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Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
A single marine may not be able to take a whole IG regiment frontally, but he can certainly sneak into the headquarters, kill the command staff, and sow enough chaos while he escapes to make the regiment completely useless. Or he can lead your own regiment into battle and inspire them to greater deeds.

But why bother? If you know the location of the enemy HQ then a barrage of Basilisk shells or a lance strike from orbit is way cheaper and easier to arrange than a single marine. There just isn't any meaningful task that can be done by small-numbers marines that can't be done better by other, much more widely available, assets. IMO GW needs to do one of two retcons:

1) Add an order of magnitude or three to the number of marines. There are billions of marines, and they're still elite compared to the trillions of guardsmen and uncountably many PDF soldiers.

or

2) Acknowledge that marines have minimal practical value and exist purely for religious and/or propaganda value. A squad of marines may be a completely worthless asset in practical terms but the possible existence of that squad gives something of immense value: hope that victory is possible. And so when the guardsmen are dying in the trenches, desperately holding on for just one more minute, they can have the hope that if they hold on a little longer their sacrifice will mean something and the marines will arrive to save them. Repeat this all over the Imperium, add in some religious preaching on the marines as symbols of the might of sacred humanity, and now you see some real value. This also neatly explains all of the in-universe claims about how powerful marines are and how a single squad can win a war despite the obvious absurdity of the claim. It's absurd and that's fine because it's all Imperial propaganda hyping up the few contributions of marines into something way more than they really are.

Why bother? Not every location is in range of your basilisks, not every warzone will have Imperial naval superiority, not every ground target can be struck from orbit thanks to shields, etc... But there is almost no target you can't quickly fire a half dozen drop pods at and expect them to arrive.

The best option of course is making there be many more marines than officially acknowledged.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Vatsetis wrote:

Marines are not imperial assasins (but in a huge and clunky power armor) ... Stop the Ninja Marine BS, its juvenile and almost bad taste.

If marines are special forces they are not seal/delta types (those are deathwatch or other dedicated kill teams) ... They are like a ranger company, ie yes they also hold ground in a pitch.

Its really easy to grasp.

Space Marine power armor is not clunky, its big but not clunky and awkward. Marines are described as moving faster and more quietly than something that big should, that is due to their power armor. It is quiet, they can move quickly and with a lot more stealth than you would think from their size alone.

They're definitely not ninjas, but a single marine could conduct a clandestine infiltration.

I'm not talking about some ninja sneaking in and out undetected. I'm talking a dude sneaking in under cover of darkness to lay a bunch of timed explosive charges and once discovered shoot his way out as the base explodes around him. Or 6 marines in a drop pod that land right in the command post, murder the command staff, and then escape to rendezvous with a thunderhawk.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Why bother? Not every location is in range of your basilisks, not every warzone will have Imperial naval superiority, not every ground target can be struck from orbit thanks to shields, etc... But there is almost no target you can't quickly fire a half dozen drop pods at and expect them to arrive.

If you can fire half a dozen drop pods at a target then you have a ship in position to destroy the target from orbit. And anything with the level of shields required to shrug off starship weapons is going to laugh at a mere squad or two of marines.

And most targets can make quick work of drop pods. Drop pods only work against Imperial 1950s-era manually aimed AA guns (and the other factions that use them), against a proper air defense network they'd be shot down at horrifying loss rates. We've been able to get direct contact hits on incoming ICBM warheads for decades and a drop pod is a much larger and slower target. Drop pod assaults are a great terror weapon against planetary governors with thoughts of treason, try them against a Tau or Eldar target and they're a great way to lose an entire chapter within seconds.

I'm not talking about some ninja sneaking in and out undetected. I'm talking a dude sneaking in under cover of darkness to lay a bunch of timed explosive charges and once discovered shoot his way out as the base explodes around him. Or 6 marines in a drop pod that land right in the command post, murder the command staff, and then escape to rendezvous with a thunderhawk.

Like the drop pod scenario this only works against very primitive opponents. I'm sure marines are very sneaky against orks where the only defenses are a bunch of low-ranking boyz who are too incompetent and useless to deserve a place in the real fight, and who have nothing but their eyes and an alarm button to guard the target. Try it against a Tau facility with automated drone defenses, motion detectors, IR cameras, audio sensors, etc, and a marine is going to trip the alarm immediately. And yeah, that marine might be able to blow away the patrolling gun drone and the fire warrior squad that arrives as immediate reinforcements but stealth is gone, the doors are all locked down, and the big guns are on their way to finish off the marine.

By your logic, all special forces are useless and pointless since we have aircraft, missiles, and artillery. Which is obviously not true.

 Grey Templar wrote:
By your logic, all special forces are useless and pointless since we have aircraft, missiles, and artillery. Which is obviously not true.

Not at all. Those forces are incredibly useful in the real world because we care about collateral damage, we have political factors where excessive force could escalate a conflict, etc. The Imperium has none of that. They don't care if some "civilians" are within the blast radius of an orbital lance strike, there are no civilians in 40k and collateral damage means fewer traitors to have to kill once the planet is taken. They don't have to worry about the media showing pictures of mangled child corpses, their media is under strict government control and even if they did show such images their citizens would cheer the death of the filthy xenos/traitors. They don't have to worry about violating the sovereignty of another country to assassinate a target, no non-Imperial entity has any legitimacy whatsoever and the only reason they temporarily have independent sovereignty is that the Imperial invasion and genocide fleet hasn't arrived yet.

If we didn't have political and moral concerns with excessive force in the real world we would have very little need for special forces. Identify a target, destroy it with an ICBM, done.

I feel like the Space Marines are kinda undersold here. For example, I'm fairly sure that the entire point of the Drop Pod is that it passes through defenses undetected and the only way to spot a Drop Pod coming is by seeing it coming down from the sky - and even then it still cannot be targeted via sensors and good luck hitting it with manual fire controls. Similarly, I can't really understand all this fuss over Space Marine special operations - these guys don't exactly compare to IRL infantry standards (that'd be the Imperial Guard), they are more like an IRL tank squadron in terms of capabilities. A tank squadron you can semi-freely air-drop anywhere, anytime, and it can act as fully-fledged infantry (while not losing any of the tankyness) as the situation desires.

 AtoMaki wrote:
For example, I'm fairly sure that the entire point of the Drop Pod is that it passes through defenses undetected and the only way to spot a Drop Pod coming is by seeing it coming down from the sky - and even then it still cannot be targeted via sensors and good luck hitting it with manual fire controls.

That's not plausible at all. Aside from the radar signature of a giant angular block of metal the sheer heat of a drop pod reentering at high velocity would set off every IR sensor in a thousand mile radius. IR guidance would be more than sufficient to hit them and there's nothing you can do to hide when the air itself is compressed and heated to extremely high temperatures. The only reason drop pods are considered hard to hit is that most of the time the other side is trying to shoot them down with 1950s-era manually aimed autocannons. But Tau/Eldar/Necrons aren't going to have living gunners staring through the gun sights as they spray shells in the general direction of the incoming pods, they'll have networked air defense systems firing guided missiles under automated fire control. All the operator has to do is, at most, approve the launch order.

Similarly, I can't really understand all this fuss over Space Marine special operations - these guys don't exactly compare to IRL infantry standards (that'd be the Imperial Guard), they are more like an IRL tank squadron in terms of capabilities. A tank squadron you can semi-freely air-drop anywhere, anytime, and it can act as fully-fledged infantry (while not losing any of the tankyness) as the situation desires.

But, again, what's the target? If you can drop pod in marines you can obliterate the target with a lance strike from orbit. And if you're deploying them conventionally you could get thousands of LRBTs for the price of a single squad of marines. There are just very few missions where super-elite special forces make sense in a world where collateral damage is treated as a happy bonus.

"In the interest of realism and proper immersion, we're going to ask the space marine players to only play two encounters during this campaign. We don't want anyone to get the wrong idea about your troops being in several different places at once." -- No one, no where.

@Aecus Decimus - I would assume the value of drop pods probably increases when/if the enemy has substantial anti-orbital capabilities that could threaten a ship based bombardment of that nature. Likewise, we know that marines aren't always drop-poding around everywhere. it may well be that drop pods are used with a touch of discretion... But the, this is GW we're talking about, so we can safely acknowledge that in the written lore drop pods are used when they make 0 sense to use them.

Even so, if they were "real" one could imagine them being used for rapid ground insertion beyond the range of enemy AA defenses, or, amusingly, essentially launched as more ammo during a bombardment with the hope that no one pays enough attention/ there's enough other stuff to distract enemy AA elements.

Now why someone would want to deploy Astartes under such circumstances is suspect, but -sadly- we can look at the current war in Ukraine to understand the continuous artillery bombardment does not win wars alone.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
That's not plausible at all.

I don't think that's a concern considering that 90% of the setting is in the same boat. If I have to explain it, I would say that Drop Pods use Sci-Fi ECM (active and passive) and unlike what people imagine they are not dropped into the atmosphere all on their own but with 1000s of decoys and independent Sci-Fi ECM emitters.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
But, again, what's the target?

Same as with your average tank squadron: breakthrough operations and mobile reserves. After all the lancing and artillery (maybe even done by the Space Marines themselves) the Drop Pods come in and the Space Marines boltgun down the reeling survivors so that the Imperial Guard attack can roll over without stopping and take the clay. OR if the Imperial Guard defenses are getting overrun the Drop Pods come in and the Space Marines boltgun down the attackers to save the day - then they can Thunderhawk away for a breakthrough in the counterattack. They can also just mingle with the Guard and act as walking-talking MBTs that can fit into trenches and buildings because you can never have enough MBTs ESPECIALLY if they can fight literally shoulder-to-shoulder with the infantry.

My head cannon is...

100,000 for elevated chapters, some sort of fancy Latin title that a chapter can receive that means it's trusted.
This would kind of account in play why we see so many DA, BA, SpW, UltM, etc.

10,000 for basic Chapters, 1000 or less isn't uncommon though among less renowned Chapters.

Techmarines aren't driving most of the tanks, a marine in PA in a tank is turning two assets into one expensive target.
Tech-serfs, machine-spirits, basic grunts, and cored marine minds, pilot the vehicles/turrets most of the time.

The Neophytes + Initiates basically are run as an 11th company. With say; 50 overseers, 100-300 Initiates, 400-800 Neophytes, 600-1000 Aspirants (boy soldiers), 100-600 "training" servitors & death-row prisoners. The Initiates are passed into other companies

Each 1000 strong company might have around 4000 staff (some of which will be Aspirants in-waiting (younglings)).

The increase in numbers has meant each chapter must maintain an autonomous military police unit.

The Custodies kind of have no fixed number, its in the millions, but they kind of wonder around in 10s of digits collecting tithes and distributing boons.

The grey-knights operate at a 100,000, other chapters are obligated to send a fraction of their psy-capable Aspirants to the greyknights. Blackships also do a pitstop at Titan.

Deathwatch are 4 chapters of 100,000 roaming the outer segmentums, they get their fraction of everything and collaborate around Segmentum Solar

...

That's me just gaking out what would feel right, but I don't think there's a real answer.

Regarding special forces, it's often speculated that the value of a lot of the infrastructure/labor can stop a bombardment being cost-effective. There'll also be some plot reason a missile or railgun shot can't get through but a team of men can.

Drop pod assaults have been used successfully against Tau, Eldar and Necrons. Obviously, they have more to them than just a ceramic-coated box with retrojets that allows them to evade enemy fire. We have, erm... the entiriety of Marine lore and rules to support that they are nearly or just as hard to shoot down as attack craft from the more advanced species.

Also, Imperial AA tech is clearly way above manually aimed WWII guns Hydras, quad guns, Icarus lascannons, skyfire missiles etc have targeting systems, which is why they have a chance of hitting aircraft broadly equivalent to the AA of other species. This might not fit your headcannon, and it may not look the case from the Hydra model, but clearly a Hydra and an Eldar Firestorm are not dissimilar at shooting down a Razorwing or something.

The Imperium is an incredibly advanced civilization, far beyond our capabilities in the 21st century. It technology is mostly regressing, but from a very high place.

Anyway, it is difficult to work out how a small number of Marines matters, but the lore says it does. They are basically a specialised homing munition that can canonically be deployed in a way that circumvents void shields and other technology that reduces the effectiveness of artillery (including void artillery), at an extremely high combat intensity (human troops can't continuously fight in combat for weeks without dying from exhaustion). That is a cornerstone of 40k lore.

40K works on the tightest and widest zoom settings. The squad of Marines fighting their battle against the backdrop of a galaxy at war. We focus on the Sergeant and the Supreme Commander whether on the tabletop or in Black Library books.

The lore/numbers/scale gets wonky at the middle "operational" level, but that's OK. It is, after all, a sci-fi/fantasy setting for a tabletop wargame. The only thing sillier than the setting is the folks that try to poke holes in it because it is not realistic. Of course it isn't.

So leave the Chapters at 1,000 members and move on. It's been this way since the start so why change it now.

And regarding Drop Pods, one Codex tells us that they move at impossible speed. So that is how they get through air defence.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
40K works on the tightest and widest zoom settings. The squad of Marines fighting their battle against the backdrop of a galaxy at war. We focus on the Sergeant and the Supreme Commander whether on the tabletop or in Black Library books.

The lore/numbers/scale gets wonky at the middle "operational" level, but that's OK. It is, after all, a sci-fi/fantasy setting for a tabletop wargame. The only thing sillier than the setting is the folks that try to poke holes in it because it is not realistic. Of course it isn't.

So leave the Chapters at 1,000 members and move on. It's been this way since the start so why change it now.

And regarding Drop Pods, one Codex tells us that they move at impossible speed. So that is how they get through air defence.

Ah, yes, Impossible Speed. That rarely seen point right in between "Ridiculous Speed" and "Ludicrous Speed". Just, whatever you do, make sure you don't go into PLAID!!!

As seen in the Scion 'dex, there is such a thing as enough AA to deter a drop pod assault, the pods can be tracked and shots (but not the Scions who are shoved out of the airlock and given a shroud of sorts to protect against the atmospheric entry)

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 AtoMaki wrote:
For example, I'm fairly sure that the entire point of the Drop Pod is that it passes through defenses undetected and the only way to spot a Drop Pod coming is by seeing it coming down from the sky - and even then it still cannot be targeted via sensors and good luck hitting it with manual fire controls.

That's not plausible at all. Aside from the radar signature of a giant angular block of metal the sheer heat of a drop pod reentering at high velocity would set off every IR sensor in a thousand mile radius. IR guidance would be more than sufficient to hit them and there's nothing you can do to hide when the air itself is compressed and heated to extremely high temperatures. The only reason drop pods are considered hard to hit is that most of the time the other side is trying to shoot them down with 1950s-era manually aimed autocannons.

Tracking and intercepting ICBMs with modern tech is considered so difficult that we're still essentially relying on the Mutually Assured Destruction paradigm.

I mean, I'd love it if we had good anti ICBM tech. . . But we don't (that we know of).

There's also stealth pods for infiltration work as well as supply pods. Those are mentioned in one of the Imperial Armor books.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bobthehero wrote:
As seen in the Scion 'dex, there is such a thing as enough AA to deter a drop pod assault, the pods can be tracked and shots (but not the Scions who are shoved out of the airlock and given a shroud of sorts to protect against the atmospheric entry)

I think in those (pretty rare) cases, the move on the SM part is to just drop over the horizon and approach at low altitude or just drop the Marine force off and have it move in on it's own accord, and then start to make a mess of things and draw the opposing force out.

Or they infil a defence site and turn off the defence laser/shields or point the big guns at the enemy. Stuff like that.

OR just bombard the AA from space, and then drop when that's complete.

Anyone ever shot something that was moving at impossible speed?

You’d need more than impossibly-fast reflexes to pull that off. Which as we all know, is impossible.

So 1,000 Marines in a Chapter is good to go.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Tracking and intercepting ICBMs with modern tech is considered so difficult that we're still essentially relying on the Mutually Assured Destruction paradigm.

Nah, we had working anti-missile defenses decades ago. There are two reasons we don't see it, neither of which apply in 40k:

1) It's a huge political issue. Effective anti-missile defenses have the potential to spark an arms race to overwhelm them with sheer numbers of ICBMs, and/or to attempt to launch a preemptive strike before your ICBMs are no longer useful as a deterrent and your enemy can launch their own preemptive strike at will. All of the major nuclear powers agreed to limit anti-missile defenses as a result and so each country has a few to stop, say, North Korea from doing something stupid but very obviously not enough to be a destabilizing threat. And as a result of being unable to spam thousands of terminal-phase interceptors all over the country the only option to counter MIRVs is huge and expensive interceptors that hit the incoming missile before MIRV separation but cost as much as the ICBM they're supposed to intercept. Obviously none of that applies in 40k, a setting where everyone wants to genocide everyone else and will gladly sacrifice billions to kill billions of the enemy.

2) Anti-missile defense requires way more reliability than killing drop pods. A 90% effectiveness on an anti-missile system means 10% of the warheads get through, and each one that gets through might kill millions of people. So now not only are you having to use the most expensive interceptor option you have to send several of them against each incoming target to get closer to a 100% stop. If I have to build five interceptors, each of which costs as much as an ICBM, to counter each of your missiles that's an arms race I can't win. But the 40k situation is completely different. A 90% stop rate against drop pods means horrifying losses for the marines, far more than the value of any possible mission they could accomplish. If 90 out of 100 marines are shot down drop podding into the enemy HQ then that's a clear win for the enemy. Those 90 marines were worth way more than the minor disruption that happens before the next person down the chain of command takes over, and that's assuming the 10 survivors can even accomplish anything before they are finished off by ground forces.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AtoMaki wrote:
I don't think that's a concern considering that 90% of the setting is in the same boat. If I have to explain it, I would say that Drop Pods use Sci-Fi ECM (active and passive) and unlike what people imagine they are not dropped into the atmosphere all on their own but with 1000s of decoys and independent Sci-Fi ECM emitters.

The problem is that GW tells us how drop pods survive: speed, and speed alone. And it's hard to imagine a decoy system that would be able to mimic the ballistic flight path of a drop pod and the IR emissions from reentry heating without being as large and heavy as a drop pod and, more importantly, taking up as much space in the launching ship as another pod full of marines.

The better answer, the one which is already required for other reasons, is for there to be orders of magnitude more marines and for drop pod assaults against well-defended targets to be a saturation attack that overwhelms the enemy's AA capacity. If a full company of Ultramarines launches a drop pod assault with 10,000 marines, loses all but 500 of them to AA fire, and the 500 survivors are able to finish the mission then that's fine because the chapter has a million marines and the Imperium as a whole has billions. It's only a problem with the ridiculously tiny number of marines in canon, where a single Sky Ray launching a SAM salvo can kill enough marines to annihilate a drop pod assault and cause catastrophic losses for the Imperium.

Same as with your average tank squadron: breakthrough operations and mobile reserves. After all the lancing and artillery (maybe even done by the Space Marines themselves) the Drop Pods come in and the Space Marines boltgun down the reeling survivors so that the Imperial Guard attack can roll over without stopping and take the clay. OR if the Imperial Guard defenses are getting overrun the Drop Pods come in and the Space Marines boltgun down the attackers to save the day - then they can Thunderhawk away for a breakthrough in the counterattack. They can also just mingle with the Guard and act as walking-talking MBTs that can fit into trenches and buildings because you can never have enough MBTs ESPECIALLY if they can fight literally shoulder-to-shoulder with the infantry.

Sure, a squad of infantry-size LRBTs is great and can do all kinds of things. But so can the 10,000 normal LRBTs you can get for the same cost as those precious few marines. All of these explanations require orders of magnitude more marines in the Imperium.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
A single marine may not be able to take a whole IG regiment frontally, but he can certainly sneak into the headquarters, kill the command staff, and sow enough chaos while he escapes to make the regiment completely useless. Or he can lead your own regiment into battle and inspire them to greater deeds.

But why bother? If you know the location of the enemy HQ then a barrage of Basilisk shells or a lance strike from orbit is way cheaper and easier to arrange than a single marine. There just isn't any meaningful task that can be done by small-numbers marines that can't be done better by other, much more widely available, assets. IMO GW needs to do one of two retcons:

1) Add an order of magnitude or three to the number of marines. There are billions of marines, and they're still elite compared to the trillions of guardsmen and uncountably many PDF soldiers.

or

2) Acknowledge that marines have minimal practical value and exist purely for religious and/or propaganda value. A squad of marines may be a completely worthless asset in practical terms but the possible existence of that squad gives something of immense value: hope that victory is possible. And so when the guardsmen are dying in the trenches, desperately holding on for just one more minute, they can have the hope that if they hold on a little longer their sacrifice will mean something and the marines will arrive to save them. Repeat this all over the Imperium, add in some religious preaching on the marines as symbols of the might of sacred humanity, and now you see some real value. This also neatly explains all of the in-universe claims about how powerful marines are and how a single squad can win a war despite the obvious absurdity of the claim. It's absurd and that's fine because it's all Imperial propaganda hyping up the few contributions of marines into something way more than they really are.

Why bother? Not every location is in range of your basilisks, not every warzone will have Imperial naval superiority, not every ground target can be struck from orbit thanks to shields, etc... But there is almost no target you can't quickly fire a half dozen drop pods at and expect them to arrive.

The best option of course is making there be many more marines than officially acknowledged.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Vatsetis wrote:

Marines are not imperial assasins (but in a huge and clunky power armor) ... Stop the Ninja Marine BS, its juvenile and almost bad taste.

If marines are special forces they are not seal/delta types (those are deathwatch or other dedicated kill teams) ... They are like a ranger company, ie yes they also hold ground in a pitch.

Its really easy to grasp.

Space Marine power armor is not clunky, its big but not clunky and awkward. Marines are described as moving faster and more quietly than something that big should, that is due to their power armor. It is quiet, they can move quickly and with a lot more stealth than you would think from their size alone.

They're definitely not ninjas, but a single marine could conduct a clandestine infiltration.

I'm not talking about some ninja sneaking in and out undetected. I'm talking a dude sneaking in under cover of darkness to lay a bunch of timed explosive charges and once discovered shoot his way out as the base explodes around him. Or 6 marines in a drop pod that land right in the command post, murder the command staff, and then escape to rendezvous with a thunderhawk.

So exactly the type of operation that a similar number of tempestus will handle similarly but with out toxic levels of fanboysm??????

And if you want to send a single operative you send an assassin, not a tac marine.

The more you thing about it, the more you realise that Astartes are nothing special... They are simply another toll in the arsenal of the IOM.

They are also Poster Boys and Propaganda Troops just like the Russian Paratroopers.

There are far fewer assassins than Space Marines. An Imperial commander is far more likely to have a small number of marines at his disposable than an assassin.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
By your logic, all special forces are useless and pointless since we have aircraft, missiles, and artillery. Which is obviously not true.

Not at all. Those forces are incredibly useful in the real world because we care about collateral damage, we have political factors where excessive force could escalate a conflict, etc. The Imperium has none of that. They don't care if some "civilians" are within the blast radius of an orbital lance strike, there are no civilians in 40k and collateral damage means fewer traitors to have to kill once the planet is taken. They don't have to worry about the media showing pictures of mangled child corpses, their media is under strict government control and even if they did show such images their citizens would cheer the death of the filthy xenos/traitors. They don't have to worry about violating the sovereignty of another country to assassinate a target, no non-Imperial entity has any legitimacy whatsoever and the only reason they temporarily have independent sovereignty is that the Imperial invasion and genocide fleet hasn't arrived yet.

If we didn't have political and moral concerns with excessive force in the real world we would have very little need for special forces. Identify a target, destroy it with an ICBM, done.

Collateral damage is still a concern for the Imperium.

We in the real world care about collateral damage for humanitarian reasons, because excessive killing is "evil" and "wrong". The Imperium still cares about collateral damage, but only in the sense that collateral damage damages valuable stuff. Valuable stuff can include local infrastructure, the population at large, the morale/loyalty of the local population, etc...

They don't care about little Timmy getting blown up by an artillery shell, but they will care about massacring the local population unnecessarily which might cause resentment in the years to come. So they'll pull their punches when possible. Reckless commanders who wantonly destroy valuable Imperial assets will be replaced quickly.

There are many brutally practical reasons to keep special forces even if you abandon morality and only deal with tangible benefits.

 Grey Templar wrote:
There are far fewer assassins than Space Marines. An Imperial commander is far more likely to have a small number of marines at his disposable than an assassin.
.

Any Source for this apart from headcannon?

If we have 1000x1000 adeptus astartes... Subtract the training, support, logistics combat attrition, etc... We Might have perhaps 500 marines aveilable per chapter for front line combat, from those perhaps 2/3 can be send alone as a Not Ninja to do assasination missions... So we have like 300k Astartes Assasins Stand offs in the IOM.

We have like 6 assasin cults... Do you really think we have less than 50.000 vindicares, and if the number of those are in fact just 500 how is that they are worst than the mass produced bolter porn acolites?

Also Astartes dont follow the IOM chain of command, the are ******Cowboys Warmongers, Assasins do.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
And it's hard to imagine a decoy system that would be able to mimic the ballistic flight path of a drop pod and the IR emissions from reentry heating without being as large and heavy as a drop pod

I would say the decoy is probably larger and heavier than the drop pod. We are not talking about an IRL army where material expenditure is a concern: the Imperium (and especially the Space Marines) can easily afford to have multiple times the disposable support material per combat force. When the Space Marines drop their entire Chapter in ~100 Drop Pods I would imagine millions (if not billions) of Drop Pod sized decoys deploying alongside covering half the target planet (if not half the solar system) in an impenetrable ECM shroud.

There’s also the issue of the number of Chapters being a matter of Administratum Records.

Which we know, in-universe, aren’t exactly reliable. And those records would likely assume Codex Compliance. I wouldn’t put it past the Administratum, at some point, to have lost a 0 from the Chapter count.

This is somewhat offset by the number of Foundings being broadly reliable. Except….those records aren’t believed to be complete, either. Especially with stuff like the Cursed Founding.

Who is actually checking a given Chapter only has 10 Companies of 100 Marines (well, 9 of 100, and a Scout Company of variable size)?

Even if the Chapter is required to assemble in one place for a census, how is there a way to know they’re not just presenting What Is Expected?

Space Wolves of course aren’t at all Codex Compliant. Black Templars are spread out so far in intentionally self sustaining Crusade Fleets there’s no way to tell just how many there actually are.

 Grey Templar wrote:
There are many brutally practical reasons to keep special forces even if you abandon morality and only deal with tangible benefits.

Which all goes back to the numbers problem. Space marines make sense if they cost 5-10x more than a guardsman with roughly proportional effectiveness. But when they cost orders of magnitude more than that it doesn't make sense. Yeah, a lance strike that takes out the traitor governor and the entire surrounding city costs some resources but that entire city is worth less than a single space marine. It would be better in the long run to obliterate the city if it means not having a space marine die.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AtoMaki wrote:
I would say the decoy is probably larger and heavier than the drop pod. We are not talking about an IRL army where material expenditure is a concern: the Imperium (and especially the Space Marines) can easily afford to have multiple times the disposable support material per combat force. When the Space Marines drop their entire Chapter in ~100 Drop Pods I would imagine millions (if not billions) of Drop Pod sized decoys deploying alongside covering half the target planet (if not half the solar system) in an impenetrable ECM shroud.

ECM does nothing against passive IR homing targeting the extreme heat of reentry friction and air compression. The drop pod is a very bright target for an IR seeker to lock onto and once it does that's the end of it. Plus there's ECCM, home-on-jam weapons, etc. And if the decoy is larger and heavier than the drop pod it won't have the same aerodynamic performance and the pods will quickly separate themselves from the decoys.

And then there's the question of how anyone is hauling millions or billions of drop pod sized ECM decoys to a planet when a space marine warship is only capable of launching a far lower number of pods. You'd have to have giant freighters full of decoys, at which point those freighters become a perfect target for naval forces. Then once you've expended all this effort on decoys, most of which you probably won't be able to recover, you really have to wonder why you bothered with space marines instead of conventional forces.

I always imagined the "1000 marines" thing in one of two ways.

1. It's an Administratum error, being that it was 1000 marines per chapter when they were reformed post-Heresy, and no-one has updated them since. Or theyve dropped a couple of zeroes.

2. It's 1000 "immediately deployable" marines. Not including those already deployed, on their way back from a deployment, in med-bays, etc. So they always make sure that they can have 1000 marines to deploy at the drop of a hat. So if they deploy 200 marines to a warzone, they immediately pick another 200 marines to be ready to go for the next deployment.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
Space marines make sense if they cost 5-10x more than a guardsman with roughly proportional effectiveness.

I would say this is close, except there is an exponential effectiveness increase per cost. So a Space Marine needs roughly 10x the resources of a Guardsman (most of it being its implants) but has 100x the Guardsman's capabilities (because it is more like an MBT rather than an infantryman). The real catch is not the cost but the availability - if the Imperium could turn every 10 Guardsmen into 1 Space Marine by simply paying the extra cost up front then they would do that in a blink of an eye, but they can't do that because only 1 Guardsman in a million could be turned into a Space Marine.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
ECM does nothing against passive IR homing targeting the extreme heat of reentry friction and air compression. The drop pod is a very bright target for an IR seeker to lock onto and once it does that's the end of it. Plus there's ECCM, home-on-jam weapons, etc. And if the decoy is larger and heavier than the drop pod it won't have the same aerodynamic performance and the pods will quickly separate themselves from the decoys.

Active ECM blind anything, any they are not your crappy IRL ECM but awesome Sci-Fi ECM. For all we know, they use an emission control field, trap all the infra-red coming from the Drop Pod, and redirect it back into space or even compress it into a needle-thin beam and refract it across the atmosphere. Maybe they use strange particle emitters to fry enemy sensors on the sub-quantum level. I don't think the Imperium is limited to our understanding of electronic warfare.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
And then there's the question of how anyone is hauling millions or billions of drop pod sized ECM decoys to a planet when a space marine warship is only capable of launching a far lower number of pods. You'd have to have giant freighters full of decoys, at which point those freighters become a perfect target for naval forces. Then once you've expended all this effort on decoys, most of which you probably won't be able to recover, you really have to wonder why you bothered with space marines instead of conventional forces.

Space Marine voidships are pretty friggin' big and a Chapter-sized deployment would bring an entire fleet of them. They should comfortably have enough space for those decoys OR they might not even carry them around but build them on-demand with in-situ resource harvesting and onboard fabricators/autofoundries. The possibilities are really endless here.

Goodluck with IR targeting during daylight. When a big ball of plasma is emitting IR and visible radiation is the backdrop. And you only have seconds to detect the drop pod; get a firing solution; bring the weapon to target; and then shoot.

Our atmosphere is 12km thick. The speed of sound is 1225km/h. So roughly 34 seconds at the speed of sound. How fast is a drop pod? If it is bullet fast you have 15 seconds.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bobthehero wrote:
As seen in the Scion 'dex, there is such a thing as enough AA to deter a drop pod assault, the pods can be tracked and shots (but not the Scions who are shoved out of the airlock and given a shroud of sorts to protect against the atmospheric entry)

I think in those (pretty rare) cases, the move on the SM part is to just drop over the horizon and approach at low altitude or just drop the Marine force off and have it move in on it's own accord, and then start to make a mess of things and draw the opposing force out.

Or they infil a defence site and turn off the defence laser/shields or point the big guns at the enemy. Stuff like that.

OR just bombard the AA from space, and then drop when that's complete.

Not always possible, between void shields and heavy defences on the outer perimeter, dropping somewhere else or lancing the target may have been impossible. Or whatever, attempts from jumping from Thundwerhawks with jump packs also failed, I assume the Marine size actually proved to be a detriment.

Imo, it's good for setting, there's always this tendency for people to think things will just automatically go the Marine's way when they arrive, and it's nice to see that, yes, drop pod assaults aren't just ''Marine show up, and win, the end''

Vatsetis wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
There are far fewer assassins than Space Marines. An Imperial commander is far more likely to have a small number of marines at his disposable than an assassin.
.

Any Source for this apart from headcannon?

If we have 1000x1000 adeptus astartes... Subtract the training, support, logistics combat attrition, etc... We Might have perhaps 500 marines aveilable per chapter for front line combat, from those perhaps 2/3 can be send alone as a Not Ninja to do assasination missions... So we have like 300k Astartes Assasins Stand offs in the IOM.

We have like 6 assasin cults... Do you really think we have less than 50.000 vindicares, and if the number of those are in fact just 500 how is that they are worst than the mass produced bolter porn acolites?

Also Astartes dont follow the IOM chain of command, the are ******Cowboys Warmongers, Assasins do.

Assassins are only trained on a single planet, Terra. They are under the direct command of the High Lords.

While direct numbers are never given, the implication is that they are extremely few in number.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bobthehero wrote:
As seen in the Scion 'dex, there is such a thing as enough AA to deter a drop pod assault, the pods can be tracked and shots (but not the Scions who are shoved out of the airlock and given a shroud of sorts to protect against the atmospheric entry)

I think in those (pretty rare) cases, the move on the SM part is to just drop over the horizon and approach at low altitude or just drop the Marine force off and have it move in on it's own accord, and then start to make a mess of things and draw the opposing force out.

Or they infil a defence site and turn off the defence laser/shields or point the big guns at the enemy. Stuff like that.

OR just bombard the AA from space, and then drop when that's complete.

Not always possible, between void shields and heavy defences on the outer perimeter, dropping somewhere else or lancing the target may have been impossible. Or whatever, attempts from jumping from Thundwerhawks with jump packs also failed, I assume the Marine size actually proved to be a detriment.

Naturally "not always possible" doesn't mean "never possible". There are passages somewhere about Space Marines juat moving on from a world that's too big a task for the strike force, and earmarking it for a combined action of Guard/Navy/Marines later. But what I like about this sort of thing is that it can play to the Marine strength of being able to go on loooong deployments and take advantage of their various extra abilities that aren't generally noted, like long, continuous marches without sleep, being able to digest all sorts of not-traditionally-food, and eating brains to gather intelligence.

Imo, it's good for setting, there's always this tendency for people to think things will just automatically go the Marine's way when they arrive, and it's nice to see that, yes, drop pod assaults aren't just ''Marine show up, and win, the end''

The point is more that there's more than one way to crack planetary defenses, and that the Marines are prepared for a number of insertion missions and types of conflict. Having the variety of scenarios keeps it interesting, yes.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Tracking and intercepting ICBMs with modern tech is considered so difficult that we're still essentially relying on the Mutually Assured Destruction paradigm.

Nah, we had working anti-missile defenses decades ago. There are two reasons we don't see it, neither of which apply in 40k:

1) It's a huge political issue. Effective anti-missile defenses have the potential to spark an arms race to overwhelm them with sheer numbers of ICBMs, and/or to attempt to launch a preemptive strike before your ICBMs are no longer useful as a deterrent and your enemy can launch their own preemptive strike at will. All of the major nuclear powers agreed to limit anti-missile defenses as a result and so each country has a few to stop, say, North Korea from doing something stupid but very obviously not enough to be a destabilizing threat. And as a result of being unable to spam thousands of terminal-phase interceptors all over the country the only option to counter MIRVs is huge and expensive interceptors that hit the incoming missile before MIRV separation but cost as much as the ICBM they're supposed to intercept. Obviously none of that applies in 40k, a setting where everyone wants to genocide everyone else and will gladly sacrifice billions to kill billions of the enemy.

2) Anti-missile defense requires way more reliability than killing drop pods. A 90% effectiveness on an anti-missile system means 10% of the warheads get through, and each one that gets through might kill millions of people. So now not only are you having to use the most expensive interceptor option you have to send several of them against each incoming target to get closer to a 100% stop. If I have to build five interceptors, each of which costs as much as an ICBM, to counter each of your missiles that's an arms race I can't win.

Well it looks to me like you just described some major problems with it. You need a ton of them, they're expensive, they need to be everywhere, and they're still not reliable.

But the 40k situation is completely different. A 90% stop rate against drop pods means horrifying losses for the marines, far more than the value of any possible mission they could accomplish. If 90 out of 100 marines are shot down drop podding into the enemy HQ then that's a clear win for the enemy. Those 90 marines were worth way more than the minor disruption that happens before the next person down the chain of command takes over, and that's assuming the 10 survivors can even accomplish anything before they are finished off by ground forces.

So then the answer is something different. Such as launch decoys, find where the effective counter-launch systems are, and then bombard the from orbit, or drop somewhere else.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AtoMaki wrote:
I don't think that's a concern considering that 90% of the setting is in the same boat. If I have to explain it, I would say that Drop Pods use Sci-Fi ECM (active and passive) and unlike what people imagine they are not dropped into the atmosphere all on their own but with 1000s of decoys and independent Sci-Fi ECM emitters.

The problem is that GW tells us how drop pods survive: speed, and speed alone. And it's hard to imagine a decoy system that would be able to mimic the ballistic flight path of a drop pod and the IR emissions from reentry heating without being as large and heavy as a drop pod and, more importantly, taking up as much space in the launching ship as another pod full of marines.

No it's really easy; more Drop Pods. As already mentioned the Marine vessels are enormous. And we already have examples of Pods that don't carry Marines.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

The better answer, the one which is already required for other reasons, is for there to be orders of magnitude more marines and for drop pod assaults against well-defended targets to be a saturation attack that overwhelms the enemy's AA capacity. If a full company of Ultramarines launches a drop pod assault with 10,000 marines, loses all but 500 of them to AA fire, and the 500 survivors are able to finish the mission then that's fine because the chapter has a million marines and the Imperium as a whole has billions. It's only a problem with the ridiculously tiny number of marines in canon, where a single Sky Ray launching a SAM salvo can kill enough marines to annihilate a drop pod assault and cause catastrophic losses for the Imperium.

No no no, that's proposing that the "fix" is a 90% loss scenario is a TERRIBLE solution. Not to mention the weird logic of discounting the idea of decoy pods, but then proposing more actual pods just filled with sacraficial bodies.

The solution lies elsewhere. Pods remain difficult to intercept effectively, through decoys, ECM, or other techniques, and the Marines aren't habitually suicide-dropping.

Sure, a squad of infantry-size LRBTs is great and can do all kinds of things. But so can the 10,000 normal LRBTs you can get for the same cost as those precious few marines. All of these explanations require orders of magnitude more marines in the Imperium.

The marines do fun stuff, like boarding orbital defence platforms and then nuking the planet below. The 10,000 LRBTs can't do that.