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Totalwar1402 wrote:I personally don't get that. Since a thousand marines have the ability to subdue a whole world with several billion people and at least millions of soldiers it would be hard to think that one to ten makes much sense. Even if you consider better mobility, tactics and the like I don't see how they'd be able to do that without being just plain better than the average mortal. I mean only a few hundred held off behemoth and just a few chapters smashed a Tau fortress world which both outgunned and outnumbered them massively. I'd say in a straight fight 50 to 1 would be a more accurate portrayel. Space Marine is funny since you only win due to your skills as a captain; plenty of enemy units are actually better than you and they do come close to killing you without being in a position to totally over-run you. Really it just shows that you can win a fight against forty orks single handed or kill five chaos marines with a lot of powerful CC equipment. If you play hoard then you realise how many marines probably are killed (ie the Sycthes of the Emperor) through just being shockingly outnumbered and pulled down one by one.

Because it depends on context? Not every planet or every world is going to be identical, nor is every battle situation. And subdue. 1000 soldiers will not be able to 'subdue' a populace by actually garrisoning it, but they might be able to slaughter the entire planet (especially via orbital bombardment, depriving it of essential facilities or resources - eg breaching the hull of a hive world or taking out its recycling and air/water reclamation, etc.) they might use psychological terror in some populations (Night Lords excelled at this.) But do you seriously expect an entire Chapter could topple Cadia on its own, unsupported? Mars? Terra? Any forge world? What about a major, heavily defended hive world with extensive orbital and ground based defenses? As an example of this I will note that 7000+ word bearers with millions of troops and over a dozen cruisers and battleships and daemon support were COMPLETELY unable to take a system full of billions of troopers and citizens and a mere 300 or so MArines in Dark Creed despite having considerable orbital authority and having conquered much of the system within a month.

Also: Space Marines get compared variously to being equal to 10 other soldiers, or 100, or whatever. We dont know in what context or situations, so this isn't something you can apply as an absolute. A single guy with a meltagun or plasma gun will easily violate that ratio, and thousands of spear and sword armored warriors vs a Space Marine hundreds of metres away with a loaded bolter or heavy bolter can skew it the other way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As far as armor goes... first off we need to remember that 'power armor' alone is not the same thing as 'power armour with a space marine in it' - the two are actually very closely related, not just for the strength and speed boosting, but for the medical assistance (providing nutrietns and resources to the Marine, providing painkillers, stimulants, sometimes combat drugs, and antitoxins, etc.) Also, the protection it provides complements the inherent resiliency of the marine - the fast clotting, the increased tolerance to pain, the black carapace and fused ribcage (as wlel as general enhancement of bones and skeleton as a whole) and the redundant organs. Power armour by itself is not 100% protective in all areas (joints and other flexible, exposed areas) and it degrades with punishment taken (chips taken out of the plates, etc.) but the ability to ignore shock/pain and blood loss are huge assets to avoiding being killed. This is often why I think you see headshots as a means of killing marines - that seems to be the most 'efficient' way to take them down, short of hacking them to pieces.

Also as far as the 50-85% thing goes... there is this which basically can be summed up as 'No body armour offers immunity to all weapons in all cases and at all times'

They certaintly arn't taking over a single planet by themselves.

However, it is usually preferable to capitulate to the demands for surrender then take the wrath of the Space Marines.


Suppose a world is rebelling over some relativly minor disturbance(the governor is taxing them too heavily)

The thing becomes a full blown riot with people taking up arms and wanting to oust the governor.

Then a Space Marine Strike Cruiser arrives in orbit and demands order be restored.


The rebels will probably surrender right there and take the Imperial backlash rather then risk their homes and lives getting nuked from orbit while Space Marines slaughter them in the streets.

The leaders will get severly punished, but the Governor will also be in trouble because his policies caused this loss in efficiency. So in the end the people get what they wanted, and a few died in the process but so what?

Connor MacLeod wrote:I personally don't get that. Since a thousand marines have the ability to subdue a whole world

A thousand Sisters conquered a hundred worlds, and Sisters are merely human.

Just saying, the feat may not be as impressive as it sounds, especially given a shock and awe war against the enemy which destroys their morale and causes them to surrender.

DrimGark wrote:However, the one thing that seems to be constant- power armour is almost useless is "super melee". Super melee being epic hand to hand combat with enemies with magic/teched up melee weapons, or crazy tyranid/demon claws.

Well, it still increases their strength and has all sorts of triage tech that can keep them fighting. So it's not useless, just doesn't offer much in the way of protection.

Even tehn it's still often better than other armors against those.