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ifStatement wrote:Imagine if caltech was run by monks from the dark ages, that's the ad mech.

But monks from the dark ages would be smarter then the admech.

Anyone is smarter than the admech

The 2nd book in the Grey Knight Omnibus (Dark Adeptus) by Ben Counter gives a lot of insight into why the Ad-Mech do what they do. On one hand they seem over cautious, on the other hand anything is better than devolving into heretics and daemons.

Another thing to consider is that human technology in the 41st Millennium, at least the bleeding edge of it, starts to dip into the warp a bit too much for safety. It's one thing when you're the psychically advanced Eldar, and you can push your technology far past humanity's current state because you can handle it. It's another when you're the Necrons/C'tan, and you developed seriously advanced tech at a time when the warp was calm and you could explore pocket dimensions and such without risk of opening a portal to hell.

But for humanity, at the point they're at (and where they were at during The Dark Age of Technology), reaching for further knowledge in some crucial areas of incredibly advanced physics is probably a ticket to damnation. Hence it is safer to more or less outlaw science altogether than risk experimenting with things that could utterly destroy your civilization.

The Ad mech are very efficient, the idea that they are horrible at everything they do is stupid, because the Imperium would not have survived 10,000 years if they were terrible at everything.

I don't know were this idea that the Imperium is made entirely up of stupid and slowed people, then how have they stayed the most powerful force in the galaxy for thousands of years?

The primary reason they're in the position they are is sheer numbers, but it's ultimately a massive dark age.

The Admech are toaster worshipers, they may be... reasonably competant at construction, reasonably efficent even, possibly even intelligent (though they use rivets, so how smart can they really be...) but they are hardly expedient.

Increasing the build time of something exponentially because they need to spend so much time sanctifying it / praying at it, is NOT an efficent system.

They are reasonably good at copying old things and passing on routines, but when it takes them the better part of a century to build a battleship is hardly efficent.

I'm going to have to take the side of "Yes, they are good at what they do" in this one. That said, I'm also going to reiterate what has been said before. They are terribly inefficient. All of the rituals and prayers are honestly crippling, and perhaps even more so is the very idea that the technology is sacred. They don't want to tamper with it for fear of desecrating the holy technology. Nor do they let simple humans even try. They're a pretty elitist bunch, and comparable to various snobby organizations that have gotten a choke-hold on technology throughout our own history.

But I just keep coming back to the fact that they produce the technology required to maintain a galaxy-spanning empire. Every lasgun, every power cell. Every Imperator-class Titan, whenever they actually are made. They support the massive war-machines of the Imperium, not to mention the civilian side. They're just slow is all. Conservative. Just like everything else in the Imperium.

On a side not, I find it really peculiar how the Tau are always referred to as having advanced incredibly quickly, going from damn near feudal to having tech magic in only a few thousand years. A few thousand years. Seems pretty reasonably standard-pace to me, not particularly fast. Of course, from the perspective of the Imperium, that's incredibly fast.

In a few centuries they went from caveman style hunter-gatherers to frontier-style blackpowder weaponry, then in just under 5 thousand years, from that to an advanced spacefaring race spanning 25-30 worlds.

Considering it's taken us as humans nearly 50-80 thousand years to go from the point of the neanderthal to our modern industrialist society, even accounting for a few centuries of Dark Ages along the way, I'd say 5000 years is pretty damn quick.

Ovion wrote:In a few centuries they went from caveman style hunter-gatherers to frontier-style blackpowder weaponry, then in just under 5 thousand years, from that to an advanced spacefaring race spanning 25-30 worlds.

Considering it's taken us as humans nearly 50-80 thousand years to go from the point of the neanderthal to our modern industrialist society, even accounting for a few centuries of Dark Ages along the way, I'd say 5000 years is pretty damn quick.

We went from flintlock muskets and kings to fusion bombs and democracy in about 300 years.
Change can be surprisingly fast too.

The Ad Mech isn't stupid. it may appear they are from our 21st century perspective but everything they do has a reason behind it.


The rituals they have, regardless of the existance of the Omnissiah or not, help the lower ranks and non-Ad Mech people operate their insane technology. Its simply the easiest solution, and least complicated one. There is alot of superstition and general ignorence as to how things work with the commoners. Its simply easier to explain to them that they must perform this ritual before turning this machine on then it is for them to say "Hold the calibration matrix button down for 4 seconds before pressing the start button after which you enter in your passcode" because no one in this entire sector knows what the feth a Calibration Matrix is.

GreatGunz wrote:[

They're horrible at it. They have no idea what science is, or how any of their stuff works. When their toys break, all they know how to do is pray to the machine-god and follow the steps laid out in their holy technical manuals. That's why they spend so much time looking for the standard template constructs. They cant invent anything for themselves.

I couldn't disagree with this more. The old knowledge is still there, it's just buried under 10,000 years of bureaucracy and religious dogma. The way GW has been writing the Ad-Mech has dropped the bar so low I don't know if it will ever come back to where it used to be.

Or I could just wait until the FINALLY get a model line and Codex then they will be the best at everything all the time and pimp slap drago out, put Calgar in his place and one techpriest with a spanner, spit and some know how will fix the Golden Throne. And it will get really silly if Mr Ward touches it.

FabricatorGeneralMike wrote:

GreatGunz wrote:[

They're horrible at it. They have no idea what science is, or how any of their stuff works. When their toys break, all they know how to do is pray to the machine-god and follow the steps laid out in their holy technical manuals. That's why they spend so much time looking for the standard template constructs. They cant invent anything for themselves.

I couldn't disagree with this more. The old knowledge is still there, it's just buried under 10,000 years of bureaucracy and religious dogma. The way GW has been writing the Ad-Mech has dropped the bar so low I don't know if it will ever come back to where it used to be.

Suppose your car broke and you went to a mechanic. Then the mechanic asked you what secret sin you had committed to offend your car's spirit, and advised you to purify yourself while he consulted the holy technical manuals.... you'd run screaming before you went to another mechanic, right? Because we all know that machines don't work that way. Anyway you wouldn't give that guy your money. 40k is the same thing, except there is no other mechanic. You're stuck with him. So hope your stuff doesn't break.

The whole thing is satire. Like everything else in 40k it's a riff on someone else's work. This time it's post apocalyptic fiction like A Canticle for Liebowitz (where a bunch of monks preserve scraps of technology after the apocalypse) or The Omega Man (where the cultists are worshipping a nuclear bomb in their basement.) The point of stories like that is that they're a bunch of ignorant savages who don't know anything. The admech is no different.

GreatGunz wrote:

Ovion wrote:In a few centuries they went from caveman style hunter-gatherers to frontier-style blackpowder weaponry, then in just under 5 thousand years, from that to an advanced spacefaring race spanning 25-30 worlds.

Considering it's taken us as humans nearly 50-80 thousand years to go from the point of the neanderthal to our modern industrialist society, even accounting for a few centuries of Dark Ages along the way, I'd say 5000 years is pretty damn quick.

We went from flintlock muskets and kings to fusion bombs and democracy in about 300 years.
Change can be surprisingly fast too.

Yes, but they would have hit that point, going by the timeline presented (going 10-15 times faster), in around 30 years.

Grey Templar wrote:The Ad Mech isn't stupid. it may appear they are from our 21st century perspective but everything they do has a reason behind it.


The rituals they have, regardless of the existance of the Omnissiah or not, help the lower ranks and non-Ad Mech people operate their insane technology. Its simply the easiest solution, and least complicated one. There is alot of superstition and general ignorence as to how things work with the commoners. Its simply easier to explain to them that they must perform this ritual before turning this machine on then it is for them to say "Hold the calibration matrix button down for 4 seconds before pressing the start button after which you enter in your passcode" because no one in this entire sector knows what the feth a Calibration Matrix is.

Really? 'You must sing the litany of activation, -half page of litany- while holding down button A (diagram to button), - repeated for the next 5 steps, is easier than a small diagram pointing out what each button is, then "Hold the calibration matrix button down for 4 seconds before pressing the start button after which you enter in your passcode"?

It's what we have today and 99.5% of people manage. A few pages of diagrams and instructions, instead of a small novels worth of BS, surrounding the few pages of instructions and diagrams.

There is an explanation as to when this is the simplest solution though - when you're trying to keep the masses ignorant, viewing technology as magic and keeping you solidly in power. Religion as a means of control, same as in the Dark Ages.

'course as far as I can tell its been so long the AdMech now pretty much buys it themselves, perpetuating a vicious cycle where no one knows exactly what's going and everyone believes the tech is holy relics.

ovlon wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:The Ad Mech isn't stupid. it may appear they are from our 21st century perspective but everything they do has a reason behind it.

The rituals they have, regardless of the existance of the Omnissiah or not, help the lower ranks and non-Ad Mech people operate their insane technology. Its simply the easiest solution, and least complicated one. There is alot of superstition and general ignorence as to how things work with the commoners. Its simply easier to explain to them that they must perform this ritual before turning this machine on then it is for them to say "Hold the calibration matrix button down for 4 seconds before pressing the start button after which you enter in your passcode" because no one in this entire sector knows what the feth a Calibration Matrix is.

Really? 'You must sing the litany of activation, -half page of litany- while holding down button A (diagram to button), - repeated for the next 5 steps, is easier than a small diagram pointing out what each button is, then "Hold the calibration matrix button down for 4 seconds before pressing the start button after which you enter in your passcode"?

Yep. That's it exactly.

Ovion wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:The Ad Mech isn't stupid. it may appear they are from our 21st century perspective but everything they do has a reason behind it.


The rituals they have, regardless of the existance of the Omnissiah or not, help the lower ranks and non-Ad Mech people operate their insane technology. Its simply the easiest solution, and least complicated one. There is alot of superstition and general ignorence as to how things work with the commoners. Its simply easier to explain to them that they must perform this ritual before turning this machine on then it is for them to say "Hold the calibration matrix button down for 4 seconds before pressing the start button after which you enter in your passcode" because no one in this entire sector knows what the feth a Calibration Matrix is.

Really? 'You must sing the litany of activation, -half page of litany- while holding down button A (diagram to button), - repeated for the next 5 steps, is easier than a small diagram pointing out what each button is, then "Hold the calibration matrix button down for 4 seconds before pressing the start button after which you enter in your passcode"?

It's what we have today and 99.5% of people manage. A few pages of diagrams and instructions, instead of a small novels worth of BS, surrounding the few pages of instructions and diagrams.

There is an explanation as to when this is the simplest solution though - when you're trying to keep the masses ignorant, viewing technology as magic and keeping you solidly in power. Religion as a means of control, same as in the Dark Ages.

'course as far as I can tell its been so long the AdMech now pretty much buys it themselves, perpetuating a vicious cycle where no one knows exactly what's going and everyone believes the tech is holy relics.

Technically you wouldn't have to sing the litany, however the Litany contains the instructions. All their litanys are basically instruction manuels put to a chant. Its done to make it easy to remember for the masses, who are completely ignorent as to how stuff works.

Its easier then implementing a galactic education system capable of making those litanys obsolete.

If they can read to learn the litanies, they can follow an instruction manual.

You don't need to know how something works / how to build it to use it.
Do you know how your TV works? Your car, boiler, washing machine, computer, etc?
Being you can already read, would it easier / better to read a few pages of instructions, or a dozen pages of how you must appease the holy technology for it to turn on?

If you do not sing the litany, the machine spirit will become angered with you, and it will malfunction. Do not arrogantly push the button. Humble yourself before the Omnissiah, brother. Think often upon the many blessings with which you have been blessed. Sing the damn litany.