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Melissia wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:I'll add in that Inquisitor Amberly Vail is specifically a member of the Ordo Xenos, and that her use of xenos technology might be a neat little 'easter-egg' pointing to developing Radicalism.

Hardly. Xeno technology is used all the time by Inquisitors. Digital weapons are xeno technology, for example.

So yeah. Why don't they try to reverse engineer it? Would that be suspicious or something (Owait, they're the police, so who can tell them what to do? They superceed everyone else's jurisdiction...)?

In Nightbringer, Barzano uses the dark eldar splinter pistol with complete ease. Granted, that's a simple weapon (It's just a gun that shoots little pieces of plastic..er..gems), but how hard would it be to take their ideas, rework them into something that looks "Imperial" and call it a new invention?

Samus_aran115: You're a bit off I'm afraid. Tau tech is FAR inferior to Imperial tech, which often skirts the boarder of magical. What the Tau have is good distribution. As someone said a few months ago, in the Tau empire everyone drives voltswagen beetles, but in the Imperium the 99% of people use horses and the 1% upperclasses use hover cars. The Imperium is far more advanced, but most of their technology is not well dispersed.

Da bucha, genosaurer and Nurglitch cover things really well. I'm just going to cover some stuff they didn't.

Imperial technology likely is NOT working on the same principles as our own. They do not use binary turing machines (electronic computers as we know them), but seem to use something beyond that. Perhaps quantum computers, but more than likely something we cannot comprehend.

Second, despite what some people have said here, machine spirits are REAL. Now the average Imperial citizen doesn't know the difference between a machine spirit and a car being out of gas, so there can be some confusion when the term is used. Many machines are purely mechanical and the 'rituals' are little more than instructions.

However, many complex machines, especially STC ones, have a 'true' machine spirit. The vast majority are not sentient, but they aren't mechanical either. They are something in-between, not able to think, per se, but able to feel and have moods. Like a dog or a mule, machines may have a personality and dispositions. There are many possible reasons for this. Most machine spirits are old and may not be maintained right. They are exposed to lots of corruption. On top of that they have a warp presence, as was mentioned previously, and the nature of the warp has changed since they were designed. This may be effecting them.

Whatever the cause, they do not work in the purely mechanical fashion we are used to.

Thirdly, and this is a big one: Tools are developed with other tools. Imagine if modern computer engineers were denied their automated computer tools and databases. Imagine a modern software developer trying to develop a complex program, like windows, without modern version tracking and analysis tools. It would be, quite simply, impossible.

STC technology was developed using advanced AIs, tools which are now illegal. The vast majority of the Ad-Mech, and therefore humanity in general, in incapable of analyzing and understanding the technology at work. The Imperium no longer trusts computers and AI, so the only individuals with the computational capacity to do research and engineering are the most augumented tech-priests. They replace the majority of their brains with computers so that they will be able to do what AIs once did. But it takes years, perhaps centuries of slow augumentation to reach that point.

Finally, there is the empires constant state of war. Why have they been searching for STCs instead of developing new tech? After the Horus Heresy the vast majority of technology left over from the Dark Age of Technology had been destroyed by the civil war on Mars. The empire was left in a time of crisis, and needed all the technological advances they could get their hands on, and there were still numerous STC patterns out there. They even thought there was a good chance that there was still a fully functional STC computer. So they dedicated all of their resources to finding STCs instead of research, probably thinking they would do research when the crisis passed. 10k years have passed, and the crisis never did. New STC patterns are rare, and it has become an increasingly likely possability that there is no fully functional STC system. The initial decision to pursue STCs has become engrained as a religious commandment. Initially they couldn't spare the personnel, now it is taboo. The crisis never passed, they still don't have time.

One person posited: "why don't they dedicate an entire sector to research?!?"

Because they simply don't have the time or the manpower. They are fighting for survival. Why don't they just reverse engineer the plans? They are far to complex to understand without significant computerized assistance, and the few in the Ad-Mech who COULD understand them are simply too valuable to dedicate to research.

For the most part the Imperium has lost their theoretical foundation. You can't write complex software mid-ranged software, and you can't write midranged software without simple software. Add a few thousand layers to that reasoning. You can't make x software without y software, but y software is AI and will kill you in your sleep.

The Imperium isn't 'dumb'. They are stuck.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Samus_aran115 wrote:
So yeah. Why don't they try to reverse engineer it? Would that be suspicious or something (Owait, they're the police, so who can tell them what to do? They superceed everyone else's jurisdiction...)?

In Nightbringer, Barzano uses the dark eldar splinter pistol with complete ease. Granted, that's a simple weapon (It's just a gun that shoots little pieces of plastic..er..gems), but how hard would it be to take their ideas, rework them into something that looks "Imperial" and call it a new invention?

No offense, but I get the feeling you don't understand the process of engineering and reverse engineering. You can only reverse engineer something with the correct tools and the correct theoretical understanding.

Eldar weaponry is made using a completely different paradigm than Imperial Tech. Imagine if we gave roman engineers a computer and asked them to engineer it. They don't understand electric theory (electricity, currents, resistance, etc.), they don't understand the metallurgy, they don't know binary logic or anything about turing style universal calculators. They don't even understand molecular theory. Their entire understanding of physics would be insufficient and innapropriate to even begin to understand what is going on. Their understanding of mathmatics is at odds with modern computer theory. And they are at least part of the same culture. On top of that , modern computers are DESIGNED using computers, you simply CANNOT reverse engineer an advanced computer without a less advanced computer. They could certainly USE one, but never reverse engineer one.

"One person posited: "why don't they dedicate an entire sector to research?!?"

Because they simply don't have the time or the manpower. They are fighting for survival. Why don't they just reverse engineer the plans? They are far to complex to understand without significant computerized assistance, and the few in the Ad-Mech who COULD understand them are simply too valuable to dedicate to research."

I don't really think that's true. They control over a million wars, of course they could! If they were half smart, they'd repo a bunch of alien tech (A very large amount), send it all to some planet, send a bunch of smart guys, tech priests, psykers and armed forces to disassemble and thoroughly understand the technology. Then they could begin making more technology through a series of trial-and-error tests. After several years, they could easily understand Xenos Technology and through the gained knowledge, make their own stuff (Ie. learning about a bicycle and a car could inspire you to invent a motorcycle)

The way I understand it the Ad-Mech's knowledge is constantly decreasing. Most of it is entwined with this ritualistic machine worship that is a way of making the operations of the machines codified as someone already said so that people can use them and it all ties in with emperor worship (control...).

Having said that, in a lot of the books you get the impression that things like lasguns and autocannons are produced locally in planetary factories - not using the STC's. Things like Land Speeders & Plasma weapons probably require a higher level of understanding to build. Terminator armour is now unproducable I get the impression?

I imagine some of the Ad-Mech's know about things in a more technical sense and can design new things or fix old ones - as already said the religious aspect is probably designed as a control mechanism and a way of localising knowledge so noone knows too much. Keep normal people completely in the dark and make people within the organisation less powerful than they could be.

Tehjonny wrote:The way I understand it the Ad-Mech's knowledge is constantly decreasing. Most of it is entwined with this ritualistic machine worship that is a way of making the operations of the machines codified as someone already said so that people can use them and it all ties in with emperor worship (control...).

Having said that, in a lot of the books you get the impression that things like lasguns and autocannons are produced locally in planetary factories - not using the STC's. Things like Land Speeders & Plasma weapons probably require a higher level of understanding to build. Terminator armour is now unproducable I get the impression?

I imagine some of the Ad-Mech's know about things in a more technical sense and can design new things or fix old ones - as already said the religious aspect is probably designed as a control mechanism and a way of localising knowledge so noone knows too much. Keep normal people completely in the dark and make people within the organisation less powerful than they could be.

No, terminator and artificer armor is constantly made. It's less advanced than you think it is.

Samus_aran115 wrote:

"One person posited: "why don't they dedicate an entire sector to research?!?"

Because they simply don't have the time or the manpower. They are fighting for survival. Why don't they just reverse engineer the plans? They are far to complex to understand without significant computerized assistance, and the few in the Ad-Mech who COULD understand them are simply too valuable to dedicate to research."

I don't really think that's true. They control over a million wars, of course they could! If they were half smart, they'd repo a bunch of alien tech (A very large amount), send it all to some planet, send a bunch of smart guys, tech priests, psykers and armed forces to disassemble and thoroughly understand the technology. Then they could begin making more technology through a series of trial-and-error tests. After several years, they could easily understand Xenos Technology and through the gained knowledge, make their own stuff (Ie. learning about a bicycle and a car could inspire you to invent a motorcycle)

Again, I think you are confused as to how reverse engineering works. Yes, bicycle + car = motorcycle. But bicycles and cars are fairly close technologically. The only real big technological innovation between the two is the combustion engine. You can figure it out because you understand the basic principles, it isn't using anything fancy. But if you were given a super computer, or even an iPod, I doubt you could do anything meaningful with it without years of preperation. Reverse engineering of advanced technologies is only possible with the proper theoretical foundation. Your talking about advances that took a few hundred years to develop, but we are dealing with advances taking tens of thousands of years to develop. Cave men couldn't comprehend metallurgy, romans couldn't understand computers, no matter how much time they were given.

And YES the Imperium has a million world, but they are also under assault on every side. The fluff demonstrates on numerous occasions that their military and industrial capacity is stretched to the breaking point. On top of that, any technology they developed would likely be vastly inferior to STC technology, which is a big reason why they spend all of their time looking for it. For the most part they are cave men with m-16s. There is no way they can understand the principles of what is going on (since AIs were required to research it in the first place), and would rather spend their time looking for more m-16s than trying to figure out how the neighboring tribe makes those bow and arrows.

riplikash wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:

"One person posited: "why don't they dedicate an entire sector to research?!?"

Because they simply don't have the time or the manpower. They are fighting for survival. Why don't they just reverse engineer the plans? They are far to complex to understand without significant computerized assistance, and the few in the Ad-Mech who COULD understand them are simply too valuable to dedicate to research."

I don't really think that's true. They control over a million wars, of course they could! If they were half smart, they'd repo a bunch of alien tech (A very large amount), send it all to some planet, send a bunch of smart guys, tech priests, psykers and armed forces to disassemble and thoroughly understand the technology. Then they could begin making more technology through a series of trial-and-error tests. After several years, they could easily understand Xenos Technology and through the gained knowledge, make their own stuff (Ie. learning about a bicycle and a car could inspire you to invent a motorcycle)

Again, I think you are confused as to how reverse engineering works. Yes, bicycle + car = motorcycle. But bicycles and cars are fairly close technologically. The only real big technological innovation between the two is the combustion engine. You can figure it out because you understand the basic principles, it isn't using anything fancy. But if you were given a super computer, or even an iPod, I doubt you could do anything meaningful with it without years of preperation. Reverse engineering of advanced technologies is only possible with the proper theoretical foundation. Your talking about advances that took a few hundred years to develop, but we are dealing with advances taking tens of thousands of years to develop. Cave men couldn't comprehend metallurgy, romans couldn't understand computers, no matter how much time they were given.

And YES the Imperium has a million world, but they are also under assault on every side. The fluff demonstrates on numerous occasions that their military and industrial capacity is stretched to the breaking point. On top of that, any technology they developed would likely be vastly inferior to STC technology, which is a big reason why they spend all of their time looking for it. For the most part they are cave men with m-16s. There is no way they can understand the principles of what is going on (since AIs were required to research it in the first place), and would rather spend their time looking for more m-16s than trying to figure out how the neighboring tribe makes those bow and arrows.

Yes, that makes sense, actually. I see your point. I never thought of it as "20,000 years of development". That's roughly equivalent to the invention of the "Spear-chucking stick" and the Hadron Collider, except reverse.

Err I swear you guys have it all wrong...

As far as Lexicanum is concerned, an STC is a computer that TELLS you how to make things, I'd always thought of it as just a massive memory stick :p

I've never heard of STCs that produce things by themselves?!

And what is Lexicanum's source for that specific statement?

Lexicanum is not itself a source, as it is a fan-written reference similar to Wikipedia.

Henners91 wrote:Err I swear you guys have it all wrong...

As far as Lexicanum is concerned, an STC is a computer that TELLS you how to make things, I'd always thought of it as just a massive memory stick :p

I've never heard of STCs that produce things by themselves?!

Melissia wrote:And what is Lexicanum's source for that specific statement?

Lexicanum is not itself a source, as it is a fan-written reference similar to Wikipedia.

Lexicanum correctly cites Codex Imperialis, which as far as I've seen is the best available source for information on the STC system. I transcribed the relevant paragraphs from Codex Imperialis earlier in this thread - you can read for yourself and compare them. While in general I agree that an "open" resource like Lexicanum is not as reliable as a primary source would be, in this particular instance the article and the primary source match almost exactly, so it's not really an issue.

More than anything else, sites like Lexicanum (and Wikipedia) are excellent as a way of finding primary sources via the citations at the end of the article.

(Of course, if Henners91 had read the whole thread before replying, he might have noticed that this point was already brought up and discussed fairly extensively, so...)

You can't just have a set of instructions for making something. It would be like an Ikea instruction pamphlet.

It's impossible to use one of them without some basic tools and knowledge. And you start with all the parts already manufactured.

If there are no STCs pumping out parts, then humans have to do everything themselves. They have to make lots of rivets, for example.

The making of a rivet requires a lot of knowledge of mining and metallurgy, plus the knowledge needed to make the tools for the mining and smelting, and the tools needed to make the rivets. This is before you get to the tools needed to do the rivetting, let alone making the things you need to rivet together.

Kilkrazy wrote:You can't just have a set of instructions for making something. It would be like an Ikea instruction pamphlet.

It's impossible to use one of them without some basic tools and knowledge. And you start with all the parts already manufactured.

If there are no STCs pumping out parts, then humans have to do everything themselves. They have to make lots of rivets, for example.

The making of a rivet requires a lot of knowledge of mining and metallurgy, plus the knowledge needed to make the tools for the mining and smelting, and the tools needed to make the rivets. This is before you get to the tools needed to do the rivetting, let alone making the things you need to rivet together.

Yes, in such a situation there's no point in giving colonists the instructions to make something without also providing the instructions for all the requisite steps required to reach the point where they can make it. Hence why the STC system needed to be a giant computerized database, and not just a binder full of blueprints.

Using an STC, a newly founded colony could go from essentially no tech base - a colony ship presumably carried at least basic tools and supplies, and the ship itself could be canibalized for parts, but otherwise pretty much starting from scratch - to the height of what mankind achieved during the Dark Age of Technology.

Note the operative word could. As has already been noted, most colonies did not ever reach the point where they could take advantage of the more advanced designs contained in the STC system, because as you mention building the infrastructure to support even a more modest current-day level of technology from nothing is the work of centuries at least.

Genosaurer wrote:
Yes, in such a situation there's no point in giving colonists the instructions to make something without also providing the instructions for all the requisite steps required to reach the point where they can make it. Hence why the STC system needed to be a giant computerized database, and not just a binder full of blueprints.

Using an STC, a newly founded colony could go from essentially no tech base - a colony ship presumably carried at least basic tools and supplies, and the ship itself could be canibalized for parts, but otherwise pretty much starting from scratch - to the height of what mankind achieved during the Dark Age of Technology.

Note the operative word could. As has already been noted, most colonies did not ever reach the point where they could take advantage of the more advanced designs contained in the STC system, because as you mention building the infrastructure to support even a more modest current-day level of technology from nothing is the work of centuries at least.

This is mere suppostition, but during the dark age of technology, when the STCs were created, would it not be reasonable to suggest that perhaps a colonial flotilla looking for habitable planets would have ships specifically designed to set down on the surface of a planet and allow you to go from a tented campsite to a flourishing technologically advanced colony? This way, while a ship or small fleet of colonizing ship would have plenty of parts and spares suitable for establishing themselves long term on a planet, they would also have some of the equipment necessary to continue those operations after the spares would have "run out"

Genosaurer wrote:(Of course, if Henners91 had read the whole thread before replying, he might have noticed that this point was already brought up and discussed fairly extensively, so...)

Read after posting, couldn't risk the conversation carrying on

@Kilkrazy

Why do you find it so hard to believe that the original human colonists had the knowledge to set up a basic manufacturing base? They did it in America, did they not?

STCs simply say how to make the advanced shizzle and standardise everything.

Planetary colonization fleets would have included, probably within the landing craft, habitat pods of some sort that would have housed not only the original colonists but the STC as well, possibly within some central hub. These pods would have also included whatever labs they needed for soil and air analysis as well as the basic machinary they would need to start terra-forming.
You normally don't just drop a ship full of people on a planet and say "survive". Even the pilgrams brought some tools and knowledge with them to the american continant.
The STC would have allowed the colonists to then add to the gear they brought.

As for how the tech actually works... Most people today barely understand how a car works, but they use one daily. Many people relate to their vehicles as having some kind of inherent 'personality'. Today we even have cars that can park themselves.
Advance this idea over 30-40k years and you have machine spirit. Could be a basic or even advanced AI type programing.... TSOLR had a landraider with an AI and basic personality traits.

But Commissar Gaunt did find a functioning STC. The most valuable one of all: The one that made the Men of Iron. And it made them all by itself....for 5 minutes.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:But Commissar Gaunt did find a functioning STC. The most valuable one of all: The one that made the Men of Iron. And it made them all by itself....for 5 minutes.

Eh, as much as I like the Gaunt books, I find myself agreeing with Genosaurer that this bit is best ignored.

As Codex Imperialis describes it, the STC almost sounds like some sort of benevolent AI, as it would basically be guiding the technological development of a whole planet. I would imagine that it would tell you how to build tools required for certain items if they were required. This seems like a necessary thing to do as there would be no way to anticipate the resources available to colonists in any given situation.

In a simplistic way, this kind of reminds me of a Lego set; I have all the parts, and the instructions tell me what to stick to what in a particluar way. In the end, I have a nice looking do-hicky that I probably couldn't have figured out how to build myself, at least not without a lot more time and effort. On the other hand, I could have made my own model out of the same pieces, which may or may not be as "good" as the one that would result from following the instructions, and, indeed, may have little to do with what the kit was supposed to be in the first place (making a car from a kit that was supposed to make a plane, for example).

Henners91 wrote:

Genosaurer wrote:(Of course, if Henners91 had read the whole thread before replying, he might have noticed that this point was already brought up and discussed fairly extensively, so...)

Read after posting, couldn't risk the conversation carrying on

@Kilkrazy

Why do you find it so hard to believe that the original human colonists had the knowledge to set up a basic manufacturing base? They did it in America, did they not?

STCs simply say how to make the advanced shizzle and standardise everything.

I don't. I find it hard to believe the STC was vital to the system. There are heaps of reasons which I will try to list briefly.

1. If the STC was vital, it would be made very robust, with a built-in self-repair system, as well as easy to use. It would probably be designed to survive a total collapse of civilisation and be useable afterwards when humans recovered to a sufficient level of technology. Such systems ought to be littering the galaxy unless they have been deliberately destroyed. There would also be an even more robust, if ‘clunkier’ back-up system. Perhaps carved diamond slabs, or something.

2. If the STC was designed just to contain the plans for the most advanced technology, it wouldn't be vital to a technological civilisation. It would probably only have plans for 4D TV and things like that.

3. The kind of technology put out by the surviving STC plans is things like Land Raiders which are hardly advanced at all.

4. You don't need a hyper-AI computer system to build stuff. The Polaris submarine along with its missiles, the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet and the Apollo moon missions were all designed on paper and built without CAD/CAM systems.

5. The kind of technology you would need an STC for is like something based on nano-technology, which is inherently uncontrollable directly by humans since we find it extremely hard to manipulate matter at the atomic level in enough quantity to do anything useful. This is the kind of STC where (as I posted earlier) you would shovel dirt into the hopper, press the "select" button and a finished vehicle pops out later on. We have been definitively informed that the STC technology is not of that level.

6. Building stuff from instructions teaches you things. It is how technology transfer occurs into third world countries. If people were taking STCs, interpreting the instructions to build things, they would learn how to build other things.

In short, the entire STC concept as presented makes no sense except as a sketchy, pseudo-sciencey maguffin designed to explain -- along with the Inquisition and so on -- why it took the IoM 3,000 years, to think of putting a heavy bolter on top of a Rhino. And when they did it, they somehow wrecked the Rhino's self-repair capability.

Kilkrazy wrote:1. If the STC was vital, it would be made very robust, with a built-in self-repair system, as well as easy to use. It would probably be designed to survive a total collapse of civilisation and be useable afterwards when humans recovered to a sufficient level of technology. Such systems ought to be littering the galaxy unless they have been deliberately destroyed. There would also be an even more robust, if ‘clunkier’ back-up system. Perhaps carved diamond slabs, or something.

The STC system were designed to support the long-term growth of new colonies that were part of a well-connected empire, and they were the product of what had been a lengthy period of peaceful expansion. I don't find it very hard to believe such a system did not survive thousands of years of devastating war paired with the isolation of each individual colony as warp storms cut off communication and interstellar travel. It's not unreasonable to say that the STC system was subjected to stress way, way beyond its original design parameters.

Kilkrazy wrote:2. If the STC was designed just to contain the plans for the most advanced technology, it wouldn't be vital to a technological civilisation. It would probably only have plans for 4D TV and things like that.

'If the STC was designed to just contain the plans for the most advanced technology' isn't really relevant, since it clearly was not designed just for that. The STC system is consistently said to have contained detailed instructions for how to make essentially every single thing that humanity knew how to construct.

Kilkrazy wrote:3. The kind of technology put out by the surviving STC plans is things like Land Raiders which are hardly advanced at all.

See above. Not all STC technology was advanced in absolute terms, it was simply the most advanced way that humanity knew of to make that particular thing. Something like a fork is pretty simple, regardless of how you make it, but there were still undoubtedly plans for how to make Dark Age of Technology standardized forks in the STC. The Leman Russ, for example, might be what you would get from the STC if you asked it for a combustion-engined tank that could be operated and maintained by unskilled crew - it's the best way that humanity had discovered to perform that specific role, but there would also be far more advanced vehicles if you needed those instead.

In fact, since (as Codex Imperialis notes) the colonies typically only made use of the lower-technology designs stored in the STC - and thus those were the designs for which hard-copy printouts survived - the majority of preserved STC designs are from the 'lower' end of what the system contained. This is an example of consistency in the fluff, not a problem.

Kilkrazy wrote:4. You don't need a hyper-AI computer system to build stuff. The Polaris submarine along with its missiles, the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet and the Apollo moon missions were all designed on paper and built without CAD/CAM systems.

As you already mentioned in previous posts on more than one occasion, a paper blueprint is not useful unless you already have the required knowledge and manufacturing capability to make use of it. You don't need a hyper-AI computer to design a 747... if you already have an aerospace industry. However, you might need a hyper-AI computer to explain how to build the tools to extract the resources to build the tools to build the infrastructure to build the tools to build a 747. Especially if it has to tweak that design for, say, a planet with no metals.

(As an aside, the 'intelligence' of the STC system has never, as far as I know, been established. I personally always suspected they were simply storage for a large volume of data with some simple analytical capability built in.)

Kilkrazy wrote:5. The kind of technology you would need an STC for is like something based on nano-technology, which is inherently uncontrollable directly by humans since we find it extremely hard to manipulate matter at the atomic level in enough quantity to do anything useful. This is the kind of STC where (as I posted earlier) you would shovel dirt into the hopper, press the "select" button and a finished vehicle pops out later on. We have been definitively informed that the STC technology is not of that level.

As noted, this is not a problem because such a device does not appear in canon.

(...except for the one occasion when it does. Abnett! )

Kilkrazy wrote:6. Building stuff from instructions teaches you things. It is how technology transfer occurs into third world countries. If people were taking STCs, interpreting the instructions to build things, they would learn how to build other things.

Well, maybe. I think the STCs would have created a classic 'give a fish/teach to fish' situation on the new colonies - there's no motivation to try and figure out a way to make things if you can instead just hit a button and be told. Especially if you are on a colony world that is at or near subsistence level and you barely have any free time from farming to feed your family.

On Lexicanum they actually call the iron man maker a Standard Template Constructor. So perhaps that is something else.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:

Gwar! wrote:It's not that they are stupid, it's that they are religiously indoctrinated, and any deviation from said doctrine equals a swift lobotomy.

And as for throwing weapons on it, that was VERY controversial and needed several hundred years of debates and councils to De Facto approve it.

Hell, look at what happened when the Spess Puppehs stuck some Lascannons on a Predator to make the Annihilator, they nearly caused a civil war!

I see. That makes complete sense. How does the Leman Russ exist then? Is it made from an STC, or is it a rather simple machine that can be made without too much knowledge? In nightbringer, it talks about how they have people making them in factories, so....

I don't know how the Leman Russ could exist if it was an STC. Unless after several thousand years of production, they just decided to name it after that space doggies guy.

Like much fluff, when examined in close detail, it makes no sense.

If it is an STC people don't have to slave in factories to build them.

If it is an STC, the design can't be changed at all, unless people understand how to change STCs.

If people understood how to change STCs, it would not take several thousand years to introduce a minor variation of a vehicle.

However, if you assume that the High Lords and the Adeptus Mechanicus have used millenia of savage coercion, propaganda and superstition to inculcate a slavish belief in the religiosity of technology for their own purposes of control, then you can imagine a situation in which the Mechanicus release a slightly improved design every few thousand years, while the stuff people do in factories is make-work.

l can't remember the film, or it may be a comic, but in one half of a factory workers receive baskets of parts which they assemble some parts into a very simple structure and it goes off down the production line.

In the other half of the factory, another group of workers disassembled the structures and puts the parts into baskets which are sent off down the production line, back to the first side.

Meanwhile the STCs continue to pump out Leman Russes without human control. (Not in this film, obviously...)

That sounds disgustingly like a job I had moving boxes of meat from one type of pallet to a different type of pallet (in -23C no less. Walked out after a few hours).

In Gaunts Ghost there is a STC machine which builds Iron men. That book implied an STC fabricator could be set to just build one sort of thing. just press a button. IIRC they also mention some guys who found STC directions on how to make mono edge combat knifes, they all get worlds to rule for finding them.

I've always seen imperial technology as a combination of Max Max and Battletech. On one hand you have a society that clearly used and understood higher tech, but now no one has the education to understand how it works or how to make more. Like Lord Humungous, you only understand how precious it is and how to use a fraction of it.

On the other hand, those that do have some inlinking of how it works conceal that knowledge behind mysticism and ritual to ensure their power. At first it was all a trick to confuse the Lord Humongous types, much like Hari Seldon's 2nd Empire used it to keep the larger empires around them under control. But over time, that mysticism took root.

The Ad Mech have become like medieval monks, scribing away in their towers in an attempt to preserve the knowledge of the Romans. Individuals may uncover some new technique or revelation, but without a systemic way to distribute the knowledge once they are gone it is forgotten again. The Ad Mech would never go that path, because control of the information is what gives them power over the rest of the imperium. So much of what they do know sits untapped and unapplied, while the imperium makes due with what it can scavenge.

Kilkrazy wrote:

The modern equivalent is computers. Most computer users have very little understanding of what is going on inside the machine. They just press the buttons in the right order and hope things come out all right. They are frightened to deviate from the script provided by the IT department in case they break something. The IT department are the Adepts.

QFT! The best description I have seen of it yet.

He had an Eldar for a girlfriend in high school. That's what.

I'm not gonna comment on the STC's, but I really believe Imperium tech is essentially just what we have now (well, OBVIOUSLY somewhat in the future) but their understanding of it has gone from a technological standpoint to a religious standpoint. Rather than debugging a program, you perform a purification ritual. Same thing, different focus. You think differently, want to innovate or think of the technology in a new way, and you end up a servitor. Admech is probably the most dogmatic sect of the Imperium, IMO. Slim margin, but ANY deviation is not tolerated.