger area, without said ruler spreading their assets too thinly. Not only did the ruler gain an increased amount of subjects (and thus a larger taxable population and a larger group of individuals from which to levy troops), but also access to more resources and the aforementioned potential for larger bodies of troops. In exchange, a vassal often received the support of the better-equipped military forces of the central rule.
Oh, and the quality of life of feudal nations also has more to do with the fact that the era in which feudalism dominated was one in which everything was pretty gakky all around.»
This analysis of the failing and structure of the Feudal system is, in my opinion, completly false and filled with historical innacuracy and myths. Thow I agree with your vision of the Imperium political structure.
2015/04/09 15:37:35
Subject: What happens if a marine chapter fell to heresy of the greater good??
So here, have this excellent explanation of Imperial science, and why it doesn't look like modern science (which Tau science resembles a lot more closely). It's not mine, but it's an excellent (if rather long and expletive-laden) explanation:
Spoiler:
The Mechanicus does NOT have the technology. They haven't been living on some fancy paradise planet since pre-Fall. Mars is an anarchic nightmare shithole the moment you leave the safe zones into the kilometres of labyrinthine corridors beneath it full of rogue machinery, self-aware and malevolent AI from before the Fall, and the daemon programs of the Heresy. EVERYTHING in the databases is fethed. The databases are fragmented over the entire surface to the extent that it would be impossible to see one tenth of the total files in the ludicrously extended life of a Magos even assuming that they are completely safe to visit. And they are not.
The files have been corrupted into madness by the Fall, and the unleashing of the most potent informational warfare systems ever to exist to defeat the Iron Men. Nearly all of Mars was rendered uninhabitable, what they live in now is built on the top of the ruins. They send archeotech expeditions in to find gak, nearly all of them never come back. The sheer number of rogue war machine running around in there is sufficient to rape the mind. Then came the Heresy, which was not earth-exclusive. Mars as the second most critical planet in the Imperium was the site of fighting nearly as ferocious as on Terra, with Mechanicus loyalists and Hereteks fighting tooth, nail, and mechadendrite everywhere. Ancient machines were unleashed, viruses both normal and daemonic unleashed into all the computer systems. Nearly every single stored record on Mars was rendered unusable, and those that survived are half the time self-aware and don't like you, or daemonic and actively try to kill you.
If you come back with a schematic, it is almost certainly gibberish, and if it isn't, it's probably corrupted into uselessness. If it does come back whole it was probably malevolently fethed with so that instead of a Lasgun power cell it's a fething grenade set to detonate the second you finish building it. Why do you think they want off-world STCs so damned much if they had them all here? The fething Heresy is why. Off-world they only have to contend with the Fall's war and its effects on the machinery plus twenty thousand years of degradation with no maintenance. But at least off-world it'll probably just not work instead of actively seeking to kill you.
Why do you think they seek to placate the Machine Spirit? It's because it exists. The fragments of trillions of self-aware programs, flourishing during the Dark Age of Technology and shattered by Man in his war with the Iron men, imprisoning the few who had not set themselves irrevocably into the machinery, a prison smashed wide open by the Heresy. Everything that can hold programming in the Imperium has a shard of a program in it. EVERYTHING. And you'd better fething please it or it will do everything in its power to make your day gak. Sure, if it's a Lasgun it'll just not work or start shooting off rounds by itself, but if you piss off a Land Raider you can say bye-bye to half a continent. They apply these principles to things without spirits by habit, since they're so used to dealing with tanks that if not talked to just right might go rogue and annihilate the Manufactorum before they can be killed.
This is why they do not like ANYONE fething with technology, because it is so rare to find anything that just works it is critical it not be compromised. That, and they do not have the actual knowledge to feth with it intelligently, just through experimentation, which inevitably leads to slaughter. Pressing buttons to see what works is fine in a 21st century computer, but it is a very stupid thing to do at the helm of a 410th century starship with the destructive power to end solar systems. The entire knowledge base of humanity was lost. Not forgotten, but outright lost. Everything at all, poof. Nobody knows anything because the Fall fethed everything up and the Heresy double-fethed it. To rebuild the theoretical framework needed to design new technologies that don't kill everyone near them would require starting from the ground up. They don't have the time, they never have, and they never will.
This gets on to the point of war and what it does to technology. Someone will parrot that it makes it go much faster. Yes, it makes practical applications of technology go much faster. It also utterly stops all research on the scientific theories behind those technologies. This means that when war chugs along for a decade or two things get done. It means when it goes on too long you run out of theories to turn into technologies, and then you run out of technologies to apply. You stagnate. When you have been fighting in a war for survival in a drastically overextended empire, this is what happens. You are desperate for any extra materiel that can possibly be produced. Half your entire fething military might went rogue, smashed the half that stayed, leaving you with the tattered shreds of a war machine to keep hold of an empire that was reaching straining point with an army far larger. There is no time for the sort of applied research programs that took Man twenty five thousand years to develop, in a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity.
This is also why the Adeptus Mechanicus insists on cargo cultism. It's because when you are dealing with things you barely understand because everything you knew about them was destroyed it is the safest and most reliable option. The rituals do not exists for mysticism, they exist because they are the most practical means of building, repairing and maintaining the equipment they have with the knowledge surviving. You don't understand why pressing that button makes it go, because the manual tried to take over your brain and the copies are all unreadable and the research base that would let you reverse-engineer it does not exist and cannot be built.
Why are the Tau doing so well with their technology? Because they had peace. Eight thousand years unmolested by any enemy and they were helped the entire time by the most advanced biological race in the galaxy. Give the Imperium eight thousand years of peace and I can guarantee you it will be harder than it was during the Great Crusade.
Since some still don't get the idea, try this:
Build a library, fill it with all human knowledge. You take it elsewhere when you need a book from it, but the book is only a simplified copy. You don't understand the real book, and you don't need to. Nobody takes the real books anywhere because why would you, when there's a whole library there?
Now that library goes rogue and the maintenance machinery starts killing everyone any-fething-where near it. Where the feth did they all come from, you swear to god there weren't this many, and there weren't because they're using the library's information to fight their war. The government fights a battle that destroys the planet against these robots and tears apart the library to stop them using it, only to be destroyed in the process. The library is leveled, cast into flames, every book burned and every computer virus-laden.
Then comes a man who worked there. He talks to the few surviving library workers, assembles their information, and starts rebuilding a city around the library and expanding it as the librarians find little scraps of paper and fragmented bits of files that stuck together just right read something. They rebuild a library from scrap on the ashes of the old. It isn't a shadow on the glory of the old, but it is all they have.
Then the city turns on itself, kills its master, and the librarians turn to rage. Half of them kill the other half and destroy the remnants of the library because where they're going they won't need science. Everything burns, and the city is left to a scattered few survivors, walls open to the world, with the hungry predators circling.
The Adeptus Mechanicus is the sole surviving librarian, desperately scrabbling through the ashes of paper and splinters of hard drives for anything to help him and the city he needs to survive just a second longer.
The Imperium isn't grim because things suck by choice and could be fine if a sensible person came along. That sensible person wouldn't survive fifty seconds of the reality. The Imperium is grim because every single gak decision, every single sacrifice, every single death, every single man woman and child suffering a gak life in the worst conditions imaginable, is the absolute best that can be done. It is a study of the worst happening to everyone and what part of your humanity must be sacrificed today just to stand a chance of survival, and all it asks is whether or not it would have perhaps been better to die.
And here's one that explains Mechanicus religion (shorter but also expletive-laden):
Spoiler:
Children, I'm fething fed up with your gak. Cult Mechanicus IS NOT a replacement of rational thought with religion for the sake of operating machines.It's a (in-universe) developed philosophy of collective rationalism. AdMechs don't throw their critical thinking out of the window. They just already took this thinking, put it on a pedestal, brought it to it's apex (Dark Age), suffered for it, suffered for it again (HorusHeresy, Schism of Mars), then looked at it and asked : "What do we do now?" Every Mechanicum is a rationalist, in a meaning that when he goes through all the critical thinking to the basic reason of his existence, he takes on the dogma of Quest for Knowledge. That he exists to Rationalize the Universe, move towards learning and understanding the Universe and it's laws. It's also a collective quest - adept doesn't seek knowledge just for himself, he sees all the Adeptus Mechanicus as one single huge Gnostical Engine, a Machine of Comprehension designed to learn. He's just a single little gear in the heart of enormous Over-Intellect gathering and producing knowledge.
For what sake? AdMechs thought a lot about this question, and took one answer.
For the sake of Mankind.
Now THIS is where gak gets religious.
As of it now, humanity utilizes science for egoistical purposes of survival (scientists need something to eat) and/or domination, which can be understood by every human through his instincts. Society of Mars, however, got devoid of this motivators, as they dropped their human instincts, so they had to find new goals. This is where the Schism takes roots, as well as the "Cult" part. Every rational human can tell you that objectively life has no meaning. Accepting that fact is what brought the galaxy Necrons and Iron Men. AdMechs knew that this is what they wish to avoid. And the most effective way to avoid that is to walk the irrational way and put a sense for your existence through Faith.
This is what they did.
They are the fanatics in the sense that they BELIEVE that Universe CAN be comprehended, while they have 0 proof of that. They BELIEVE that critical thinking works, while living in a Galaxy that laughs at any attempts of rationalization. They BELIEVE that Quest for Knowledge can be completed. And it this faith, they are being paradoxical and irrational. And they know it. Lets have a look at Universal Laws, that Mechanicum use as the foundation of their philosophy.
The Mysteries
01. Life is directed motion.
This gives a definition to "life", as existence of individual. A definition that basically says "Only that thing which irrationally takes a (faith) direction for it's way can be called a Living Thing".
02. The spirit is the spark of life.
Here they recognize the illogical existence of Souls and Warp, and their defining roles in being representation of one's beliefs.
03. Sentience is the ability to learn the value of knowledge.
04. Intellect is the understanding of knowledge.
05. Sentience is the basest form of Intellect.
Here they define ability for rational thinking.
06. Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.
07. Comprehension is the key to all things.
And HERE they put this thinking as their Way to exist.
08. The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.
And establish an ideal, to which they are heading.
Are we seriously at the point where we're copy/pasting from 1d4chan?
... because that's where that explanation is from.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/04/09 15:37:50
So here, have this excellent explanation of Imperial science, and why it doesn't look like modern science (which Tau science resembles a lot more closely). It's not mine, but it's an excellent (if rather long and expletive-laden) explanation:
Spoiler:
The Mechanicus does NOT have the technology. They haven't been living on some fancy paradise planet since pre-Fall. Mars is an anarchic nightmare shithole the moment you leave the safe zones into the kilometres of labyrinthine corridors beneath it full of rogue machinery, self-aware and malevolent AI from before the Fall, and the daemon programs of the Heresy. EVERYTHING in the databases is fethed. The databases are fragmented over the entire surface to the extent that it would be impossible to see one tenth of the total files in the ludicrously extended life of a Magos even assuming that they are completely safe to visit. And they are not.
The files have been corrupted into madness by the Fall, and the unleashing of the most potent informational warfare systems ever to exist to defeat the Iron Men. Nearly all of Mars was rendered uninhabitable, what they live in now is built on the top of the ruins. They send archeotech expeditions in to find gak, nearly all of them never come back. The sheer number of rogue war machine running around in there is sufficient to rape the mind. Then came the Heresy, which was not earth-exclusive. Mars as the second most critical planet in the Imperium was the site of fighting nearly as ferocious as on Terra, with Mechanicus loyalists and Hereteks fighting tooth, nail, and mechadendrite everywhere. Ancient machines were unleashed, viruses both normal and daemonic unleashed into all the computer systems. Nearly every single stored record on Mars was rendered unusable, and those that survived are half the time self-aware and don't like you, or daemonic and actively try to kill you.
If you come back with a schematic, it is almost certainly gibberish, and if it isn't, it's probably corrupted into uselessness. If it does come back whole it was probably malevolently fethed with so that instead of a Lasgun power cell it's a fething grenade set to detonate the second you finish building it. Why do you think they want off-world STCs so damned much if they had them all here? The fething Heresy is why. Off-world they only have to contend with the Fall's war and its effects on the machinery plus twenty thousand years of degradation with no maintenance. But at least off-world it'll probably just not work instead of actively seeking to kill you.
Why do you think they seek to placate the Machine Spirit? It's because it exists. The fragments of trillions of self-aware programs, flourishing during the Dark Age of Technology and shattered by Man in his war with the Iron men, imprisoning the few who had not set themselves irrevocably into the machinery, a prison smashed wide open by the Heresy. Everything that can hold programming in the Imperium has a shard of a program in it. EVERYTHING. And you'd better fething please it or it will do everything in its power to make your day gak. Sure, if it's a Lasgun it'll just not work or start shooting off rounds by itself, but if you piss off a Land Raider you can say bye-bye to half a continent. They apply these principles to things without spirits by habit, since they're so used to dealing with tanks that if not talked to just right might go rogue and annihilate the Manufactorum before they can be killed.
This is why they do not like ANYONE fething with technology, because it is so rare to find anything that just works it is critical it not be compromised. That, and they do not have the actual knowledge to feth with it intelligently, just through experimentation, which inevitably leads to slaughter. Pressing buttons to see what works is fine in a 21st century computer, but it is a very stupid thing to do at the helm of a 410th century starship with the destructive power to end solar systems. The entire knowledge base of humanity was lost. Not forgotten, but outright lost. Everything at all, poof. Nobody knows anything because the Fall fethed everything up and the Heresy double-fethed it. To rebuild the theoretical framework needed to design new technologies that don't kill everyone near them would require starting from the ground up. They don't have the time, they never have, and they never will.
This gets on to the point of war and what it does to technology. Someone will parrot that it makes it go much faster. Yes, it makes practical applications of technology go much faster. It also utterly stops all research on the scientific theories behind those technologies. This means that when war chugs along for a decade or two things get done. It means when it goes on too long you run out of theories to turn into technologies, and then you run out of technologies to apply. You stagnate. When you have been fighting in a war for survival in a drastically overextended empire, this is what happens. You are desperate for any extra materiel that can possibly be produced. Half your entire fething military might went rogue, smashed the half that stayed, leaving you with the tattered shreds of a war machine to keep hold of an empire that was reaching straining point with an army far larger. There is no time for the sort of applied research programs that took Man twenty five thousand years to develop, in a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity.
This is also why the Adeptus Mechanicus insists on cargo cultism. It's because when you are dealing with things you barely understand because everything you knew about them was destroyed it is the safest and most reliable option. The rituals do not exists for mysticism, they exist because they are the most practical means of building, repairing and maintaining the equipment they have with the knowledge surviving. You don't understand why pressing that button makes it go, because the manual tried to take over your brain and the copies are all unreadable and the research base that would let you reverse-engineer it does not exist and cannot be built.
Why are the Tau doing so well with their technology? Because they had peace. Eight thousand years unmolested by any enemy and they were helped the entire time by the most advanced biological race in the galaxy. Give the Imperium eight thousand years of peace and I can guarantee you it will be harder than it was during the Great Crusade.
Since some still don't get the idea, try this:
Build a library, fill it with all human knowledge. You take it elsewhere when you need a book from it, but the book is only a simplified copy. You don't understand the real book, and you don't need to. Nobody takes the real books anywhere because why would you, when there's a whole library there?
Now that library goes rogue and the maintenance machinery starts killing everyone any-fething-where near it. Where the feth did they all come from, you swear to god there weren't this many, and there weren't because they're using the library's information to fight their war. The government fights a battle that destroys the planet against these robots and tears apart the library to stop them using it, only to be destroyed in the process. The library is leveled, cast into flames, every book burned and every computer virus-laden.
Then comes a man who worked there. He talks to the few surviving library workers, assembles their information, and starts rebuilding a city around the library and expanding it as the librarians find little scraps of paper and fragmented bits of files that stuck together just right read something. They rebuild a library from scrap on the ashes of the old. It isn't a shadow on the glory of the old, but it is all they have.
Then the city turns on itself, kills its master, and the librarians turn to rage. Half of them kill the other half and destroy the remnants of the library because where they're going they won't need science. Everything burns, and the city is left to a scattered few survivors, walls open to the world, with the hungry predators circling.
The Adeptus Mechanicus is the sole surviving librarian, desperately scrabbling through the ashes of paper and splinters of hard drives for anything to help him and the city he needs to survive just a second longer.
The Imperium isn't grim because things suck by choice and could be fine if a sensible person came along. That sensible person wouldn't survive fifty seconds of the reality. The Imperium is grim because every single gak decision, every single sacrifice, every single death, every single man woman and child suffering a gak life in the worst conditions imaginable, is the absolute best that can be done. It is a study of the worst happening to everyone and what part of your humanity must be sacrificed today just to stand a chance of survival, and all it asks is whether or not it would have perhaps been better to die.
And here's one that explains Mechanicus religion (shorter but also expletive-laden):
Spoiler:
Children, I'm fething fed up with your gak. Cult Mechanicus IS NOT a replacement of rational thought with religion for the sake of operating machines.It's a (in-universe) developed philosophy of collective rationalism. AdMechs don't throw their critical thinking out of the window. They just already took this thinking, put it on a pedestal, brought it to it's apex (Dark Age), suffered for it, suffered for it again (HorusHeresy, Schism of Mars), then looked at it and asked : "What do we do now?" Every Mechanicum is a rationalist, in a meaning that when he goes through all the critical thinking to the basic reason of his existence, he takes on the dogma of Quest for Knowledge. That he exists to Rationalize the Universe, move towards learning and understanding the Universe and it's laws. It's also a collective quest - adept doesn't seek knowledge just for himself, he sees all the Adeptus Mechanicus as one single huge Gnostical Engine, a Machine of Comprehension designed to learn. He's just a single little gear in the heart of enormous Over-Intellect gathering and producing knowledge.
For what sake? AdMechs thought a lot about this question, and took one answer.
For the sake of Mankind.
Now THIS is where gak gets religious.
As of it now, humanity utilizes science for egoistical purposes of survival (scientists need something to eat) and/or domination, which can be understood by every human through his instincts. Society of Mars, however, got devoid of this motivators, as they dropped their human instincts, so they had to find new goals. This is where the Schism takes roots, as well as the "Cult" part. Every rational human can tell you that objectively life has no meaning. Accepting that fact is what brought the galaxy Necrons and Iron Men. AdMechs knew that this is what they wish to avoid. And the most effective way to avoid that is to walk the irrational way and put a sense for your existence through Faith.
This is what they did.
They are the fanatics in the sense that they BELIEVE that Universe CAN be comprehended, while they have 0 proof of that. They BELIEVE that critical thinking works, while living in a Galaxy that laughs at any attempts of rationalization. They BELIEVE that Quest for Knowledge can be completed. And it this faith, they are being paradoxical and irrational. And they know it. Lets have a look at Universal Laws, that Mechanicum use as the foundation of their philosophy.
The Mysteries
01. Life is directed motion.
This gives a definition to "life", as existence of individual. A definition that basically says "Only that thing which irrationally takes a (faith) direction for it's way can be called a Living Thing".
02. The spirit is the spark of life.
Here they recognize the illogical existence of Souls and Warp, and their defining roles in being representation of one's beliefs.
03. Sentience is the ability to learn the value of knowledge.
04. Intellect is the understanding of knowledge.
05. Sentience is the basest form of Intellect.
Here they define ability for rational thinking.
06. Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.
07. Comprehension is the key to all things.
And HERE they put this thinking as their Way to exist.
08. The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.
And establish an ideal, to which they are heading.
Are we seriously at the point where we're copy/pasting from 1d4chan?
... because that's where that explanation is from.
No... but I think there're some lines other posters'd do well to take to heart.
The files have been corrupted into madness by the Fall, and the unleashing of the most potent informational warfare systems ever to exist to defeat the Iron Men. Nearly all of Mars was rendered uninhabitable, what they live in now is built on the top of the ruins. They send archeotech expeditions in to find gak, nearly all of them never come back. The sheer number of rogue war machine running around in there is sufficient to rape the mind. Then came the Heresy
Even during the Great Crusade, Imperium "understanding" of technology was already next to non-existent.
You don't understand why pressing that button makes it go, because the manual tried to take over your brain and the copies are all unreadable and the research base that would let you reverse-engineer it does not exist and cannot be built.
There is no human understanding of most of its technology.
