Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

battle Brother Lucifer wrote:

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Commander Endova wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:One more idea: Call Of Duty 40k

I think that might be the best idea I've heard on these forums in a minute.

Reminds me of the joke I always tell my friends in the morning, "Guys, I was playing Call of Halo: Modern Reach yesterday, so awesome.... Etc Etc with random tidbits of what I unlocked or have as a special effect

Reminds me of the Total War: Australia Attacks conversations the guys would have. "By Copperhead Tribesmen attack the redcoat flank, with the vangaurd led by a unit of Drop Bears!"

purplefood wrote:

Henners91 wrote:Pfff, as if I was going to read *every post*

It's only 2 pages

Why do you endeavour to consistently catch me at my lowest points? :-/

Henners91 wrote:

purplefood wrote:

Henners91 wrote:Pfff, as if I was going to read *every post*

It's only 2 pages

Why do you endeavour to consistently catch me at my lowest points? :-/

It's not like i try... just lucky i suppose...

One more idea: they play paint ball with Eldar XD, or dare with SoB. Anyway... they do what usual solders do, it all depends the world they are from. Cadians like discipline, Armageddonians to joke, Catachan to tell exiting hunting stories...

Well I would have to say Vostroyans Drink the 40k equivalent to vodka, Catachans hunt whatever there is for wildlife(well that and try to speak like Sylvester), Cadians do w/ever storm troopers do in starwars, and the others try not to get shot by a drunk commissar

Nah Catachans get baked, paint peace symbols on their weapons and then refuse to move when ordered to mobilise.

Henners91 wrote:Nah Catachans get baked, paint peace symbols on their weapons and then refuse to move when ordered to mobilise.

That sounds dangerous, even I would not refuse the order of a Commissar.

Brother Coa wrote:

Henners91 wrote:Nah Catachans get baked, paint peace symbols on their weapons and then refuse to move when ordered to mobilise.

That sounds dangerous, even I would not refuse the order of a Commissar.

Commissars tend to have accidents all the time when the Catachan fellows get annoyed. I'm sure their newfound groupie-huggy thing would be tolerated.

Hmmm...play unreal tournament 3 maybe? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBdYXOK83hs&feature=related

Here's an interesting question: how many Guardsman have one Regiment? First I heard something about 10.000, then someone told about 3.000.000. I must say that number of 3.000.000 is more realistic because how can you hold a planet with just 10.000 man? You can't even hold one city with that many men. Is this true?

Brother Coa wrote:Here's an interesting question: how many Guardsman have one Regiment? First I heard something about 10.000, then someone told about 3.000.000. I must say that number of 3.000.000 is more realistic because how can you hold a planet with just 10.000 man? You can't even hold one city with that many men. Is this true?

I think in all honesty it depends on the planet, on a death planet(e.g. catachan, or fenris) I would be more inclined to think smaller(probably a few hundred thousand) in a hive world I would be more inclined to think upwards of 5,000,000, but this is just me

Wardragoon wrote:Well I would have to say Vostroyans Drink the 40k equivalent to vodka, Catachans hunt whatever there is for wildlife(well that and try to speak like Sylvester), Cadians do w/ever storm troopers do in starwars, and the others try not to get shot by a drunk commissar

I'm pretty sure that would be the Valhallans

speaking of which, the Valhallans probably go ice fishing for orks with melta guns and flamethrowers for fun. XD

Brother Coa wrote:Here's an interesting question: how many Guardsman have one Regiment? First I heard something about 10.000, then someone told about 3.000.000. I must say that number of 3.000.000 is more realistic because how can you hold a planet with just 10.000 man? You can't even hold one city with that many men. Is this true?

It depends on the regiment, the founding world, and their function.

A Light Infantry Regiment of footsloggers can number tens of thousands easily, hundreds of thousands depending on world. The Imperial Guard Tithe is based on the planetary population. So a Hive World's Regiment size will be alot larger than that fielded from a Death World, but the Death World would like be alot more specialised. Catachans would be a good example of a specialised company that would probably only number a couple of thousand at most, likely even less, where as the Gudrunite Rifles, mustered in the opening Eisenhorn book, were 50,000 strong from memory.

A Heavy armor regiment on the other hand, can number only 100 or so tanks and their crews, and an artillery regiment is even less.

---

Regiments are very rarely posted on their own. More often than not, a planetary invasion, or mustered Imperial Guard defense will be quite a few regiments, so they can support each other, and bring down the Hammer of the Emperor on His enemies.

---


I'd say they drink, play cards, go whoring, and everything else a military man who's never going to see home again does in their spare time.

Aren't regiments generally described in the fluff as being in the low thousands? When a tithe would be larger than that, it's split into the founding of multiple regiments, like with Tanith.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Aren't regiments generally described in the fluff as being in the low thousands? When a tithe would be larger than that, it's split into the founding of multiple regiments, like with Tanith.

That what is not understandable to me, how can a couple of thousand man hold a planet? SM can because they are highly mobile and attack only venerable targets. IG however attack always directly to the enemy, and if they suffer casualties in hundreds they will be all died out already. I say that IG Regiment number around 3.000.000 man, and that specialized regiment number around 10.000 - 50.000 man. But, this specialized Regiments never fight alone, and other Regiments don't send entire Regiment in whole war, just one part of it.

Brother Coa wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Aren't regiments generally described in the fluff as being in the low thousands? When a tithe would be larger than that, it's split into the founding of multiple regiments, like with Tanith.

That what is not understandable to me, how can a couple of thousand man hold a planet? SM can because they are highly mobile and attack only venerable targets. IG however attack always directly to the enemy, and if they suffer casualties in hundreds they will be all died out already. I say that IG Regiment number around 3.000.000 man, and that specialized regiment number around 10.000 - 50.000 man. But, this specialized Regiments never fight alone, and other Regiments don't send entire Regiment in whole war, just one part of it.

A regiment could hold a planet alone they don't take as many casualties as you might think. 3 million men in a regiment would be ridiculous. maybe 10,000-50,000 for a single regiment but no more than that.

There's no way a group of 10-50k could possibly hold a planet. The US army is 550k alone (that doesn't include Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, or Air Force).

40k falls into the same trap as Star Wars and most other sci-fi universes. Writers simply don't stop and think about the actual scale of things.

There's a few million planets under Imperial control. Each one of those planets has got to average to over a billion people each. So, their military personnel contribution (even if we're just going with modern-day equivalents) must be in the tens of millions each. That means the Imperial military has got to be made up of 10,000,000,000,000,000 soldiers at a minimum.

When you stop and think about it, there's no way it make any sense for the Space Marines to be anything less than the scale of 10 billion or so (that's 0.0001% of the total). And, the number of active duty IG has got to be in the trillions or quadrillions.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale

Yeah they must be bigger than 10k-50k... but most fluff would put them at 10k-50k which means as you say "Sci-fi writers have no sense of scale" although maybe their are bits we aren't told about... like the PDF actually doing something... yeha i laughed at that.

Isn't it important to remember the variety of Imperial worlds?
One may be densly populated, others juts a few thousand work-crews.
And these hive-cities tend to be rather some sort of pyramid/tower, most citizens never see more than the next few levels of their home.

If the authors fail, why should we fail too and raise the size of regiments to millions?
Its unneccessary and also dangerous to upscale as these formations need to be controllable and millions aren't really a number you can move and supply with a structure of a IG regiment. I 'd say IG regiments are correctly coming in steps of 1k, from 5 to 100 and at 100k it is a pain to control them all.
Using several Regiments instead, makes things easier.
Maybe just add/imagine the "missing" parts of the hierarchy, ie divisions and armys?

they sit/stand in giant foam trays and contemplate killing the pewter commisar with a cooler paint job in the square next to them

People are talking as though a single regiment is expected to be able to hold a planet. Most fluff I've seen has had either a dozen or more regiments used as a massed attack on a small area, or a handful of regiments either left guarding specific strategic locations or used as surgical strike forces, even if they use weight of numbers in that surgical strike.

For all the jokes about the Imperial Guard consisting of untrained conscripts with flashlights and tshirts, they seem to manage pretty well against everything but worse than hundred to one numbers and gigantic power armored Mary-Sues carrying around a few metric tons of plot armor. Even a basic guardsman is a fairly elite soldier, with excellent equipment, and backed up with just about the best armor in the galaxy. And there are trillions of them serving the Imperium.

Grakmar wrote:There's no way a group of 10-50k could possibly hold a planet. The US army is 550k alone (that doesn't include Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, or Air Force).

40k falls into the same trap as Star Wars and most other sci-fi universes. Writers simply don't stop and think about the actual scale of things.

There's a few million planets under Imperial control. Each one of those planets has got to average to over a billion people each. So, their military personnel contribution (even if we're just going with modern-day equivalents) must be in the tens of millions each. That means the Imperial military has got to be made up of 10,000,000,000,000,000 soldiers at a minimum.

When you stop and think about it, there's no way it make any sense for the Space Marines to be anything less than the scale of 10 billion or so (that's 0.0001% of the total). And, the number of active duty IG has got to be in the trillions or quadrillions.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale

Most planets in the 40k universe don't boast populations of 7 billion.

What if it's just some backwater arid mining world with only a handful of major settlements?

Henners91 wrote:

Grakmar wrote:There's no way a group of 10-50k could possibly hold a planet. The US army is 550k alone (that doesn't include Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, or Air Force).

40k falls into the same trap as Star Wars and most other sci-fi universes. Writers simply don't stop and think about the actual scale of things.

There's a few million planets under Imperial control. Each one of those planets has got to average to over a billion people each. So, their military personnel contribution (even if we're just going with modern-day equivalents) must be in the tens of millions each. That means the Imperial military has got to be made up of 10,000,000,000,000,000 soldiers at a minimum.

When you stop and think about it, there's no way it make any sense for the Space Marines to be anything less than the scale of 10 billion or so (that's 0.0001% of the total). And, the number of active duty IG has got to be in the trillions or quadrillions.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale

Most planets in the 40k universe don't boast populations of 7 billion.

What if it's just some backwater arid mining world with only a handful of major settlements?

Dude mining planets are over populated What are you smoking
Backwater planets are usually homes of astrates so they don't really need protection.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:People are talking as though a single regiment is expected to be able to hold a planet. Most fluff I've seen has had either a dozen or more regiments used as a massed attack on a small area, or a handful of regiments either left guarding specific strategic locations or used as surgical strike forces, even if they use weight of numbers in that surgical strike.

For all the jokes about the Imperial Guard consisting of untrained conscripts with flashlights and tshirts, they seem to manage pretty well against everything but worse than hundred to one numbers and gigantic power armored Mary-Sues carrying around a few metric tons of plot armor. Even a basic guardsman is a fairly elite soldier, with excellent equipment, and backed up with just about the best armor in the galaxy. And there are trillions of them serving the Imperium.

Well if you look at the DoW series... there was always only ONE IG regiment per planet( Tartarus 37 PDF, Cadian 412, Kronus 1'st Liberators and Kauravan 252'nd Conservators). To make things worse, in Soulstorm 1 Regiment had to hold entire planetary system instead of one planet. They us single Regiment for defense and several of them when they are attacking something or defending something important.

Brother Coa wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:People are talking as though a single regiment is expected to be able to hold a planet. Most fluff I've seen has had either a dozen or more regiments used as a massed attack on a small area, or a handful of regiments either left guarding specific strategic locations or used as surgical strike forces, even if they use weight of numbers in that surgical strike.

For all the jokes about the Imperial Guard consisting of untrained conscripts with flashlights and tshirts, they seem to manage pretty well against everything but worse than hundred to one numbers and gigantic power armored Mary-Sues carrying around a few metric tons of plot armor. Even a basic guardsman is a fairly elite soldier, with excellent equipment, and backed up with just about the best armor in the galaxy. And there are trillions of them serving the Imperium.

Well if you look at the DoW series... there was always only ONE IG regiment per planet( Tartarus 37 PDF, Cadian 412, Kronus 1'st Liberators and Kauravan 252'nd Conservators). To make things worse, in Soulstorm 1 Regiment had to hold entire planetary system instead of one planet. They us single Regiment for defense and several of them when they are attacking something or defending something important.

DoW had dodgy fluff tbh... remember the baneblades in Soulstorm?

purplefood wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Aren't regiments generally described in the fluff as being in the low thousands? When a tithe would be larger than that, it's split into the founding of multiple regiments, like with Tanith.

That what is not understandable to me, how can a couple of thousand man hold a planet? SM can because they are highly mobile and attack only venerable targets. IG however attack always directly to the enemy, and if they suffer casualties in hundreds they will be all died out already. I say that IG Regiment number around 3.000.000 man, and that specialized regiment number around 10.000 - 50.000 man. But, this specialized Regiments never fight alone, and other Regiments don't send entire Regiment in whole war, just one part of it.

A regiment could hold a planet alone they don't take as many casualties as you might think. 3 million men in a regiment would be ridiculous. maybe 10,000-50,000 for a single regiment but no more than that.

Try to see it from my viewpoint. Take Earth for example. With all today's technology and so... And we have misfortune to be attacked by Orks... And can 10.000 people defend all continents of Earth? Can 50.000? In best case those 10 - 50.000 can oly hold few major cities (Nwe York, Peking, Moscow, London...) while others would be left to survive on their own. Even if we count US army in whole as IG Regiment... their number is around 500.000 and that is still not enough to protect anyone...and to kill majority of Orks on the planet. Earth have around 6,893,500,000 Humans. One Imperial Hive World have around 10.000.000.000 and 40.000.000.000 Humans. So for IG it's impossible to have so little man in one Regiment.

Be fair they only ever say 1 regiment of IG holds a planet. There are usually copius amounts of PDF which aren't mentioned.
Also why quote the US army as the numbers for a regiment? I'm pretty sure Turkey and China have bigger armies.

Yeah don't compare the US army to IG, it makes my job more depressing!

*rocks steadily in the corner* "It's not like IG. It's not like IG"

For what it's worth, Canada had 1.5 million soldiers during World War 2. And, their population was only a little over 11 million.

If the IoM really is under constant attack, you've got to expect that they've got similar enlistment ratios.

So, either the authors are incorrect about the number of soldiers.


OR


Perhaps the IoM really isn't under constant attack. There really is no such things as Space Orks, or Eldar, or Tyranids, or anything else. Humanity is alone in the galaxy, and the IoM is using 1984 tactics to keep it's population in check.

All these battles we fight, books we read, video games we play, etc, are all just part of the propaganda machine.

[tinfoil hat]

It would be hilarious if it just turned out the IoM was fine and they were making everything up to control the populace.