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Any concept of rationality with our world went out the window the moment they decided that jumping through a negative space wedgie was the best and safest way to travel long distances. Plus some of those numbers were probably fudged by a bored imperial clerk who couldn't be bothered to check how many 0's went into a billion or a million.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

The Imperium has over a trillion worlds,

No it doesn't. It has a bit over million worlds. You're off by several orders of magnitude.

 Crimson wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

The Imperium has over a trillion worlds,

No it doesn't. It has a bit over million worlds. You're off by several orders of magnitude.

Cite your million world source.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

The Imperium has over a trillion worlds,

No it doesn't. It has a bit over million worlds. You're off by several orders of magnitude.

Cite your million world source.

SJ

Most recent: 7th edition Dark Millennium book, first page. Repeated on page 6. It has been million worlds in every edition.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

Yeah, no they don't because Imperium doesn't have trillion worlds, it has a million worlds.

The Imperium has over a trillion worlds, each with billions of citizens. Of those trillions of billions, maybe one per world survives recruitment to the Astartes, one in a thousand of those survives to become an Astartes, leaving a million Astartes in service. Which is astoundingly ridiculous in concept, let alone any thinking that that is a useful statistic.

I like the original RT set up for Marines, where a world would fund the creation of a Space Marine Chapter to defend their system and neighbors. The Chapter would recruit from the local population, receive munitions and supplies from the worlds they defend, and in general acted as the elite shock troops they were billed to be. The current incarnation is just unworkable.

SJ

Gonna need a good hard quote for that one, buddy (because you're wrong). Never seen it stated as anything other than "over a million worlds" and you need some really good evidence for why that phrase is off by three six orders of magnitude.

Trillion sounds better.

SJ

And because its 40k, Jeff's post is technically correct for his 40k. Although why he doesn't just scale up the Marines too is anyone's guess. Whining rights, probably.

Who knew that Forging the Narrative can include forging new stars/star systems into a galaxy? Here I was thinking world were only destroyed in the grimdark future.

There's not enough stars in the galaxy to have that many worlds, even if every star in the Milky Way had habitable planets circling them that were all human-owned (which they most certainly are not).

It's been fairly consistently a million worlds. The population of the imperium, that's in the trillions.

yea, the 1 million space marines or so, and 1 million worlds or so has been around a long time.

Things to consider: in many cases Marines have helpers from the human population manage lots of the day to day and even run their ships. Ultramar comes to mind, where the Ultramarines have their own empire within the empire. They are the most codex complaint chapter, and with multiple worlds they oversee, it's easy to imagine that they raise significant Imperial Guard regiments and work closely with human population.

Fluffwise, a tactical squad of marines is an army unto itself. Heck, a single marine is. Obviously on the table top this doesn't equate, but in the literature, Space Marines are almost godlike in power and longevity.

Lastly, I think it's the new SM book that says there is less than 1 marine for each world in the imperium, which puts the total number of worlds in the low millions.

riburn3 wrote:
Things to consider: in many cases Marines have helpers from the human population manage lots of the day to day and even run their ships. Ultramar comes to mind, where the Ultramarines have their own empire within the empire. They are the most codex complaint chapter, and with multiple worlds they oversee, it's easy to imagine that they raise significant Imperial Guard regiments and work closely with human population.

Fluffwise, a tactical squad of marines is an army unto itself. Heck, a single marine is. Obviously on the table top this doesn't equate, but in the literature, Space Marines are almost godlike in power and longevity.

Lastly, I think it's the new SM book that says there is less than 1 marine for each world in the imperium, which puts the total number of worlds in the low millions.

Space Marine worlds actually aren't required to provide IG Regiments, but Ultramar is so well ran they actually have several hundred IG quality Regiments on standby to bolster the Imperiums war machine when needed.

10th company doesn't count towards the total, as they are not yet full astartes. A chapter normally has 1000 Marines (9 companies of 100 plus another 100 command, drivers etc), plus 100+ scouts in 10th company. At least that's how I've always interpreted it.

Though, fluff-wise, a Scout is not on par with a Battle Brother, lacking both the wargear and the experience.

The Ultramarines have 1001 without Dreadnoughts, 1027 with Dreadnoughts.

came here hoping to find out how many space marines are in the entire imperium

axisofentropy wrote:
came here hoping to find out how many space marines are in the entire imperium

One million, give or take one million.

SJ

I suspect that they simply forgot the scale when they set that number.

Dev 1: 'You know those super-powerful Space Marines, man?'

Dev 2: 'Yeah? Wow, they're so awesome.'

Dev 1: 'You know, the Imperium has one million of them.'

Dev 2: 'One million?! Imagine that, one million of them coming at ya! No one would be able to stop them.'

Dev 1: 'Yeah! The Imperium's greatest defenders, for sure.'

It is a well documented fact that sifi writers don't understand scale.

The guard suffer from this problem too really. They are mostly presented as several regiments of one to ten thousand men being sent to deal with a whole planet when in WWII d day involved about one hundred and fifty thousand men on the allies side. So fifty thousand guard being sent to take a planet it equally as dumb as only 100 marines being sent.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I suspect that they simply forgot the scale when they set that number.

Dev 1: 'You know those super-powerful Space Marines, man?'

Dev 2: 'Yeah? Wow, they're so awesome.'

Dev 1: 'You know, the Imperium has one million of them.'

Dev 2: 'One million?! Imagine that, one million of them coming at ya! No one would be able to stop them.'

Dev 1: 'Yeah! The Imperium's greatest defenders, for sure.'

I always thought the one million number was supposed to highlight the hopelessness of the fight, rather than being a sign of scale-blindness.

If so, they probably wouldn't depict that million performing as well as they are.

The million Marines fluff is a lot older than the godlike Marines fluff.

 jonolikespie wrote:
It is a well documented fact that sifi writers don't understand scale.

The guard suffer from this problem too really. They are mostly presented as several regiments of one to ten thousand men being sent to deal with a whole planet when in WWII d day involved about one hundred and fifty thousand men on the allies side. So fifty thousand guard being sent to take a planet it equally as dumb as only 100 marines being sent.

Vraks cost 14 million guardsmen (34 regiments)

 Crimson wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
1,000 marines per Chapter is the stupidest idea in 40k. How do a million Astartes protect a trillion worlds? They don't, of course.

SJ

Yeah, no they don't because Imperium doesn't have trillion worlds, it has a million worlds.

The statement of the Imperium having a million worlds is a stylistic statement at the start of every 40k novel. The Imperium certainly has more planets than this, simply by the amount of sectors of space they control. FFG and other novels put them at billions- but trillions is a bit much. Of course the number changes daily thanks to Administratum rounding errors and Orks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 aka_mythos wrote:
It's been fairly consistently a million worlds. The population of the imperium, that's in the trillions.

No, the population of the Imperium is in the quadrillions just from the Hive Worlds. It has trillions of guardsmen.

1000 marines, but keep in mind that they also have chapter serfs, who are human servants.
I don't think serfs are used in combat though. Probably has something to do with the heresy.

 Wyzilla wrote:


The statement of the Imperium having a million worlds is a stylistic statement at the start of every 40k novel. The Imperium certainly has more planets than this, simply by the amount of sectors of space they control. FFG and other novels put them at billions- but trillions is a bit much.

Citation needed.

What Crimson said. I have seen no indication that they number more than a million. Indeed, the 'one Marine per world' thing is something they've been big on.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:
It is a well documented fact that sifi writers don't understand scale.

The guard suffer from this problem too really. They are mostly presented as several regiments of one to ten thousand men being sent to deal with a whole planet when in WWII d day involved about one hundred and fifty thousand men on the allies side. So fifty thousand guard being sent to take a planet it equally as dumb as only 100 marines being sent.

Vraks cost 14 million guardsmen (34 regiments)

FW know what they are talking about (most the time). GW less so.

14 million is still very low. But it's at least better than what GW puts out.