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My 40k group and I are discussing general backstory and the question popped up, "Are there more Orks or humans in the galaxy?"

Most of us agree that because of the fact that some things breed like rabbits but rabbits bleed like Orks, there should be more Orks in the galaxy than humans. After all, how could they afford to keep fighting themselves and STILL be such a major threat to each other?

On the other hand, the Imperium has such a large amount of worlds in it and they also have to put down insurrections, cults, and rebellions regularly.

Tell us, Dakkaites, which race is more plentiful?

The Orkish hordes are lead by Warbosses who don't allow Boyz to fight with each other.
Although there are more Orks than humans in the Galaxy (they breed not even like rabbits but like weeds, according to Leoten Semper's grandpa), humans are still more intelligent and developed race. Orks are incredibly stupid (only Ogryns can beat them in stupidity) and have primitive vehicles and armaments, and the Imperium has many hi-tech weapons, regardless of technological regression.

There are more Orks then humans. Infact there are so many orks that if they were all to unify, they would crush all of the more "civilized" races.

Farseer Petriel wrote:The Orkish hordes are lead by Warbosses who don't allow Boyz to fight with each other.
Although there are more Orks than humans in the Galaxy (they breed not even like rabbits but like weeds, according to Leoten Semper's grandpa), humans are still more intelligent and developed race. Orks are incredibly stupid (only Ogryns can beat them in stupidity) and have primitive vehicles and armaments, and the Imperium has many hi-tech weapons, regardless of technological regression.

Do humans have man portable ordinance S 10 AP 2 weapons that create semistable tunnels through the warp then? Hadn't noticed those

Orks are more advanced than you give them credit for They are unsophisticated, but very creative

Orks outnumber humans massively. Apparently there are probes that have been travelling out from the IOM for millenia and are still picking up ork transmissions ...

Orks. Undeniably Orks.

Orks are also one of the most technologically advanced races in 40k, as long as that technology is focused on some aspect of war.

ORKZ IS MORE!

Deffinatly more Orks although primitave minded they have technology and the way they breed with the spore things mean they breed faster than even weeds.

What.

Humans number in the untold trillions, right?

If there are so many orks, where the hell do they live? The odd space hulk?

I've never heard of "ork worlds"

Obviously there must be more humans.

More orks than fighting humans maybe?

Almarine wrote:
If there are so many orks, where the hell do they live? The odd space hulk?

I've never heard of "ork worlds"

Well, there are Ork worlds. A lot of them. Ork empires spanning multiple worlds too. The Imperium covers a fraction of the galaxy, and while they are the biggest unified force, the Orks likely hold more worlds overall.

Almarine wrote:What.

Humans number in the untold trillions, right?

The upper limit for the Imperium's population can actually be calculated out from GW sources:

The Hive Worlds of the Imperium are classed as having upper limit population of 500 billion (3rd edition 40K rulebook, p. 114). The 5th edition rulebook on p. 115 estimates there to be 3.238 * 10^4 or 32,380 hive worlds in the Imperium. Even if all 1,000,000 worlds of the Imperium were hive worlds with 500 billion people that is 5 * 10^17. That is an UPPER limit for the Imperium's population, yet we know not all worlds are hive worlds so the true population is actually lower.

It is therefore not untold trillions...it is 500,000 trillion as an upper limit.

The great crusade led by the Emperor himself largely involved cleansing the galaxy of Orks.

He got so tired of cutting his way through Orks to expand his tiny empire that he let Horus take over whilst he tinkered away out the back of the Imperial Palace on some sort of dodgy webway gate so he could skip the Orks altogether.

Turns out Horus was a total bastard, and there were way more Orks than anyone would have thought.

Great idea that was, Emp.

Almarine wrote:I've never heard of "ork worlds"

Bam. Look at the top right. Orks have their territory measured in number of worlds per subquadrant(a fourth of a subsector). They aren't limited to any sector of the galaxy-- they inhabit ALL of them, it's just a matter of how many Orks happen to be in there (the Eye of Terror area has less Orks in it because the Eldar spent so ages cleansing them from the area before their fall, for example).

Orks outnumber all other sentient species in 40k combined.

Iracundus wrote:

Almarine wrote:What.

Humans number in the untold trillions, right?

The upper limit for the Imperium's population can actually be calculated out from GW sources:

The Hive Worlds of the Imperium are classed as having upper limit population of 500 billion (3rd edition 40K rulebook, p. 114). The 5th edition rulebook on p. 115 estimates there to be 3.238 * 10^4 or 32,380 hive worlds in the Imperium. Even if all 1,000,000 worlds of the Imperium were hive worlds with 500 billion people that is 5 * 10^17. That is an UPPER limit for the Imperium's population, yet we know not all worlds are hive worlds so the true population is actually lower.

It is therefore not untold trillions...it is 500,000 trillion as an upper limit.

Right. And orks?

I think there were some on armageddon too... but I guess they died?

The ones at black reach died right?.

Dawn of war orks... all dead except that one warboss.

Looks like there's gonna be some orks in Space Marine though, so yeah, there's them.

Edit: Yeah I'm not buying that map, obvious shoop. At least spell Sunkiller right.

Almarine wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

Almarine wrote:What.

Humans number in the untold trillions, right?

The upper limit for the Imperium's population can actually be calculated out from GW sources:

The Hive Worlds of the Imperium are classed as having upper limit population of 500 billion (3rd edition 40K rulebook, p. 114). The 5th edition rulebook on p. 115 estimates there to be 3.238 * 10^4 or 32,380 hive worlds in the Imperium. Even if all 1,000,000 worlds of the Imperium were hive worlds with 500 billion people that is 5 * 10^17. That is an UPPER limit for the Imperium's population, yet we know not all worlds are hive worlds so the true population is actually lower.

It is therefore not untold trillions...it is 500,000 trillion as an upper limit.

Right. And orks?

I think there were some on armageddon too... but I guess they died?

The ones at black reach died right?.

Dawn of war orks... all dead except that one warboss.

Looks like there's gonna be some orks in Space Marine though, so yeah, there's them.

Edit: Yeah I'm not buying that map, obvious shoop. At least spell Sunkiller right.

Ork spelling? No wai!

And yes, Orks outnumber all species combined. Hell, a large portion of human worlds has feral orks too. The point is, a single ork making it to a world will mean there will be orks there as long as it is habitable.

Almarine wrote:Edit: Yeah I'm not buying that map, obvious shoop. At least spell Sunkiller right.

It's directly from the 40K Rulebook. You kinda have to buy it.

Its from the big one and not the AoBR minie rule book so not everyone will have it.

But it is cannon. ork spelling FTW!



Orks most certaintly outnumber Humans, but as they are constantly divided they will never be able to take over the galaxy.

Although that map from the rulebook shows widespread Ork world distribution, the population is not given. Not all worlds would necessarily be teeming with Orks, such as the world of Angelis that GorkaMorka took place on, which was essentially a sparsely populated Max Max like world with a scavenger economy.

Of all the major races native to the Milky Way galaxy though, Orks are certainly one of the most numerous, though how they compare against other races described as very numerous is uncertain unless we can get numbers. What we lack is data on how many Necrons might be slumbering, though interestingly enough we do have a reference for Tyranids. The omniscient narrator POV from the 2nd ed. Tyranid Codex even gives us the number of Tyranids still waiting on the edge of the galaxy:

A billion times a billion Tyranids stand at the rim of the galaxy yet each one is no more than a single cell in the living body of the hive mind, the devourer of worlds. p. 4, 2nd edition Tyranid Codex

That's 10^18, which is incidentally double the maximum upper limit for the Imperium's population (which already took unrealistically favorable assumptions for the Imperium). Humans are outnumbered by over 2:1 by the Tyranids.

Thaanos wrote:There are more Orks then humans. Infact there are so many orks that if they were all to unify, they would crush all opposition.

fixe'd

Ork codex p.4 first paragraph

There are more Orks then humans. Even more then that map indicates as any world that the orks fight on will still have an ork population even centuries after the main ork force has been beaten, a good example is armageddon wher during the 3rd war hordes of feral orks swarmed from the equatorial jungles.

Almarine wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

Almarine wrote:What.

Humans number in the untold trillions, right?

The upper limit for the Imperium's population can actually be calculated out from GW sources:

The Hive Worlds of the Imperium are classed as having upper limit population of 500 billion (3rd edition 40K rulebook, p. 114). The 5th edition rulebook on p. 115 estimates there to be 3.238 * 10^4 or 32,380 hive worlds in the Imperium. Even if all 1,000,000 worlds of the Imperium were hive worlds with 500 billion people that is 5 * 10^17. That is an UPPER limit for the Imperium's population, yet we know not all worlds are hive worlds so the true population is actually lower.

It is therefore not untold trillions...it is 500,000 trillion as an upper limit.

Right. And orks?

I think there were some on armageddon too... but I guess they died?

The ones at black reach died right?.

Dawn of war orks... all dead except that one warboss.

Looks like there's gonna be some orks in Space Marine though, so yeah, there's them.

Edit: Yeah I'm not buying that map, obvious shoop. At least spell Sunkiller right.

Some orks on armageddon? Billions more like. It was the largest WAAAGH! in history. Billions of billions of orks. And they aren't dead, Ghaz is still laying siege to armageddon, and the orks aren't waning. Well I suppose neither are the humans, but that is irrelevant.

Black reach is one WAAAGH! in many millions. Do you expect all WAAAGH!s to be successful? BILLIONS more WAAAGHs. Including Ghazes, the Arch Arsonist's and Wazdakka's.

Gorgutz lads was just a small warband. Only a few thousand orks. Not a full on WAAAGH!. And as I said there are millions of large scale wars that GW does not specify.

And whens the last time you have seen ork spelling?

Orks are the biggest threat to the IOM short of the Tyranids.

End rant.

zilegil wrote:

Some orks on armageddon? Billions more like. It was the largest WAAAGH! in history. Billions of billions of orks. And they aren't dead, Ghaz is still laying siege to armageddon, and the orks aren't waning. Well I suppose neither are the humans, but that is irrelevant.

Codex armageddon disagrees.

Lets count the orks there:

+ + + + + + + +

not so many...

zilegil wrote:
Black reach is one WAAAGH! in many millions. Do you expect all WAAAGH!s to be successful? BILLIONS more WAAAGHs. Including Ghazes, the Arch Arsonist's and Wazdakka's.

The map in the BRB, yes you guessed it, disagrees...

zilegil wrote:
Gorgutz lads was just a small warband. Only a few thousand orks. Not a full on WAAAGH!. And as I said there are millions of large scale wars that GW does not specify.

Millions? youre following the sense of scale of the design team yes?

zilegil wrote:
And whens the last time you have seen ork spelling?

Orks are the biggest threat to the IOM short of the Tyranids.

End rant.

Poor chaos., once they were the biggest threat...

Its after reading threads like these I have to commend the old ones for making a perfect warrior race. Although I always wonder where did the orks go when the eldar where at the height of their power? Did they just hide at the fringes where the eldar took them for little more than a nuisance (like golden age humans)?

Really?
Humans reproduce by sex...
Ork reproduce by scathing...
You get the idea...

vodo40k wrote:Its after reading threads like these I have to commend the old ones for making a perfect warrior race. Although I always wonder where did the orks go when the eldar where at the height of their power? Did they just hide at the fringes where the eldar took them for little more than a nuisance (like golden age humans)?

No, no, they were always a threat even to the Eldar, just like they are to the Imperium.

Melissia wrote:No, no, they were always a threat even to the Eldar, just like they are to the Imperium.

What makes you say that?

The Eldar's empire appeared to be basically uncontested after the Necrons went to sleep.

The only difference is that Eldar had more control over the Orks then Imperials in 41'st millennium...

Void__Dragon wrote:What makes you say that?

Because they're Orks.

It's what they do.

Brother Coa wrote:The only difference is that Eldar had more control over the Orks then Imperials in 41'st millennium...

More like the Eldar just know how to lead them away from important areas like maiden worlds and such. I don't even recall a moment where Orks attacked an Eldar world

Farseer Petriel wrote:The Orkish hordes are lead by Warbosses who don't allow Boyz to fight with each other.
Although there are more Orks than humans in the Galaxy (they breed not even like rabbits but like weeds, according to Leoten Semper's grandpa), humans are still more intelligent and developed race. Orks are incredibly stupid (only Ogryns can beat them in stupidity) and have primitive vehicles and armaments, and the Imperium has many hi-tech weapons, regardless of technological regression.

Orks always fight each other. It's how they decide who the leader is.
Orks can be more intelligent than humans and vice versa.
Orks can have plenty of high-tech weapons just like humans can have primitive weapons, they use bayonettes for someone's sake.

It's not high intelligence rather low cunning like an animal. I mean the whole reason given for most of the ork equpiment working is "it just does"