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Corennus wrote:A company of space marines can hold out for months at a time against far superior numbers. A company of imperial guard will last five minutes.

Not so in Storm of Iron, an entire Company of Imperial Fists along with a Regiment of Imperial Guard, and a demi-Legion of titans inside one of the greatest fortresses ever built fell within weeks to an Iron Warriors Grand Company.

Lord Harrab wrote:Not so in Storm of Iron, an entire Company of Imperial Fists along with a Regiment of Imperial Guard, and a demi-Legion of titans inside one of the greatest fortresses ever built fell within weeks to author fiat.

Fixed it for you.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Lord Harrab wrote:Not so in Storm of Iron, an entire Company of Imperial Fists along with a Regiment of Imperial Guard, and a demi-Legion of titans inside one of the greatest fortresses ever built fell within weeks to author fiat.

Fixed it for you.

indeed.

Fluff.

Anyone ever wondered why it is called that name?

Eh, I've long thought that the notion of a chapter being only ~1,000 marines was completely implausible. A chapter of 100,000 would be far more reasonable in size.

I mean think about it, even if each astarte is a total badass, say he was equal to 100 IG troopers. If you are fighting 500,000 Orks, what could 100 marines possibly do against that weight of numbers?
Or think about the fact that there are titans. A single titan could just step on a couple dozen marines. Bam! There goes 30% of an entire company in one stomp!

Think about modern war today. The US has about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan today. That is one small country. What if you had to fight across an entire planet of 8 billion people? (or a series of planets if you are the Ultramarines)? There's no way that there could be enough space marines to make any sort of strategic difference to the Empire if chapters are only 1,000 men.

So, like I said before, a far more reasonable number would be if a chapter had 100,000 marines. It would still be relatively small, but they could bring several thousand marines to bear in any given conflict.

fluff:
"1000 chapters, 1000 men to each."

1000*1000 = 1M.

if there are 1M marines, with 1M worlds to the imperium, there are approximatly 1=1 marine for every world.

considering the price that the marines must cost, (I'd say 2 trillion american.) most marines are worth roughly the same as a world.

KK's points are all correct.

Kilkrazy wrote:I've never read any GW novels and never will. They are fiction and present an idealised view for dramatic purposes.

That's a pity as they tend to agree with you concerning the subjects you've touched on here. For example, in Gav Thorpe's Angel of Darkness, the main characters are part of an independent squad-sized force. Not only do we know from this book that such an arrangement is rare (the main characters all suffer from morale problems from being separated from the rest of the Chapter--unlike almost every other Dark Angel) but that it only occurs when the DA are forced to maintain a permanent presence in a stable solar system for the purpose of recruiting from within that same system. Furthermore, who is present in that squad-sized force: a chaplain, an apothecary, a tech-marine . . .

As an aside, the bad grammar of the thread title is irksome.

Maybe the books go both ways.

My argument is based on logic though.

Kilkrazy wrote:Fluff.

Anyone ever wondered why it is called that name?

It blows?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Captain Solon wrote:fluff:
"1000 chapters, 1000 men to each."

The fluff has never given a specific number of Marine Chapters. It's always given the staple of vagary: 'Over 1000 Chapters'.

And there are far, far more than 1000 Marines in a Chapter.

fair enough.

assume there are 1001 chapters, what does this mean?

1,001,000 men. so, amongst 1,000,000 worlds, guess what? instead of being 1-1, it's 1.001 = 1. over 1000 chapters? fine. 10,000 chapters! thats a difference. there are now 10 marines for every planet. whoo. one squadron for every planet!


guess what? the fact is, unless you have 1M chapters, there will never be enough of them.

What is the concept of "enough"? Enough space marines to do what, fight at every planet the second an ork shows up?

The whole idea behind space marines is that there are not enough to completely sweep back Mankind's enemies. That is why when they do show up it is looked upon as a blessing. (Although this just means that things are bad enough to warrant their presence)

They are like future navy-seals that creep out of space, destroy whatever needs to be destroyed, and moves on. There is no point to have an Imperial Guard if there are 10,000,000 SM running around/

It would depend on how many planets are under threat or in a war situation and need the special intervention of the SMs.

40K gives the impression that the whole Imperium is constantly at war, but what does that mean?

Does it mean 1%, or 5%, 10% or 25% of Imperial planets are in such threat they need the attention of SMs?

If it is 1%, then there are 10,000 planets needing SMs, so 1,000 chapters with 10 companies each could conceivably cover them all pretty well.

If it is 5%, suddenly there is a problem, because you need to break down your chapters to unfeasibly small units.

How about the rulebook,page 133?
Should hint at the number of SM neccessary per Planet/subsector.

IMO the IG isn't so unable and deals with almost 80%
of conflicts without Space marines attending to.

Kilkrazy wrote:My argument is based on personal preference though.

Fixed it for you.

Kilkrazy wrote:It would <snip>

The 'logical' conclusion is that there are enough Space Marines to deal with the wars happening throughout the Imperium until there aren't at which point another Founding produces the required amount of Chapters deemed necessary and no more.

We know that a Chapter is a limited force because the Space Marine Legions almost destroyed the Imperium once already and so Chapter size and the amount of Chapters is heavily controlled and can only be altered by the ruling of the High Lords.

Much of what the High Lords get up to is political skulduggery for their own means but on matters that effect the Imperium the Tarot is always consulted, in effect allowing the Emperor to continue to direct human affairs; even though we also know that the Emperor could be returned at any time but isn't as it does not suit the interests of the majority of those holding power just the same as the High Lords will never allow gazillions of Space Marines to be charging around the galaxy when they aren't strictly part of the Imperium and could, given half a chance, rest control of it or destroy it utterly.

But why not just ignore the Codex Astartes and make enough Chapters to take over the whole galaxy?

Precisely for that reason.

The various Space Marine Chapters are a force allied to the Imperium by ancient oaths of loyalty, they are not of the Imperium which is why they do not have a High Lord, they are only for the Imperium.

If the High Lords allowed a force of Astartes of galaxy conquering proportions to be created the Astartes would be conquering that galaxy in their own name and for their own means, they are known for being very independent afterall, it would be a force that the High Lords, and therefore the Imperium and its armies could not control.

The Imperial Guard (and Navy), as steempunk quite rightly points out, is the force of the Imperium and this is why Lord Solar Macharius commanded a force that conquered a thousand worlds for the Imperium. Not a Chapter Master, not Space Marines but Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy under the command of an ordinary human.

So the answer remains the same; there is always enough Space Marines and at times when it is felt that a few more would be most efficacious the High Lords decree a new Founding and they have done this twenty-four times maintaining the balance of power where no one force is capable of wreaking the kind of destruction seen during the Horus Heresy.

The Imperial Army was split to reduce its power and the Legions were split to reduce their power, the Primarchs agreed to step back and let ordinary humans run the show and those humans maintain that balance by ensuring that the Space Marines can never again threaten the Imperium by keeping their numbers to a necessary minimum as per the dictates of Guilliman whose Gene-Seed is used by the High Lords to create most Chapters who conform to his decrees and those Primarchs that weren't too happy about it, well, their Gene-Seed doesn't get used much does it.