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Because that is tactically unsound.

mrFickle wrote:
Also the fluff used to say that terminator armour and weapons were rare and couldn’t be replicated and weee treated like holy relics passed from marine to marine.

But since the advent of primaris marines the imperium clearly has the resources to equip units with any gear they want. So why not give all astartes melta guns

Which is beyond idiotic fluff seeing standard operating mode of any apothecary is to hack apart your breastplate to extract seed, making these "relics" one use items. And that's before considering what happens to armor hit by melta/plasma/lascannons/krak warheads, never mind something like distortion weapons of Eldar of Necron gauss. If SM chapters couldn't replace gear, they would run out of stuff after 10 years, never mind after 10 millennia.

And repeating the primaris 4chan whining is as always really comical, they literally mass use heavy stubbers on their vehicles due to lack of gear, most of their units can't even take a single frakking pistol or melee weapon on sarge, and use cheap, modular gravis instead of terminator armor, but suuure, it's the primaris that are the problem here, not squatmarines who can take more relics on their (single) veteran units that the above (stupid) fluff says most chapters have

Primaris tech is *new*, but it doesn't seem to be particularly mass-producable? Like, eradicators have basically better meltas, but you're only fielding about 3 of them at a time in a basic squad. Being able to produce a batch of meltaguns at some point during the 10,000 years Cawl was working on the primaris doesn't suggest to me that he has the resources to pump out an extra 900 meltaguns for all their brothers. Whatever bottlenecks keep meltas rare in the first place presumably still apply to eradicator meltas.

Hellblasters, admittedly, kind of seem to go against this by virtue of having a plasma weapon per dude and being fieldable in relatively large squads, but I imagine the total number of hellblasters in a given chapter is supposed to be quite a bit smaller than the total intercessors. Similar to how being able to give a missile launcher to 4 out of 5 devastators doesn't mean that you have enough spare missile launchers to replace your chapter's bolters with them.

Primaris equipment is a tantalising glimpse into what The Imperium could achieve if it was better organised.

Remember, Cawl was working on the whole project for 10,000 years. That’s 10,000 years of R&D, manufacture and stockpiling, with no attrition to wear down reserves.

Even if it took him and his copies 9,000 years to get the weapon systems working? That’s still 1,000 years of uninterrupted manufacture. Even if every Chapter was destined to have 100 Impulsors? That’s 100 to be made each year. Which isn’t a huge number at all.

The fancy plasma and Melta weapons? You’re probably looking at similar numbers, because Marines are so few in number, and specialised units even fewer.

To give every company 2 of the new Dreadnoughts? That’s around 20 per Chapter. Again, not a huge amount needed to create the 20,000 of each example.

As for “Cawl invented an awful lot”? Did he? We know he had access to stuff from the original Astartes project. The relative sophistication of the toys he’s made may have been drawn up during that initial project, but mothballed/sidelined as too complex when arming and continually supplying forces of the size involved in the Great Crusade.

That’s he slapped his monicker on them is no different to Arkhan Land and his speeder and raider. He who finds an STC and gets it back in production gets to name it.

All meltas would be a bad idea, because they have shorter range and lower rate of fire than other options. Ammunition capacity is also low. Marines mainly fight renegade human PDFs/cultists and Orks, so all meltaguns would be poor for masses of infantry.

 Irbis wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
Also the fluff used to say that terminator armour and weapons were rare and couldn’t be replicated and weee treated like holy relics passed from marine to marine.

But since the advent of primaris marines the imperium clearly has the resources to equip units with any gear they want. So why not give all astartes melta guns

Which is beyond idiotic fluff seeing standard operating mode of any apothecary is to hack apart your breastplate to extract seed, making these "relics" one use items. And that's before considering what happens to armor hit by melta/plasma/lascannons/krak warheads, never mind something like distortion weapons of Eldar of Necron gauss. If SM chapters couldn't replace gear, they would run out of stuff after 10 years, never mind after 10 millennia.

And repeating the primaris 4chan whining is as always really comical, they literally mass use heavy stubbers on their vehicles due to lack of gear, most of their units can't even take a single frakking pistol or melee weapon on sarge, and use cheap, modular gravis instead of terminator armor, but suuure, it's the primaris that are the problem here, not squatmarines who can take more relics on their (single) veteran units that the above (stupid) fluff says most chapters have

I suspect very few veterans with Terminator honours still have their progenoids in situ. They can be safely removed from living Marines once they have matured, which takes 5 and 10 years for each progenoid.

Anyway, Terminator armour can definitely be repaired. With a lot of Marine relics, I suspect there is the old "when I've replaced every part is it still the same item" issue, but superstition and tradition probably win out.

Suits can also be manufactured. It’s just seemingly a length and resource intensive process, with those efforts arguably better put to maintaining and repairing what you do have. After all, you can (entirely hypothetically) build a Single Suit, or use the same amount of constituent parts to rebuild and refurbish multiple suits to battle readiness, appeasing a tried, tested and trusted Machine Spirit along with it.

I think besides the maintenance issue, it's just all down to "right tool for right job". The hammer/ shield combo gives you more defense, and I would assume the chainfist variation would be less of a power spike if you wanted to- say- carve out of a rock formation/ solidified rockcrete. And of course, vs autocannon/ storm bolters, lightning claws won't do much- the old "Knife to a gunfight" adage.
But what do I know? I play Orks and the Power Klaw is our only power weapon option!

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Primaris tech is *new*, but it doesn't seem to be particularly mass-producable? Like, eradicators have basically better meltas, but you're only fielding about 3 of them at a time in a basic squad. Being able to produce a batch of meltaguns at some point during the 10,000 years Cawl was working on the primaris doesn't suggest to me that he has the resources to pump out an extra 900 meltaguns for all their brothers. Whatever bottlenecks keep meltas rare in the first place presumably still apply to eradicator meltas.

Hellblasters, admittedly, kind of seem to go against this by virtue of having a plasma weapon per dude and being fieldable in relatively large squads, but I imagine the total number of hellblasters in a given chapter is supposed to be quite a bit smaller than the total intercessors. Similar to how being able to give a missile launcher to 4 out of 5 devastators doesn't mean that you have enough spare missile launchers to replace your chapter's bolters with them.

Plaama and melta can't be that difficult to manufacture because the Guard have them in the millions. Probably hundreds of millions.

They're probably just not given to everybody due to tactical and logistics reasons.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Suits can also be manufactured. It’s just seemingly a length and resource intensive process, with those efforts arguably better put to maintaining and repairing what you do have. After all, you can (entirely hypothetically) build a Single Suit, or use the same amount of constituent parts to rebuild and refurbish multiple suits to battle readiness, appeasing a tried, tested and trusted Machine Spirit along with it.

Don't forget there's probably a dual-channel thing going on: Most parts go to repair existing suits, but some will go to creating new suits either to replace destroyed/lost suits (Terminators lost in a Space Hulk and left behind etc) and outfit new Successor Chapters.

Also it is very plausible that Terminator armour (and power armour in general) is designed with relatively-easily-replacable ablative layers over the super advanced, rare core layers, with the ablative layers being sufficient for most incoming attacks.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Primaris tech is *new*, but it doesn't seem to be particularly mass-producable? Like, eradicators have basically better meltas, but you're only fielding about 3 of them at a time in a basic squad. Being able to produce a batch of meltaguns at some point during the 10,000 years Cawl was working on the primaris doesn't suggest to me that he has the resources to pump out an extra 900 meltaguns for all their brothers. Whatever bottlenecks keep meltas rare in the first place presumably still apply to eradicator meltas.

Hellblasters, admittedly, kind of seem to go against this by virtue of having a plasma weapon per dude and being fieldable in relatively large squads, but I imagine the total number of hellblasters in a given chapter is supposed to be quite a bit smaller than the total intercessors. Similar to how being able to give a missile launcher to 4 out of 5 devastators doesn't mean that you have enough spare missile launchers to replace your chapter's bolters with them.

Plaama and melta can't be that difficult to manufacture because the Guard have them in the millions. Probably hundreds of millions.

They're probably just not given to everybody due to tactical and logistics reasons.

It’s the law of big numbers.

Astartes Bolters and Guard Issue Lasguns tend to be fairly well standardised. So whichever Forge or Industrial World you happen to be near will more likely than not have the bits and pieces you need to repair, reload etc. And for most foes, they’re perfectly capable weapons. Because whilst we the players often see the Lasgun as woefully underpowered, it’s still a true miracle weapon - and more than capable of slaying unarmoured or lightly armoured opponents. For anything bigger the Guard have plenty of heavy weapons too.

And so those are made on a ridiculous scale, compared to their relative demand. It’s likely billions of Lasguns and power packs are produced every day across the Imperium.

Plasma and Meltaguns are therefore only rare by direct comparison, but still clearly made in untold thousands every single day. But. Whether or not a given world is producing them is more open to question that your bread and butter weapons.

I still maintain that amongst space marines a soldier is expected to earn the right to bear more advanced arms which creates their scarcity. Chainswords are very common but until you get a promotion you are stuck with a knife.

Terminator squads are full of veterans that have earned their place in the armour and amongst them there are those that have earned the right to move beyond the storm Bolter and power fist configuration.

Also the mechanicum treat manufacturing processes like holy rituals. it makes them more valuable as a faction to hide production of technology behind religious barriers and give the most senior member of imperial forces the most sacred (and powerful) technology.

I’m sure if the mechanicum wanted to they could turn over a whole planet to producing power claws but that would devalue the mechanicum because it would make it look like power claws are easy to make and then people would think - if they are easy to make maybe I could make them myself.

On that, we know that once out the Scout Company, a Marine typically goes through squad types. If memory serves its Devastator, Assault then Tactical.

When it comes to weapons in Tactical Squads, it could be there’s a certain meritocracy involved. A Brother with a proclivity for picking out weak points in enemy armoured units may be equipped with a Lascannon or Meltagun. A particularly good shot on the hoof may be issued a Plasma Gun - rather than specific Marines always being the Special or Heavy Weapon specialist?