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Kid_Kyoto wrote:*Snip----billions of guys, billions of billions of soldiers, etc*

Approves this post

Brother Coa wrote:First of all: your story is for little kids.
Second of all, I can respond WHATEVER I WANT at any source material that contradicts your account. You are not the law, neither my mother to tell me what I cannon and can do.
Third of all, we are talking about realistic stuff in 40k. And it's not realistic that today's Earth military forces have more solders than 1 Imperial star system, nor that they have population of ~billions and they only making military groups of 10.000 solders. And that group is in most times the only force defending a planet. ( like we saw 85'th Vendoland in defence of Meridian and later on Aurelia. )

hey, calm down coa, it's fine . You can have billions of guards in your army if you want to. Keep in mind that we're guessing the unknown numbers of a sci-fi's universe's imaginary army. Difficult to have a more abstract conversation topic.

If I were you, I would say your army is the fifth Army Group of urlivingroom, and have your squads taken from different regiments from this army group, with different backgrounds, etc. It would explain why your army is able to slaughter billions of green-skins and provide a nice background.

wait, a Chinese battalion is 750,000?

A battalion is supposed to be around 3000 men.

A Chinese PLA Group Army, contains 65.000 men

An army consists of dozens to hundreds of brigades/regiments


Considering that you're going by realism:

If you count up the amount of Regiments on Earth

There will probobly be hundreds of regiments.

A sector is never guarded by one regiment, unless its a token force in a very peaceful area.


25 billion population on a planet

1 billion hive militia (2-5 if pressed)

50 million PDF soldiers.

Orks come in warbands of 300-3000, That's the reason they're not the considered a large threat unless they have a great leader among them.

Every time an ork dies, a few more will respawn in a couple months, become warriors in several years. There are several ways to deal with this.

Kill it with fire- ork spores will die from extreme heat. No new orks.

Kill them all. After the first generation, orks will stop using modern weaponry, because they don't know of its existance/how to use it. That makes orks again managable.
This has precedence in all the fluff as feral orks, but it also makes sense.

Now assuming you meant a huge waagh, of dozens of millions of orks led by a strong leader, The imperium would see it coming from very far away. Mobilized would be the PDF and Nearby guard units from planets where the orks are not expected to show up, and moved to the areas that the orks are moving towards. As the orks get closer to this planet, the imperium would have a better understanding to where they're going, and the troops would get redeployed closer and closer to the planet, until finally several hundred guard regiments(Which is still 1-2 army groups) is guarding the planet, with a sizable fleet around it.

Remember, imperial fleets move faster than orks through space, giving them the logistical advantage. There is also much less infighting, which helps with the same.

orks have the knowledge to build their Technology in their DNA. a Big Mek doesn't learn how to build something, he knows.


it may take a few generations for feral orks to get back into building the real stuff, but they are only limited by the materials to hand and their imagination.

A regiment is around 4000-12,000. Cadia sets the standard for most things and a cadian regiment is 8,000.

MikeV37 wrote:wait, a Chinese battalion is 750,000?

A battalion is supposed to be around 3000 men.

A Chinese PLA Group Army, contains 65.000 men

An army consists of dozens to hundreds of brigades/regiments

Now now, if Brother Coa wants to tell us that the entire People's Liberation Army consists of three battalions I see no reason to doubt him. If you read his other posts in this thread I am sure you will find he knows a lot about military organization.

Laodamia wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:First of all: your story is for little kids.
Second of all, I can respond WHATEVER I WANT at any source material that contradicts your account. You are not the law, neither my mother to tell me what I cannon and can do.
Third of all, we are talking about realistic stuff in 40k. And it's not realistic that today's Earth military forces have more solders than 1 Imperial star system, nor that they have population of ~billions and they only making military groups of 10.000 solders. And that group is in most times the only force defending a planet. ( like we saw 85'th Vendoland in defence of Meridian and later on Aurelia. )

hey, calm down coa, it's fine . You can have billions of guards in your army if you want to. Keep in mind that we're guessing the unknown numbers of a sci-fi's universe's imaginary army. Difficult to have a more abstract conversation topic.

If I were you, I would say your army is the fifth Army Group of urlivingroom, and have your squads taken from different regiments from this army group, with different backgrounds, etc. It would explain why your army is able to slaughter billions of green-skins and provide a nice background.

Of course, sorry for all that brother. I mean no disrespect and thank you for your support of my Regiment




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Raxmei wrote:

MikeV37 wrote:wait, a Chinese battalion is 750,000?

A battalion is supposed to be around 3000 men.

A Chinese PLA Group Army, contains 65.000 men

An army consists of dozens to hundreds of brigades/regiments

Now now, if Brother Coa wants to tell us that the entire People's Liberation Army consists of three battalions I see no reason to doubt him. If you read his other posts in this thread I am sure you will find he knows a lot about military organization.

Actually PLA have 385,821,101 males and 363,789,674 females available for active military service. And + 10,406,544 male and 9,131,990 females that are reaching age for military service ( 18 years ). The now have 2,285,000 active solders and 510,000 support personnel.
Which is a LOT of solders if you ask me, and Indians are not so far behind them. They also have 2,500 aircraft (1,300 are fighters ) and unknown number of tanks, artillery and APC-s.

And you are right Raxmei, as codex stand with you. But nowhere said that IG Reginemt must have up to 12.000 man. So my will have 3.000.000 Guardsman

But, as the vise Kilkrazy said "Remember that according to official GW policy, fluff is a mix of legend, myth, propaganda, lies, misunderstanding, and some genuine (possibly misreported) history.

If there is ever a conflict between fluff and logic, you have to bear in mind the possibility that the fluff is wrong." So it may be that even the codex is wrong when it comes to the fluff.

Brother Coa wrote:Actually PLA have 385,821,101 males and 363,789,674 females available for active military service. And + 10,406,544 male and 9,131,990 females that are reaching age for military service ( 18 years ). The now have 2,285,000 active solders and 510,000 support personnel.
Which is a LOT of solders if you ask me, and Indians are not so far behind them. They also have 2,500 aircraft (1,300 are fighters ) and unknown number of tanks, artillery and APC-s.

The astute reader might notice that the above does not actually address the size of Chinese battalions. The claim that Chinese battalions number 750,000 is false, provably false, and I can't imagine where that number could possibly have come from. No organizational level in the People's Liberation Army or any other army is that big.

And you are right Raxmei, as codex stand with you. But nowhere said that IG Reginemt must have up to 12.000 man. So my will have 3.000.000 Guardsman

But, as the vise Kilkrazy said "Remember that according to official GW policy, fluff is a mix of legend, myth, propaganda, lies, misunderstanding, and some genuine (possibly misreported) history.

If there is ever a conflict between fluff and logic, you have to bear in mind the possibility that the fluff is wrong." So it may be that even the codex is wrong when it comes to the fluff.

However, there is absolutely no precedent for a regiment of 3 million. While a maximum size is never explicitly stated the largest example ever shown is many times smaller. In this perceived contradiction you seem to have gone out of your way to find the most ridiculous possible solution. The problem is you don't believe a ten thousand man regiment could have a meaningful impact in battle. The idea that there might be multiple regiments involved and only the most prominent gets mentioned, or that the usual engagement in 40k is much smaller than you think it is, both are dismissed out of hand. No, the obvious solution is that the standard regiment is of a size that is completely without precedent in fluff or history and literally everything the fluff has to say on the subject is wrong.

The main thrust of my argument from the start has been that the claim that a regiment contains 3 million men has no basis in the published background and that the number obviously comes from somebody's imagination. I have proven this to my satisfaction.

Platuan4th wrote:There are only 6 Orders Militant.

False. There are many Orders Minoris whom are militant.

The Sisters have to patrol across the entire Imperium, safeguarding its various pilgrimage routes and sites. The Sisters have to safeguard Ecclesiarchal domains. The Sisters participate in wars of faith, which are fairly common, and have participated in every major war in the Imperium. And all the while half of all of the Orders Majoris must stay on Terra and Ophelia IV.

They can't do this with a just a few thousand. Even a few million would leave Sisters dangerously short-handed.

Raxmei wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:Actually PLA have 385,821,101 males and 363,789,674 females available for active military service. And + 10,406,544 male and 9,131,990 females that are reaching age for military service ( 18 years ). The now have 2,285,000 active solders and 510,000 support personnel.
Which is a LOT of solders if you ask me, and Indians are not so far behind them. They also have 2,500 aircraft (1,300 are fighters ) and unknown number of tanks, artillery and APC-s.

The astute reader might notice that the above does not actually address the size of Chinese battalions. The claim that Chinese battalions number 750,000 is false, provably false, and I can't imagine where that number could possibly have come from. No organizational level in the People's Liberation Army or any other army is that big.

And you are right Raxmei, as codex stand with you. But nowhere said that IG Reginemt must have up to 12.000 man. So my will have 3.000.000 Guardsman

But, as the vise Kilkrazy said "Remember that according to official GW policy, fluff is a mix of legend, myth, propaganda, lies, misunderstanding, and some genuine (possibly misreported) history.

If there is ever a conflict between fluff and logic, you have to bear in mind the possibility that the fluff is wrong." So it may be that even the codex is wrong when it comes to the fluff.

However, there is absolutely no precedent for a regiment of 3 million. While a maximum size is never explicitly stated the largest example ever shown is many times smaller. In this perceived contradiction you seem to have gone out of your way to find the most ridiculous possible solution. The problem is you don't believe a ten thousand man regiment could have a meaningful impact in battle. The idea that there might be multiple regiments involved and only the most prominent gets mentioned, or that the usual engagement in 40k is much smaller than you think it is, both are dismissed out of hand. No, the obvious solution is that the standard regiment is of a size that is completely without precedent in fluff or history and literally everything the fluff has to say on the subject is wrong.

The main thrust of my argument from the start has been that the claim that a regiment contains 3 million men has no basis in the published background and that the number obviously comes from somebody's imagination. I have proven this to my satisfaction.

Ok but I still believe in my point. You have proven that based on books and codex's. Ok, so see it my way: one planet Ork invasion. Imperial Guard have been deployed with 100 Regiments, each with 6000 man ( that's total of 600.000 Guardsman ). And we know that they are losing man at a very high rate. So I believe that in the end Orks are still there but the Guard control most of the planet, with losses of 450.000 Guardsman. Now let me see, that's about 75 Regiments destroyed in action. Now time to gaiter all info about killed Guardsman, Regiments destroyed and all survivors will take a lot of time. From this example I see several logical errors:

1) They need a lot of time cataloging losses, in most cases they are never cataloged. The army of 100 Regiments require a lot of of paperwork, and when they start losing that numbers they then must catalog every killed Guardsman and sing the surviving one ( if the regiment falls below 500-1000 man ) to other Regiments. But, seeing as every time they finish one planet they must move on they just mix them up at speed and leave, without regards where did this guy served or what's his profession. The simple thing would be to have larger Regiments witch require less of paperwork and better organisation.

2) And jugding by IG organisation they are still using today's Earth army's organisation as you can see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion. This method is excellent for a world with 7 billion and maybe 10 billion people. But when you have world of 25 billion citizens this kind of organisation becomes outdated. My point is proven as codex writers cannot see into the future but using information of the past. It's like today's army's fighting like Napoleon troops in 19'th century. That combat style is outdated, like today's arm'y organisation must be outdated for 10.000 year old army 40.000 years in the future. Judging by the size of one planet population, it's logical for one Regiment to have more than 12.000 man, maybe even up to million. This kind or organisation simplify things and this order is meant for planetary defense. Army organisation today is made for a country's, witch makes them absolute in defending an entire planet.

3) And if we see Cadia we see that they only had 648 Regiment's in 10.000 years. Witch is little strange giving where are they standing and who are they fighting. How that we never see Cadian 1056'th Regiment? I mean given the losses over millennial and destruction of countless Regiments Cadia must had 1000 Regiment's for sure. But codex states only 600 Regiments so this must be wrong or Abaddon is simply became lazy . So the fluff here is wrong, again.

In the end I am right again, Regiments may not have million - but them may have much larger numbers than 12.000 Guardsman. Simply because from the logical side it simplify command since you have much numbers with equal force to deal with and it is realistic given the population of various Imperial worlds. So from a logical side I am right. And still, since there is no regulations about regiment numbers my Guard Regiments will still have 3 million Guardsman. And it's not solution to my problem, it's just an idea.

Brother Coa wrote:
3) And if we see Cadia we see that they only had 648 Regiment's in 10.000 years. Witch is little strange giving where are they standing and who are they fighting. How that we never see Cadian 1056'th Regiment? I mean given the losses over millennial and destruction of countless Regiments Cadia must had 1000 Regiment's for sure. But codex states only 600 Regiments so this must be wrong or Abaddon is simply became lazy . So the fluff here is wrong, again.

Actually, it seems that IG regiments are re-funded quite regularly. When a regiment is completely wiped out during a campaign, it seems to be fairly common to actually re-create the regiment from nothing. I've read about these situations a few times already.
This would explain why we don't see the 13 098th Cadian, or something like that.

1. That would be necessary no matter what the size of the individual regiments was. You keep saying that this all being one big regiment would simplify the paperwork but all it really does is dump an army's worth of paperwork in the laps of a regimental staff. If there are to be subordinate levels of command between the regiment and the tens of thousands companies that you believe make it up then managing those units is organizationally no different from a higher command doing the same with subordinate regiments of the official size. All that inflating the manpower of the regiment realistically would accomplish is renaming the stage of the chain of command corresponding to that size to regiment. It does not change any organizational requirements at all.

I will note in addition that had these men all been one single regiment this engagement would have been the end of its existence as a regiment. At only a quarter of its former size it is far below the strength it should be and now must be disbanded and its surviving members sent to other units.

2. Population size is a non sequitur. It has absolutely nothing to do with the size of a regiment. A larger total size of the army becomes possible but that army won't have unusually large squads, platoons, companies, or regiments. An army numbering many millions would likely require the invention of additional levels at the top of the chain of command but that's above the regiment's head.

3. The regiment numbers of destroyed regiments get reused. The number you see is not indicative of the total number of regiments that have been raised in the planet's history. Now, there are a few regiments mentioned in the codex with 4-digit numbers. Cadian 1056th isn't one of them but they've probably just never done anything worthy of note. There is nowhere near enough space in the codex to list more than a tiny fraction of the Guard's regiments.

Um. Just because its the future doesn't necessarily mean that unit sizes will necessarily go up. One of the problems of large formations is command and control; simply directing tens of thousands of men, lugging hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment, is a staggering proposition. That's why modern armies have staff systems and elaborate hierarchies. Furthermore, one of the things that enabled army sizes to swell between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War was advances in communications (some wireless, but also telegraph) and transportation (railroads). Come World War II, more advances in communications and transportation enable even larger armies. Granted, after WWII, the push seems to be more towards efficiency rather than size, but whatever. In neither of those cases, though, did low-echelon unit size grow. What happened is that levels above that of regiment, were created. In World War I, you see regiments being formed into actual divisions, rather than the ad-hoc assignment of a few regiments to a general being called a division. Hell, when the US got into World War I, Pershing's Chief of Staff stated in his memoirs that prior to World War I, nobody in America had ever seen a division. World War I forced a new hierarchy in upper-echelon command structure; you have regiments (or brigades), then divisions, then corps, then armies, then army groups. And actually, even in World War I, we can see cases where different fighting styles can yield different-sized divisions. British and French divisions were designed for trench warfare; American divisions were designed for open-field combat. Granted, American deficiency in artillery and officers may have forced it, but American divisions were, "fully twice the size of any other European division," at 27,123 men according to the 8 August 1917 TO&E. American units were so big and powerful that they were treated as corps-level units by the Allied High Command. You Europeans are more than welcome to make snide comments about how Americans have to be bigger than anybody else, or whatever else you want to say, but the simple fact is that during the 1918 offensives, the American divisions took casualties that would shatter British and French divisions (I seem to remember a casualty count of about 8,000 for one engagement), and the Americans "kept on trucking," as the saying goes.

In any case, whoever it was who brought up the TVTropes article about how Sci Fi writers have no sense of scale is dead on. In the current Guard codex, there is a quote (that I know I've seen in past codicies, but w/e). It reads as follows: "I have at my command an entire battle group of the Imperial Guard. Fifty regiments, including specialized drop troops, stealthers [sic], mechanised [sic] formations, armored companies, and mobile artillery. Over half a million fighting men and thirty thousand tanks and artillery pieces are mine to command."

So, an entire Imperial Guard battle group is between 500,000 and 1,000,000 men?

Yawn.

According to my Ospery books, during Operation BARBAROSSA, the German Army Group South (as in, there were two other army groups called North and Center) attacked into Russia with 972,000 men. Irritatingly enough, the other two books in the series don't give similar hard numbers. Wikipedia gives us a number of 3.9 million Germans, but does not cite it. I have read a figure of 3 million, but either number is more than sufficient for the purpose of this post (Sci-Fi writers have no sense of scale). Wikipedia also gives us 3,600 tanks, 4,389 aircraft (the aircraft figure comes from a book, but I don't know how reliable it is, seeing that JMH did not review it), and 46,000 artillery pieces. An interesting factoid from one of the Osprey books I have on BARBAROSSA is, "The Ostheer suffered 300,000 killed during Barbarossa - the equivilent of one regiment per day - and most of them were infantrymen."

So, again, Sci Fi writers have no sense of scale - one side of one front in World War II is bigger than a Guard Battlegroup, according to the 'dex. Hell, the Coalition forces in the First Gulf War had more men (more than half a million), and probably had more (and more capable) vehicles, and the First Gulf War was....kind of a small war.

In any case. The Guard codex also specifically mentions the major disparity in unit sizes; it specifically stipulates the 120,000-man strength of the Valhallan 18th Light Infantry (the "Tundra Wolves" of that asshat Chenkov), contrasted to the 1,500-man Vostroyan Heavy Armored 24th. The first Eisenhorn book gives the strength of the 50th Gundurian (spelling?) at 250,000 men, whereas the Valhallan 597th of Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphus Cain books stands at a strength of 1,000.

Now, the thing is that these smaller unit sizes can still make sense; the Imperium is petrified by the possibility that a unit might go rogue; so, the smaller the unit, the less power it has, and the less of a threat if it does go rogue. If the Guard needs combat power, well, they just take a couple of regiments, group them in a division, and then go stomp on somebody. That's also the reason the Guard codex states that regiments are usually homogenous; regiments won't have organic heavy artillery, so they need to work with another unit to get heavy artillery. (I choose to interpret this as regiments not having access to Bombards, and only having a battery or two, or perhaps a company, of organic artillery).

I'll check back in a few hours, and for the next couple of days.

Mechanised isn't a spelling error, it's just British english. The quote in the codex also spells armour with a u. The example isn't necessarily indicative of poor scale. There's nothing stopping anyone from fielding more than one battle group. However in general the numbers of troops involved in any given 40k conflict are, when given, with few exceptions curiously small. An example brought up in this thread is 3rd Armageddon, the largest Ork waaugh in history being fought with a few million combatants on each side. Small numbers on the attacking side are easy enough to understand because they're limited by their transport capacity. The defense is on a highly populous world heavily involved in arms manufacture. My best guess at what's limiting their numbers is a bottleneck in the training facilities. Nobody expected a war this big right on their doorstep so they don't have the cadre or facilities to rapidly expand their army to the degree necessary. You can give a man a lasgun but that won't make him a soldier. On the scale of armies that gets even worse. Ten thousand armed but untrained men with inadequate leadership are worse than useless.

There is an entertaining theory that the 40k universe is much less violent than is implied. Attacks in strength are rare and the typical conflict is either a raid or a clash of expeditionary forces. When something comes along that seriously threatens major worlds (Black Crusade, Armageddon, Tyrannic Wars) it enters a short list of major wars. The Imperium only seriously mobilizes in response to such a threat or when they intend to launch such an offensive themselves. At all other times the tithes are perfunctory, the troops either sent on whatever make work missions won't compromise readiness or shipped across the galaxy in quest of an active conflict.

Raxmei wrote: There is an entertaining theory that the 40k universe is much less violent than is implied.

The W40K universe is pretty much the most violent piece of science fiction ever created IMO.

It is simply that, as other people pointed out, most sci-fi writers have absolutely no sense of scale or any knowledge about warfare. Which means that uncountable pieces of W40K fluff are poorly written and completely unrealistic.

Laodamia wrote:

Raxmei wrote: There is an entertaining theory that the 40k universe is much less violent than is implied.

The W40K universe is pretty much the most violent piece of science fiction ever created IMO.

It is simply that, as other people pointed out, most sci-fi writers have absolutely no sense of scale or any knowledge about warfare. Which means that uncountable pieces of W40K fluff are poorly written and completely unrealistic.

My point exactly. And if the people think it's less violent - just wait until "Space Marines" arrive. I have a sense it will be like: "100 ways to butcher an OrK"
Seriously, I saw in promotion video that marine is catch the Ork throat, slam it to the ground and then he hit his head with his boot. Or when he stab him with Chainsword and then he pull him in the air to slice him at half. Now tell me is this less violent than Star Wars or Halo?

Just to clean up a few things:

1) sci or fantasy isn't realistic. Since 40k is not a historic or realistic setting ( orks&elfs&...etc ), real events have no bearing on 4ok's possibilities.

2) scale. The ruleset of unexpanded 40k isn't able to handle a single battle fully. What you get is a small focus at parts of it.
Expanded it may deal with a single battle, but even then does not include limits of fuel, ammo, food, etc.
Certainly a codex covers a fight of 2 opponents at max company-level. The fluff to support the participants was never meant to
create a whole world to enact battles, just to give a general setting to place these fights in an better environment than a empty
kitchen desk. Thus the description of the worlds is vague.

3) threat level. Some authors tend to raise the threat level each time they move the timeline. Until their series fails to work...
GW made it supergrimextradark with supersized casuality rates at one hand and contradicting these with believable casuality rates
at the other. It would be enough to fight for cities. But it had to be systems...
Now, the "end-times" shall end the species....so how to move on to 6th ed???

4) managable size. The formations have evolved and some stood the test of time. Those that were proven to work, have been kept.
Gw has admit they just call a formation "regiment", in 5th ed. Before this, there was at least an attempt to crosscheck fluff and
provide detailed background. Now, its the secret of the munitorum how big a certain regiment is....the range seems to be a few thousand
to hundredthousands. So it changes from 3rd ( borrowed scale down from History ) to 5th ( 1k to 100k, please look up TacticaImperialis..)
mostly from given examples to "imagination". But for those without experience with real formations its hard to imagine anything believable...
Therefore, the issue of size returns because 40k and the fluff only covers company-level and regiments are above that.
Companies are managable. Regiments below 100k too IMO. Above this, further "ranks" are neccessary.

to be continued...

While in the warhammer 40k game nobody will look down on you for saying "My regiment is 3 million strong"(Well, they would, but they shouldn't, since ANYTHING is possible in warhammer), if you want a realistic size for a regiment, 200,000 is the absolute max.

Putting more work on less shoulders does not make the army or regiment in question any more efficient.

If the paperwork required after 450,000 people die is alot for 100 command units, it will be much harder on one command unit of your proposed regiment. Unless of course you rush the entire 3 million as one large dwindling mob, which would be much less effective as a fighting unit. In fact, at that point, I'm not sure you can call it a proper military outfit.

Notice how your regiment is larger than The ENTIRE ACTIVE ARMY OF CHINA. Perhaps you might want to change the fluff of your "regiment" into your "army"

And the 25 billion population hive is surrounded by several agri worlds which have a population of less than 500,000 that it has to protect. If it fails, then a majority of the hives population will starve and die.

Heh. Bit of a tangent. I once came up with figures showing annual recruitment of the Guard in a worst-case scenario. I figured it on an average planetary population of 5 billion, since that 25 billion Hive World (and that's actually a small Hive World) has to be offset by 4 worlds with population: 1 in order to equal out to 5 billion.

I have found another hole in GW official fluff. Commander Chenkov lost 10.000.000 Guardsman while trying to conquer one Hive City. Giving the size of Regiment is 12.000 (for example), thats about 834 Regiments?
And Raxmei said that when Chaos conquer a world Guard raise 100 more Regiments. Giving the amount of man lost to retake 1 Hive City, they will go out of Regiments long before they go out of enemies.

Brother Coa wrote:I have found another hole in GW official fluff. Commander Chenkov lost 10.000.000 Guardsman while trying to conquer one Hive City. Giving the size of Regiment is 12.000 (for example), thats about 834 Regiments?

Chenkov could easily be a higher level commander than a Colonel, and thus, yes, he sent 834 regiments into the meat grinder to take back one Hive City. Remember, this is Warhammer 40k, so that's probably exagerated to make Chenkov seem more heroic/brutal, etc. But it's not impossible that Chenkov threw a thousand regiments in, and got a couple hundred out. This is the Imperium. You seriously seem to fail to understand the basics of military organization. WHy are you so obsessed with the idea that it's one regiment to one planet?

And Raxmei said that when Chaos conquer a world Guard raise 100 more Regiments. Giving the amount of man lost to retake 1 Hive City, they will go out of Regiments long before they go out of enemies.

Remember, Chenkov's assault on that planet was known because he DID the stereotypical Guard thing and just kept charging men at the Hive City till the enemy collapsed. He did it without significant armor or artillery support, which is part of why that victory was mentioned--it was abnormal for the Guard. The Guard are dogmatic, but not stupid, a more common tactic for dealing with a hive city would be to lay siege and bombard with artillery until the shield/walls/defenses collapsed, and then attack with a mixed armor-infantry formation to clear out the survivors. This could take back a hive with much fewere casualities at the expense of taking much, MUCH longer to accomplish. Chenkov was memorialized not for following SOP, but for breaking it and trading lives for a quicker victory.

Remember, on the other hand the DKoK managed to reduce an entire hive to nothing but rubble over 10 years with limited casualties. Both of these cases are atypical, and can not be held up as a 'standard' Guard operation.

Brother Coa wrote:Giving the size of Regiment is 12.000 (for example), thats about 834 Regiments?

Again, the size of a regiment is not fixed. The 18th Valhallan Light Infantry, Chenkov's "Tundra Wolves", is g a given fighting strength of 120,000 on page 9 of the current Guard codex. On the same page, the Vostroyan 24th Heavy Armored has a strength of 1,500. The 50th Gundurian Rifles of the Eisenhorn trilogy is given a strength of 250,000 men. Ciaphus Cain's Valhallan 597th is given a strength of 1,000.

As for that asshat Chenkov losing ten million men, well, what ChrisWWII said.

Actually, what ChristWWII said to pretty much everything. The reduction of that hive was an abnormal operation; Chenkov traded expanding time and ammo for expanding bodies.

I'm curious, Brother_Coa. What, exactly, are you arguing? Also, have you ever done any reading on military affairs, and if so, what?

DakkaDakka wrote:

Ogiwan wrote:
I'm curious, Brother_Coa. What, exactly, are you arguing? Also, have you ever done any reading on military affairs, and if so, what?

I will answer you: it's the SIZE. To me at least, this is how I imagine things.
Earth is a sizable planet ( 510.065.600 km ), and we Humans are pretty small ( 10 km is a long way for us ). To maintain planet security you must have sizable military force to control local population + defend against alien attacks. Further more, when you see Hitlers army in 1941 that attacked USSR it numbered ~3.9 million solders. That was still not enough to defeat and eventually to hold on waves of enemies. So if you want to defend entire planet you must have 1 regiment per continent ( Asia and Africa should have 2 because of size ).
And to defend let's say Europe you must have concentration of large army's per country. And if Europe is attacked on one side, send available army's there. To successfully defend Europe you will need at least 20.000.000 solders. For Asia 3x that number and for Africa 2x that number. An when you work numbers you get around 1.8 billion people ( there are around 7 billion Humans today). And if one Regiment have 12.000 Guardsman (average Regiment) thats about 150000 Imperial Guard Regiments.
And my point is not one Regiment on planet - but few. I would, for example, made European 1'st Regiment that could guard mainland Europe ( of course not 20.000.000 man, but some 3.000.000 ) to guard every Europe capital, every strategic point and every military installation. In case of an Ork invasion, I would regroup as many solders as possible, and defend as many territory as I can.
My point is that this fluff is broken because: we can use only around 20% of our entire population and made enough Regiments to guard entire Segmentum ( Solar for example ), then the size of Regiments is not realistic due to Human population in 41'st millennium and due to that they are still using 20'th century military organisation ( like they are in 1991 not 41999 ), and they don't take the size of planets itself into account ( it's very hard to defend very big please with very limited manpower ) like " 20 Regiments have been deployed in sector defense' - Earth is 510 million km long, those 20 Regiments have max of 300.000 man, you try to defend just Africa from Ork invasion with that many man.
And only that, everything else if fine ( well, almost ). And I am sorry if I have upset you all, I didn't mean it, I just wanted to point out my opinion.
Cheers...

Dude, like many have said:
Regiment, that word I don't think it means what you think it means. For example Canada has like 5-10 Regiments and our population is < 1 planet.

Its fairly obvious that English is not your first language; are you confusing "regiment" with "division," perhaps? 20th century divisions can be 12,000 men strong (though that may be a bit light), and Guard regiments don't have a fixed size.

Crap. Have to do housework. Back later.

Brother Coa, please remember regiment != army. WHy do we have to have just two regiments? The US Army is divided up into about 47 real regiments spread over the world. The British army has about 6 divisions, with only 2 available for deployment at any one time, except for times of general war. The RUssians are divided up into about 10 ARMIES. If Earth was attacked, why would there HAVE to be only one regiment defending a continent? Why can't the forces be divided into smaller components for ease of command? If you look at every large military in history, they have a strict level of military units. In general, that is:

Army Group > Army > Corps > Division > (Brigade) > Regiment > Batallion > Company > Platoon > Squad.

Various nations tend to put stress on different levles within their command. The British and Americans tend to rely on smaller formations mostly at or around the regiment/brigade level, with high quality NCOs. The Russians tend to rely on division level formations. Although the IG is dvided permanantly into regiments, in times of actual war it's not too hard to assume they are arranged into adhoc larger formations for ease of command, and I find it hard to believe that een internally there's not SOME kind of organization besides squad < company < regiment.

ChrisWWII wrote:The US Army is divided up into about 47 real regiments spread over the world.

Quibble: American regiments are pretty much paper formations only. They're used for heraldry and little else. All the actual operational details are handled in brigades.

But, if you want to know more, perhaps the Army Institute of Heraldry can give you some interesting information!

The RUssians are divided up into about 10 ARMIES.

Did they call them "fronts" or some such? Wait, no, a Front is a Soviet Army Group. I think? Yeah, so says Wikipedia. So, nevermind.

If Earth was attacked, why would there HAVE to be only one regiment defending a continent? Why can't the forces be divided into smaller components for ease of command?

Agreed.

Although the IG is dvided permanantly into regiments, in times of actual war it's not too hard to assume they are arranged into adhoc larger formations for ease of command, and I find it hard to believe that een internally there's not SOME kind of organization besides squad < company < regiment.

Again, agreed. Frankly, I think its more than likely that the next level up from a regiment is a Brigade (command by, of course, a brigadier), composed of multiple regiments.

Away again!

edit: the quote tags.

another thing to consider is that the IG doesn't do security work.


thats the PDFs job, and even then the Arbites and Enforcers are who do actual police work.

the IG is an offensive organization. analogous to the U.S armed forces and all it's branches(Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force...)

the PDF is a defensive organization. analogous to the National Guard(a state by state military organization that can only be deployed to defend the assigned territory)

the Arbites/Enforcers are a police organization(albiet one armed to the point of being paramilitary) analogous to all police organizations(State Troopers, City Police, SWAT teams...)


when a planet isn't under threat, the PDF will be confined to their barracks and training grounds.

the Arbites will be doing the menial things like issuing traffic tickets, arresting criminals, and dealing with domestic problems...

the PDF only gets involved in the case of rebellions or major riots.


if the IG gets involved in planetary affairs, the planet has either outright rebelled or there is an invasion. normally, the PDF is sutible for all tasks requiring a military intervention.


an IG regiment will often become a PDF regiment if it subdues a planet. the local populace can't be trusted with weaponry for at least a generation so the PDF won't have any local troops for many years.

the Arbites will start out with a small off-world group of trained personel. these will then recruit locals to form the Arbites/Enforcer force(local born people will have an easier time of enforcing the law rather then off-worlders)



the Imperium actually has few laws proper.

they are basically, Pay the Tithe and Worship the Emperor.

aside from that the locals will hardly notice a difference in everyday life.

Alright, you all have proven your point. I just imagine that with the empire that size and numerless population there would be more numerous military organisations.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ogiwan wrote:Its fairly obvious that English is not your first language; are you confusing "regiment" with "division," perhaps? 20th century divisions can be 12,000 men strong (though that may be a bit light), and Guard regiments don't have a fixed size.

Crap. Have to do housework. Back later.

И зашто мислиш да је енглески мој први језик? Did you see the flag at all?
And our army was once 4'th in military power in Europe. And like I said, it is just my opinion that IG regiments should have more man, given the.... no matter....