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 Grim.Badger wrote:


How large is a company? GW say 100 Marines, but that's not true as there is at least the Captain and command squad to add to that, making it 106.

Well this math seems a bit silly. A all the materials clearly state that a sergeant commands ten marines, captain commands 100 marines, and that there are ten sergeants in a company, so if you take the captain's 100 marines, the sergeants' ten each, and the captain you obviously get 201 marines. Therefore, every company has 201 marines.

Right?

I'm kidding.

The Command Squads are not a codified part of the Company organisation. Rather they are approved yet ad hoc units. As such they can vary in size and composition but they rarely comprise more than ten Marines and normally consist of between five and ten warriors. In the Battle and Reserve Companies these Marines are veterans drawn from the ranks of the Company's Tactical, Assault and Devastator Squads who have not yet been promoted to the 1st Company. The number of marines in a Command Squad will vary according to the availability of such veterans and to the tactical situation the Chapter encounters. - Insignium Astartes

How large is the Chapter? Each company (with the possible exception of the 1st and 10th) will be 106 strong, plus the Chapter Master and Honour Guard (11 Marines), plus the Librarians, Chaplains, Apothecaries (any who aren't assigned to a command squad), techmarines and the vehicle crews.

[i]\All Space Marines are able to act as crew for the vehicles maintained in each Chapter's armoury. It is normally the Tactical squads which provide vehicle crews. When fighting in this role they replace their normal tactical markings with crew badges, but otherwise they retain their company colours and Chapter insignia as normal."
- Codex: Ultramarines

You then have the fleet, and BL books seem to say that ship commanders/captains do their job on a permanent basis, but I have yet to read anything substantial about where any other marines come from (so assume they come from companies as per the article).

"The exact organization of those Space Marines tasked with crewing the fleet varies from Chapter to Chapter. In some cases, it will be the Master of the Fleet's own company who provide these Marines, with each of his veteran captains acting as captain to a different vessel within the fleet while their own squad members each man a different vital area within that same vessel. In other cases, squads from different companies within the Chapter may be charged with manning the fleet, serving under the command of the Master of the Fleet in just the same way as a Space Marine battleforce may be made up of squads drawn from several companies across the Chapter under the battle-command of a single, nominated force commander." - Fanatic Magazine


There is not really anything else to say.

Yeah, the actual breakdown of a company is more like...

Captain
- 5 veterans in a command squad
- 2 Razorback crew

Sergeant
- 5 Marines
- 2 Razorback crew

Sergeant
- 5 Marines
- 2 Razorback crew

Sergeant
- 5 Marines
- 2 Razorback crew

Sergeant
- 10 Marines
- 1 Rhino crew

Sergeant
- 10 Marines
- 1 Rhino crew

Sergeant
- 10 Marines
- 1 Rhino crew

Sergeant
- 10 Marines
- 1 Rhino crew

Sergeant
- 8 Marines
- 1 Rhino crew

= 100 Marines.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Yeah, the actual breakdown of a company is more like...

Captain
- 5 veterans in a command squad
- 2 Razorback crew

Sergeant
- 5 Marines
- 2 Razorback crew

Sergeant
- 5 Marines
- 2 Razorback crew

Sergeant
- 5 Marines
- 2 Razorback crew

Sergeant
- 10 Marines
- 1 Rhino crew

Sergeant
- 10 Marines
- 1 Rhino crew

Sergeant
- 10 Marines
- 1 Rhino crew

Sergeant
- 10 Marines
- 1 Rhino crew

Sergeant
- 8 Marines
- 1 Rhino crew

= 100 Marines.

Makes sense to me, unfortunatly the only company break down we've gotten that I can recall is the Ultramarines 2nd company which does not in fact do this. in fact it's pretty clear that the vehicle pool is seperate all together.

I suppose it's possiable that useally tech marines are assigned to vehicles. the Ultramarines have 27 of them so I suppose that could be eneugh in most situations. especially if you assume they have a "1 operator and servators" approuch.

Ultramarines Fleet:

8 Strike Cruser
3 Battle Barges
12 Rapid Strike Vessels
31 Thunderhawk Gunships

Source: Space Marine Codex 5th Edition page 17

Blood Angels Fleet:

7 Strike Crusers
2 Battle Barges
16 Rapid Strike Vesseös
36 Thunderhawk Gunships
3 Thunderhawk Transports
51 Stormraven

Source: Blood Angels Codex 5th Edition page 9

Space Wolves Fleet:

2 Ramilles Class Star-fort
30+ Strike Crusers
8 Battle Barges
20+ Hunter Destroyer Squadrons
20+ Gladius/Nova Frigate Squadrons

Source: Space Wolves Codex 7th Edition page 15

Imperial Fists Fleet:

At least:

1 Phalanx
3 Strike Cruiser (1 of them lost 963.M41 to the Iron Warriors.. Lysanders Ship)
2 Battle Barge
3 Gladius/Nova Frigate

Source: Sentinels of Terra Suplement 6th Edition page 7,16, 24,
Source: Space Marine Codex 6th Edition page 43,114

For a "normal" Chapter I would go for:

Strike Cruiser for each Company
1-2 Rapid Strike Vessels for each Company
1 Flagship Battle Barge
2 Battle Barges

Even this would require around 200-300 Asartes manning thes ships.

A Space based Chapter would have more support and escort ships plus a couple more Battle Barges/Strike Cruisers.

 Mr Morden wrote:
For a "normal" Chapter I would go for:

Strike Cruiser for each Company
1-2 Rapid Strike Vessels for each Company
1 Flagship Battle Barge
2 Battle Barges

Even this would require around 200-300 Asartes manning thes ships.

A Space based Chapter would have more support and escort ships plus a couple more Battle Barges/Strike Cruisers.

Why would you need that many marines for the fleet? Most ships have few if any marines.

Because Imperial ships are huge. Even if you only have 1 Marine per "major" section, as a command officer, that's still a dozen Marines per ship.

Some of the below titles are not official, but descriptive of what it is they're responsible for:

You've got the Captain, the Ship's Quartermaster, Ship's Surgeon (Apothecary), the Chief Engineer (Tech-Marine), Master of Ordnance (that's the weapons), Master of the Void Array (Void Shields), Master of Vox (Comms), Master of Defense (anti-boarding actions), Master of the Hangar (oversees the flight deck of assault craft, fighters, bombers, etc), Master of the Armory, Master of Ratings (oversees the non-Astartes crew), and the Master of Boarding Actions (plans ship-to-ship assaults in an offensive method, where as the Master of Defense coordinates defenses of this ship).

And if you have Marines in anything other than supervisory roles, then that greatly increases the number of Marines required to run each ship.

Don't know if this has already been mentioned but the Gothic SM fleet list was:
0-3 battle barges
1-10 strike cruisers
Escort vessels

So max 3 battle barges and 10 strike cruisers (plus escorts) for a normal chapter in the gothic zone during the gothic war.

 Psienesis wrote:
Because Imperial ships are huge. Even if you only have 1 Marine per "major" section, as a command officer, that's still a dozen Marines per ship.

Some of the below titles are not official, but descriptive of what it is they're responsible for:

You've got the Captain, the Ship's Quartermaster, Ship's Surgeon (Apothecary), the Chief Engineer (Tech-Marine), Master of Ordnance (that's the weapons), Master of the Void Array (Void Shields), Master of Vox (Comms), Master of Defense (anti-boarding actions), Master of the Hangar (oversees the flight deck of assault craft, fighters, bombers, etc), Master of the Armory, Master of Ratings (oversees the non-Astartes crew), and the Master of Boarding Actions (plans ship-to-ship assaults in an offensive method, where as the Master of Defense coordinates defenses of this ship).

And if you have Marines in anything other than supervisory roles, then that greatly increases the number of Marines required to run each ship.

Do all those roles have to be astartes?

I'd imagine you you would only need a small squad on a Strike Cruiser in addition to a few techmarines.

Now on a battle barge, ,especially with the Chapter Master aboard I'd expect a much higher population of marines, both to act as security and oversee sections.

But marines are too important to be kept on ships that are not en route to combat.

In the description they give for how Astartes man their fleets, it notes that most of the bridge crew/officers are Space Marines. Imperial ships are not the USS Enterprise NCC-1701. The "bridge crew" is not 5 guys on a capital-class cruiser, it's like 50 guys, or more. Again, and I can't stress this enough, Imperial ships are huge, with crews numbering in the thousands and tens of thousands. This is not to mention the possibility of passengers.

So I took a list of example titles from RT and BFG of the various officer-classes of an Imperial ship, and assigned a Space Marine to each role. These are just supervisory roles, too. The guy arranging the flight deck, for example, is not piloting an assault boat himself.

And while it does, indeed, make more sense to hand this job off to a well-favored serf... we're told they don't.

 minigun762 wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Because Imperial ships are huge. Even if you only have 1 Marine per "major" section, as a command officer, that's still a dozen Marines per ship.

Some of the below titles are not official, but descriptive of what it is they're responsible for:

You've got the Captain, the Ship's Quartermaster, Ship's Surgeon (Apothecary), the Chief Engineer (Tech-Marine), Master of Ordnance (that's the weapons), Master of the Void Array (Void Shields), Master of Vox (Comms), Master of Defense (anti-boarding actions), Master of the Hangar (oversees the flight deck of assault craft, fighters, bombers, etc), Master of the Armory, Master of Ratings (oversees the non-Astartes crew), and the Master of Boarding Actions (plans ship-to-ship assaults in an offensive method, where as the Master of Defense coordinates defenses of this ship).

And if you have Marines in anything other than supervisory roles, then that greatly increases the number of Marines required to run each ship.

Do all those roles have to be astartes?

I'd imagine you you would only need a small squad on a Strike Cruiser in addition to a few techmarines.

Now on a battle barge, ,especially with the Chapter Master aboard I'd expect a much higher population of marines, both to act as security and oversee sections.

But marines are too important to be kept on ships that are not en route to combat.

They absolutely can't be all marines, even if they do exist on marine ships. The total number of post-human captains/crew needed to man a full size space marine fleet, including thunderhawks is 80 - 100. The fleet has about 55 vessels, including thunderhawks. Each vessel might have two marines. That is what the published information is. I'd say some rapid strike vessels have zero or one marines, especially since they are in squadrons so they can be commanded by marines on other ships in the squadron, and that means some of the more important cruisers or barges could have a full combat squad.

I can tell you why. Marines cannot work if they have a "navy" branch. Even a single captain-level officer being in charge of no regular marine company and only the fleet would mean that to do his job well, he'd try to get the best and most equipment, and the best and most marine crew. He'd do his job to the best of his ability, trying very hard to win space battles. All of these things are bad.

Those things detract from the performance of the chapter. If you asked the space marine navy what kind of ships to build, they'd build ships that have lances and go really fast. If you asked a space marine battle company captain what kind of ships to build, they'd build ships that have 50 drop pod bays and can stay in low orbit blowing up ground targets. That's why there is no space marine navy, and why they put battle company captains in charge of their fleet.

If a marine captain on the ground needed a ship in the system to do something, there would be a navy marine who'd say he was busy winning a space battle, and those dumb ground pounders would get his ship blown up if he did what they wanted. Instead of letting that happen, they put a tactical squad sergeant in command of the strike cruiser, and he offers to break his ship in half and use the parts as two gigantic drop pods. Every fighting unit (not specialists, but fighting/transport unit) in the chapter has to be part of the ten companies because the mission of the chapter is always to put space marines in bolter range of bad guys.

The number of marines cannot be disputed. The fleet has about 90 marines plus techmarines. It's not possible to consider any question about how many marines there are in the fleet, the only thing you can argue about is why there are so few.

Mr Morden wrote:

The poster above you gave the actual numbers, from the actual codexes, and I think he registered specifically so he could do that. I do not believe you are even reading this. You're going to forget that you posted in the first place, aren't you?

The numbers provided are but a small number of the 1000 Chapters of Space Marines that the Imperium maintains. There's also the fact that those Chapters provided vary wildly in their fleet strength.

And to take the Space Wolves as an example...

If you put only 1 Marine on each of their ships, assuming 3 vessels in each squadron, you have an entire Great Company, and then some, devoted to the fleet alone. That seems like madness.

The Blood Angels devote, apparently, an entire Company to the Fleet. They have over 100 vessels.

?

"At an absolute minimum, a Master of the Fleet typically needs eighty to a hundred Marines to properly crew the fleet, its Thunderhawks and its landing craft, and most Chapters have measures in place to ensure that a astanding force of this size is permanently available to the Master of the Fleet, be it his own company in its entirety, or squads from across the Chapter left permanently at his disposal." (Fanatic Magazine 6, p. 55)

The blood angels devote an entire company to crew, so do everyone else

Ohrtanc wrote:Ultramarines Fleet:

8 Strike Cruser
3 Battle Barges
12 Rapid Strike Vessels
31 Thunderhawk Gunships

Source: Space Marine Codex 5th Edition page 17

Blood Angels Fleet:

7 Strike Crusers
2 Battle Barges
16 Rapid Strike Vesseös
36 Thunderhawk Gunships
3 Thunderhawk Transports
51 Stormraven

Source: Blood Angels Codex 5th Edition page 9

These are functionally identical, absent Stormravens.

Imperial Fists Fleet:

At least:

These are ships that have been mentioned, not a comprehensive list.

At an absolute minimum, a Master of the Fleet typically needs eighty to a hundred Marines to properly crew the fleet, its Thunderhawks and its landing craft, and most Chapters have measures in place to ensure that a astanding force of this size is permanently available to the Master of the Fleet, be it his own company in its entirety, or squads from across the Chapter left permanently at his disposal." (Fanatic Magazine 6, p. 55)

Yes, but the SW don't work like other Chapters do. Each GC is supposedly a self-contained Chapter in its own right. You don't have, for example, a GC that is nothing but Longfangs, or nothing but Bloodclaws.

So each GC gets some of the fleet assets of the entire Space Wolves Chapter, and then devotes a not-inconsiderable number of its available Marines to staffing it, especially as we're told how the Chapter as a whole functions, this is not going to be any of the young bucks in the Bloodclaws, and might even heavily lean towards the Iron Priests.

Ohrtanc wrote:


Blood Angels Fleet:

7 Strike Crusers
2 Battle Barges
16 Rapid Strike Vesseös
36 Thunderhawk Gunships
3 Thunderhawk Transports
51 Stormraven

Source: Blood Angels Codex 5th Edition page 9

Space Wolves Fleet:

2 Ramilles Class Star-fort
30+ Strike Crusers
8 Battle Barges
20+ Hunter Destroyer Squadrons
20+ Gladius/Nova Frigate Squadrons

Source: Space Wolves Codex 7th Edition page 15

Keep in mind, with the way the Black Templars got nerfed this edition, these numbers may be subject to radical change.

The poster above you gave the actual numbers, from the actual codexes, and I think he registered specifically so he could do that. I do not believe you are even reading this. You're going to forget that you posted in the first p

I don't even understand what this means?????

I posted the Space Wolves fleet ages back in the thread and then later said my thoughts on a normal Chapters fleet - which is similar to the later post of the BFG books - what is your point?

We all know that the 1000 marines thing is a bit odd when you try and incude drivers and pilots etc - same with the fleet- you need several hundred Marines to command a Chapters fleet asests - supported by chapters serfs/failed aspirants etc. Thats how its always decribed in the fliff and the novels.

The new SW Codex throws this all away and grants them a vast fleet - cos reasons - then cuts off the chapters serfs route of crewing and does not provide another soruces for the truely vast numbers of crew they need to man two Ramilies Star forts never mind several hundred ships. Your Talking several hundred thousand indivudals..........