What STC items do you reckon were created by mankind?

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**KamikazeCanuck**

purplefood wrote:
KamikazeCanuck wrote:
reds8n wrote: They, sort of, covered this in interviews at the time : What *we* call combi bolters were referred to as Stormbolters by some at that time. the design becoming improved and refined over time, and the current names being really for game/player benefit.

..so..yeah.. it was a slip up, but one easily enough explained.

Works for me. That was my other theory.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the knives, what basically happened (iirc) was 6 guardsmen found it by accident by like falling through a floor egyptian pyramid style. It made slightly lighter and sharper knives which is such a monumental discovery that all 6 of them had planets named after them!

They were actually put in charge of the planets... massive promotion considering they were probably only guardsmen which shows just how much the IoM values STC findings.

Are you sure they were actually given planets? Either way its safe to say STCs are pretty important. Look what they got for just getting one that makes a better steak knife!

**Captain Roderick**

Sir Pseudonymous wrote: STC's were databases with a printer attached, that produced instructions for building something (something like a cross between blueprints and Ikea's assembly guides).

Moreso than that, they blueprints were also a guide to how to make that thing from whatever you had to hand based upon local resources. Want to make a rhino (or rather, tractor) on a planet with very little metal and no oil? Sure, make it from wood and power it with steam, the STC blueprint includes all possible permutations, and the designs themselves are simple and robust enough to allow a lot of flexibility with regards to resources. STC blueprints for hi-tech stuff like computers and ipods became comparatively rarer over the dark age because not only were they less essential to survive, so less blueprints were made of them, but also the technology needed to create the complex components was also lost. Although I'm surprised there's not an STC mentioned for Babbage's Analytical Engine anywhere...

And I suppose weaponry blueprints are more common because the Dark Age of Technology was not a kind period to the human race, isolated on a million worlds. If there's one thing mankind's going to hang onto when besieged by an unkind universe and warring with itself, it's how to put a cap in someone's buttocks.

**LooT**

What I want to know is, if The Leman Russ Battle Tank has been around for god knows how long, and the Malcador came before that, then where did they come from? What machine did they originate from. I would lol if they originated from a taxi or a moped design....

The Boltpistol was originated from a hand-drill, of course. The missile-launcher was an evolution of the wheel. The Drop Pod was a by-product of My Little Pony.

The Omnissiah was actually a Led Zeppelin CD with some scratches. The powersword was recovered from a legoland foam blade for 3 year olds.

But seriously, what other things do you think they could have come up with? Maybe some pictures to back up your posts

**Grey Templar**

the Lemun Russ was developed shortly after the Heresy and was named after Lemun Russ as it has many similer qualities to the primarch

the Malcador was used prior to the Heresy and was named after Malcador(duh

)

the Malcador was probably based, and expanded, on prior tank designs that were around at the time. these designs would have since been lost to history.

Bolters have been around practically forever in 40k fluff. many lost human civilazations found by the Great Crusade had some form of Bolter based weapon(the Knights of Caliban used Bolt Pistols and Chainswords). it was likely a very successful design during the Dark Age of Technology that the Emperor chose for his Astartes to wield.

**Captain Roderick**

Lord of Timbraxia wrote:What I want to know is, if The Leman Russ Battle Tank has been around for god knows how long, and the Malcador came before that, then where did they come from? What machine did they originate from. I would lol if they originated from a taxi or a moped design....

But seriously, what other things do you think they could have come up with? Maybe some pictures to back up your posts

I think it's good to take into account that in addition to STC's, there were also some items that people still had the skill to make. Wars didn't stop, so I think it's entirely possible that the Malcador was a tank design still in use - maybe even on earth - at the start of the great crusade. Not the best design, thus its phasing out for the baneblade and leman russ, but one that the skills existed to create. Those skills may have rapidly been lost over the 10 millenia since the great crusade, but in the crusade-era imperium, the AdMech didn't have the absolute stranglehold over technology they do now - after all, the Emperor wanted to usher in an era of science and reason, and we all know science and reason leads to machine guns and atom bombs...

back on the STC topic, this is a guaranteed example of the kind of thing you might find on a desert world...

http://www.groasis.com/page/uk/principle.php

**BloodDrop101X**

This is rather stupid to post but hopefully someone will get a luagh out of it.

How do you think some tech preists would react to finding an STC machine with a sex toy as the last thing qued up haha I can see it now (Tech Priest) "Oh great we needed this STC machine to make bio-weapons to fight tryanids and all its useful for is making a bunch of bloody spankers"

**Grey Templar**

Where do you think Quake Cannon tech came from

**blazinpsycho&typhooni**

Where did you guys get the fluff on what STC's were? I thought it was basically a program you could find on a computer and you could just print out blueprints to make them.

I didn't know that STC's were actual machines...

Any BL books or codex quotes would be nice!

**Owain**

I assume an STC machine has the processing power to generate additional permutations of a design based on local resources and user-generated operating parameters.

In short, a fully functioning STC machine would make Humanity as technologically versatile as the Orks, but in a repeatable fashion. We would be mass-producting LR Executioners or constructing more robust hellguns and cheaper carapace armor for general infantry use. We'd also have the ability to produce spare parts for Titans and Ordinatus crawlers, meaning that we could deploy them more aggressively and in greater numbers. Heck, if the Mechanicum could be shaken out of their backward slide we could construct a more efficient Imperator titan.

**purplefood**

blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:Where did you guys get the fluff on what STC's were? I thought it was basically a program you could find on a computer and you could just print out blueprints to make them.

I didn't know that STC's were actual machines...

Any BL books or codex quotes would be nice!

One of the GG novels and one of the GK series.
Can't remember which ones though so good luck with that.

**Grey Templar**

Owain wrote:I assume an STC machine has the processing power to generate additional permutations of a design based on local resources and user-generated operating parameters.

In short, a fully functioning STC machine would make Humanity as technologically versatile as the Orks, but in a repeatable fashion. We would be mass-producting LR Executioners or constructing more robust hellguns and cheaper carapace armor for general infantry use. We'd also have the ability to produce spare parts for Titans and Ordinatus crawlers, meaning that we could deploy them more aggressively and in greater numbers. Heck, if the Mechanicum could be shaken out of their backward slide we could construct a more efficient Imperator titan.

the Mechanicum is "sliding backwards"

they are actually inching forwards.

Titans are completely replicable and spare parts are widely avaliable.

however, the parts are, and were always, difficult to make and it's easier to fix a broken titan then make a new one.

the same reason you take your car into the shop when it breaks and see if it's fixable is the same reason the IoM rarely makes a new titan. it's cheaper and you get more value out of your car if you take it in for regular check ups and repairs then buying a new care everytime a spark plug dies or a tire pops.

**Owain**

But if having two cars allowed me to better crush the enemies of the Imperium and I had the money....

**Pacific**

Grey Templar wrote:
the Mechanicum is "sliding backwards"

they are actually inching forwards.

Titans are completely replicable and spare parts are widely avaliable.

Grey Templar, can I ask how you have reached this kind of conclusion about the 40k universe? A huge chunk of the 'doom and gloom' is that we (the human race) have had our moment in the sun, our chance for greatness, and we let it slide into the toilet. Now, it's a slow path to ruin, as the machines gradually break down and the technology is lost with science being reduced to some kind of psuedo-religion, where by it's most important component - innovation - is not only undesired but is punishable by death. This isn't something I've just just gleamed from a couple of BL novels, to me it's been the integral component of the 40k universe, essentially what separates it from a good chunk of most other sci-fi franchises and 'hollywood'.

Here is a post on A-D-B's blog which puts it more eloquently than I ever could:

http://www.bscreview.com/2011/02/back-to-the-future-with-a-warhammer/

Here is some of that article, which I would recommend to everyone to read!

I’m aware that as articles go, the first one usually has to stick to a degree of setup, and it can read as a little dry. I apologise for that, and I’ll keep it to a minimum. But excuse me while I blabber just a bit, because I do freaking love this world.

Warhammer 40,000 takes its core concept and rolls with it right to the end of the universe: In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

That’s the mood behind the theme, and it’s what creates the palpable undercurrent of gritty, dirty desolation.

I use three words to describe Warhammer 40,000 at its simplest, when we’re talking terms of theme and atmosphere. Bleak, Gothic, and Baroque.

Bleak: “Without hope or encouragement.”

Gothic: “Noting or pertaining to a style of literature characterised by a gloomy setting, grotesque, mysterious, or violent events, and an atmosphere of degeneration and decay.”

Baroque: “Extravagantly ornate, florid, and convoluted in character or style”.

That sounds pretty pretentious, I’ll admit. But it’s also accurate.

See, Warhammer 40,000 is a sci-fi setting where everything that could possibly go wrong, has gone wrong. All of the optimism in science fiction; all of the hopes and tales of a brighter future with the ascension and evolution of mankind… All of that has failed. The golden age has passed, and humanity failed to cling onto the precious lore of those magnificent centuries.

Our species has an empire that spans the galaxy, but everything – everything – is devoted to fuelling the engines of our eternal crusade against alien races and the ever-present threat of heresy. The galaxy is besieged, and humanity’s empire crumbles at the edges. We lose ground, we lose worlds and star systems, every night.

The God-Emperor of Mankind was a secular visionary devoted to bringing about humanity’s perfection, but for the last 10,000 years he has existed as nothing more than a stasis-caught corpse shackled to a life support machine, using his psychic powers to scream his last breath into the endless void, in order to power our species’ space travel. Humanity worships a husk bound to a throne – and worse, to keep the Emperor’s corpse and its vestiges of power preserved, thousands of souls are sacrificed each month, their lives fed into the soul engines powering the Emperor’s life support.

We are capable of warp flight, but it’s far from a matter of speed and convenience. To make a warp jump is to punch a hole into another reality, and race through a literal Hell realm of boiling psychic storms. Daemons formed from raw human emotion claw at the ship, kept at bay by ancient shield generators.

Invention is heresy. Literally, heresy, because only the schematics preserved from our golden age can be trusted. All mechanical genius is the purview of the Martian Mechanicus, who believe machines have souls, and construct massive Titan war machines to walk the battlefields as gods, and Imperial Navy battleships the size of cities.

Humanity feeds its sons and daughters into the meatgrinder regiments of the Imperial Guard, in the keenest allegory to both World Wars (the Guard’s tanks even resemble WWI vehicles), while our greatest warriors are taken as children and genetically modified in hidden monasteries who stand eight feet tall in layered ceramite power armour; can spit acid; and their personal firearm is a fully-automatic rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

These last are the hallmark heroes of Warhammer 40,000: the Adeptus Astartes. Those are the guys that come up the moment you Google “Space” and “Marine” in the same sentence. At best, they are monastic, hypnotically-trained religiously revered warriors so genetically enhanced that they barely count as human anymore. At worst, they’re psychopathic degenerates with chainsaw swords that are barely tolerated by their own species, but are too powerful – and too necessary – to be abandoned.

Kids like it, sure. It’s got war in it, and it’s a developed, cool setting. The ties to the game bring in a lot of younger readers, though it’d be a lie to say I – and, I assume, my colleagues – are writing for that age group. The setting itself is just so absolutely, punishingly dark, that it hardly rewards immature storytelling. That’d be doing an injustice to it.

To paraphrase myself, what draws me to Warhammer 40,000 is how bleak existence is. How corruption taints absolutely everything, from a peasant’s harsh life; to a hive city worker toiling 17 hours a day in a meaningless grind; to the billions destined to die in humanity’s armies; to supernatural threats most humans would never see.

Yet people still live, fight, survive… and that’s where the stories are. Degeneration is inevitable, even in the aspects that are intentionally funny. I think that’s powerful. It’s a kickass theme. Omnipresent decay is an insidious concept that makes my skin crawl, and 40K has it in spades. It’s what Gormenghast would look like if Titus Groan had an empire. It’s got the stagnation versus freedom aspect that ran through Peake’s work, and it’s got the taint of madness, misery and emotional sensitivity.

**Grey Templar**

Things that have been developed/rediscovered since the HH.

Lemun Russ battle tank(and all varients),

Mk8 power armor,

Stormravens,

Infantry Portable Multi-meltas and Plasma Cannons,

Assault Cannons,

Land Raider Crusaders,

Land Raider Redeemers,

Land Raider Ares,

Terminus Ultra Land Raider,

Baal Predator,

Lucifer Pattern Engines,

Vindicators,

Hellguns.

**blazinpsycho&typhooni**

purplefood wrote:
blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:Where did you guys get the fluff on what STC's were? I thought it was basically a program you could find on a computer and you could just print out blueprints to make them.

I didn't know that STC's were actual machines...

Any BL books or codex quotes would be nice!

One of the GG novels and one of the GK series.
Can't remember which ones though so good luck with that.

Thank you sir! I have read the GK omnibus, although I don't remember where it said stuff on the STC's just on the STC titan is all I can remember. I'll look into GG.

How would an STC for a cruiser or battleship work? Are they huge XD?

**Grey Templar**

the STC for the Titan was a computer program that had been posessed by a Deamon.

the STC deamon then built it's own Mega Titan to house itself.

**Captain Roderick**

I'm not even sure if titans count as STC's - they were created by the denizens of Mars during the DAoT, and thus were still being made and used when the Emperor brought them in on the whole great crusade malarky. As a result, Titan-building knowledge is something preserved within the AdMech itself, and quite possibly is in gradual decline as a result.

It explains why they're so important as cultural icons to the AdMech as well - these aren't just holy items created from discovered blueprints, they are the original, iconic weapon of Mars, preserved from the DAoT and carried forth into the galaxy thereafter as proof of the omnissiah (or 'Void Dragon')'s superiority.

**Grey Templar**

the STC for Titans was destroyed.

but just because the original is gone doesn't mean the copies aren't still around.

there are too many copies of that STC laying around and getting used for them to forget how to make Titans.

**KamikazeCanuck**

Grey Templar wrote:Things that have been developed/rediscovered since the HH.

Lemun Russ battle tank(and all varients),

Mk8 power armor,

Stormravens,

Infantry Portable Multi-meltas and Plasma Cannons,

Assault Cannons,

Land Raider Crusaders,

Land Raider Redeemers,

Land Raider Ares,

Terminus Ultra Land Raider,

Baal Predator,

Lucifer Pattern Engines,

Vindicators,

Hellguns.

Storm Bolters!

**Grey Templar**

doh

**blazinpsycho&typhooni**

Captain Roderick wrote:I'm not even sure if titans count as STC's - they were created by the denizens of Mars during the DAoT, and thus were still being made and used when the Emperor brought them in on the whole great crusade malarky. As a result, Titan-building knowledge is something preserved within the AdMech itself, and quite possibly is in gradual decline as a result.

It explains why they're so important as cultural icons to the AdMech as well - these aren't just holy items created from discovered blueprints, they are the original, iconic weapon of Mars, preserved from the DAoT and carried forth into the galaxy thereafter as proof of the omnissiah (or 'Void Dragon')'s superiority.

I think in the GK novel Daemon World, the one where they find the Titan, the AI aboard the STC titan gave a sort of history about titans in general.

Personally, I don't think titans came from mars, maybe a Mars design was made on mars and still manages to stay in production. But giant mechs are all so ingrained in our culture, that I think it won't be long before someone makes one. Perhaps they already have. Of course not at the size and scale of the god-machines, but eventually people will keep making them bigger and bigger until it resembles something along the lines of the machines in 40k.

If that didn't make any sense, what i'm trying to get at is that the 41st millenium is a long time away, there are so many things that could have been created and lost in that time. People probably had to re-invent sliced bread!

/end rant

**CoI**

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Grey Templar wrote:Things that have been developed/rediscovered since the HH.

Lemun Russ battle tank(and all varients),

Mk8 power armor,

Stormravens,

Infantry Portable Multi-meltas and Plasma Cannons,

Assault Cannons,

Land Raider Crusaders,

Land Raider Redeemers,

Land Raider Ares,

Terminus Ultra Land Raider,

Baal Predator,

Lucifer Pattern Engines,

Vindicators,

Hellguns.

Storm Bolters!

Thing is, aren't many of those simply rediscovered STC designs? The Baal predator and Vindicator are the ones that seem to remember being STC designs. not sure about the othe ones.

**Captain Roderick**

blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:

I think in the GK novel Daemon World, the one where they find the Titan, the AI aboard the STC titan gave a sort of history about titans in general.
....
If that didn't make any sense, what i'm trying to get at is that the 41st millenium is a long time away, there are so many things that could have been created and lost in that time. People probably had to re-invent sliced bread!

/end rant

yeah good point, and no need to rant

I've not read the GK novel and don't plan to, and I'm one of those people who only really takes a couple of the BL writers' stuff as canon anyway (to avoid MULTILAZORZ) so hadn't come across that schpiel.

I agree there were probably other titan designs out there in the wider imperium-to-be, I just reckon the reason they're so special to the AdMech is that they were on Mars beforehand, and they and the knowledge of how to make them has been held on to since then with absolute desperation.