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 Iron_Captain wrote:
Where do people get it from, that the Leman Russ was designed as a tractor?

I'm sure I read once from the same source that Terminator Armour was simply a hazardous environment work suit.

I think the point was to show how absurdly advanced the DAOT was, and how the pinnacle of Imperial technology consists of nothing more than scraps from that era.

Even scraps of an absurdly advanced era are going to be absurdly advanced.

And yes, Terminator armor was based on suits made to function inside functioning plasma reactors(Its not an STC). IE: You can walk around in a nuclear fusion reaction and be fine.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Even scraps of an absurdly advanced era are going to be absurdly advanced.

And yes, Terminator armor was based on suits made to function inside functioning plasma reactors(Its not an STC). IE: You can walk around in a nuclear fusion reaction and be fine.

I thought that was just part of their testing rather than their main purpose.

Nope. They were designed to allow workers to perform maintenance on active reactors, preventing the need to shut the reactor down for maintenance.

The "Crux Terminatus/Emperor's Armour" fluff really did break the whole concept of Terminators. >< But it was badly (and half-heartedly) implemented anyway and hasn't been mentioned since that first introduction, thankfully.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Nope. They were designed to allow workers to perform maintenance on active reactors, preventing the need to shut the reactor down for maintenance.

Wow, that really does make them alot less cool. They're glorified hazmat suits

I don't know. It basically lets you tolerate the temperature on the surface of a star.

And TDA has been heavily modified from what it was originally. It probably has only superficial resemblance to the original product.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I don't know. It basically lets you tolerate the temperature on the surface of a star.

And TDA has been heavily modified from what it was originally. It probably has only superficial resemblance to the original product.

You can see the evolution in different patterns of the armor. The older Cataphractii, for instance, has a 4+ invuln but only S&P.

 SDFarsight wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Nope. They were designed to allow workers to perform maintenance on active reactors, preventing the need to shut the reactor down for maintenance.

Wow, that really does make them alot less cool. They're glorified hazmat suits

On the contrary, it makes the Imperium even cooler for having created such a thing.

 SDFarsight wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Nope. They were designed to allow workers to perform maintenance on active reactors, preventing the need to shut the reactor down for maintenance.

Wow, that really does make them alot less cool. They're glorified hazmat suits

There's a certain Mr. Freeman here who'd like a word with you. Well no, not a word as such.
More a crowbar, in fact.


Anyway, it's my understanding that there are no "computers" in the Imperium, due to the the fluff ripping off Dune's ban on all thinking machine (aka. the Butlerian Jihad). But rather than use human computers (Mentats) the Imperium got around this by making servitors and data engines with a biological component, and using technology to enhance humans beyond their normal capacity.

This may of course been retconned of course,

They call computers "cogitators". They don't appear to have a biological component, but they are also not at AI-level of capability.

It's entirely possible that the majority of high-level imperial calculatory technology is partly organic. But there is very likely non-organic computers, too.

To be as powerful as we expect them to be (due to fully incorporating human minds), the hardware of the bio-computers would be at least partly extremely advanced forms of modern computing tech, possibly with a quantum computing component. If they have that kind of hardware available, there is little you'd need a human brain for anyway, aside from a direct and thinking control mechanism.

To put it in some perspective, Mars and all of its satellite Forge Worlds across the galaxy have quantum computers. This was how Mars once received updates, or sent new protocols, to the Forge Worlds, without the use of Astropaths (since Astropaths cannot transmit data in that nature).

We have also seen personal, portable computing technology in use in various sources, whether for simple word processing or for hacking into an Administratum data network.

There is, of course, the possibility that all computers contain something like a vat-grown brain component that acts as a combined hard drive and CPU, given the mind's ability for data storage and simultaneous calculations and processes, bolstered with/supported by electronic components.

 Aben Zin wrote:

 SDFarsight wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Nope. They were designed to allow workers to perform maintenance on active reactors, preventing the need to shut the reactor down for maintenance.

Wow, that really does make them alot less cool. They're glorified hazmat suits

There's a certain Mr. Freeman here who'd like a word with you. Well no, not a word as such.
More a crowbar, in fact.

But wouldn't Mr Freemen prefer thrice-blessed tactical dreadnought armour containing a fragment of our Emperor's armour?

Oh, gods, no, first thing he'd probably do is free all the psykers...

Maybe cogitators aren't computers, maybe they're cogitators. The Land Raider poster has some neat information about their cogitators, cogitations per minute and so on.

Something that the Mutilator fluff (yeah yeah...) suggests is that everything has a warp-presence, and that part of the Mutilator thing is that their own souls become enmeshed and intermingled with the souls of their weapons as time and the warp affects them. Maybe the problem with computers is that they don't start with or develop human souls.

I think the issue with computers is that they're easily possessed in a universe where the skin between reality and madness is getting thinner by the hour, so walking around with a ready-made scaffold for an inter-dimensional warp-gate is unhealthy (and relatively easy to ban, unlike actual people and psykers), and attaching one as the control system for a war-machine is practically suicide. Better to make sure any devices already have a mind, and one that's resistant to daemonic suggestion, intrusion, or possession is all the better.

Nomeny wrote:
Maybe cogitators aren't computers, maybe they're cogitators. The Land Raider poster has some neat information about their cogitators, cogitations per minute and so on.

Something that the Mutilator fluff (yeah yeah...) suggests is that everything has a warp-presence, and that part of the Mutilator thing is that their own souls become enmeshed and intermingled with the souls of their weapons as time and the warp affects them. Maybe the problem with computers is that they don't start with or develop human souls.

I think the issue with computers is that they're easily possessed in a universe where the skin between reality and madness is getting thinner by the hour, so walking around with a ready-made scaffold for an inter-dimensional warp-gate is unhealthy (and relatively easy to ban, unlike actual people and psykers), and attaching one as the control system for a war-machine is practically suicide. Better to make sure any devices already have a mind, and one that's resistant to daemonic suggestion, intrusion, or possession is all the better.

I doubt they're that risky of possession. The only cogitiators I know of to be possessed had spent many years on a Chaos-tainted planet, and even then IIRC it only had some creepy gliches rather than actualy summoning a deamon/warp gate. If the Imperium is afraid of anything it's having another AI war, which is why they put organic parts in the more powerful/important computers.

It seems that you need a specific type of daemon to posses a computer. Tech-daemons seem to be their own category, and they have some differences from actual daemons(like they can actually forget they're daemons)

Cogitators cogitate. That is why they are called cogitators. It implies some level of ceretronic activity or design parameters.

 Psienesis wrote:
Cogitators cogitate. That is why they are called cogitators. It implies some level of ceretronic activity or design parameters.

In layman's terms, they're powerful calculators.

Which would make them a computer, since that is all a computer does. It calculates strings of binary code.

But thats really all computers are. Very powerful calculators.

And the definition of Cogitate is as follows,

transitive verb
: to ponder or meditate on usually intently
intransitive verb
: to meditate deeply or intently <cogitating on her career plans>

This implies some judgement and decision making. So some sort of crude decision making is involved.

So Cogitator is just 40k-speak for Computer. Heck, you would not be wrong to call your Laptop/pocket calculator/iPhone/etc... a Cogitator in our modern language.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It seems that you need a specific type of daemon to posses a computer. Tech-daemons seem to be their own category, and they have some differences from actual daemons(like they can actually forget they're daemons)

Sometimes they can materialise themselves as large blue entities with foul white script across them, or a multi-coloured rotating ball made from pure heresy.

 SDFarsight wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
It seems that you need a specific type of daemon to posses a computer. Tech-daemons seem to be their own category, and they have some differences from actual daemons(like they can actually forget they're daemons)

Sometimes they can materialise themselves as large blue entities with foul white script across them, or a multi-coloured rotating ball made from pure heresy.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 SDFarsight wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
It seems that you need a specific type of daemon to posses a computer. Tech-daemons seem to be their own category, and they have some differences from actual daemons(like they can actually forget they're daemons)

Sometimes they can materialise themselves as large blue entities with foul white script across them, or a multi-coloured rotating ball made from pure heresy.

zoom in and read all the tooltips and fineprint

 Grey Templar wrote:
zoom in and read all the tooltips and fineprint

Did :3

If only daemon summoning had those tools. Although I'd soon change the paper clip for something less annoying.

Clippy is an Avatar of Khorne, God of Rage and Bloodlust. Change or dismiss him at your peril.

 Psienesis wrote:
Clippy is an Avatar of Khorne, God of Rage and Bloodlust. Change or dismiss him at your peril.

More like Tzeentch, you never know what twisted plots he has weaved behind those tooltip options.

Bending and unbending menacingly, always watching with those dull, soulless eyes just... floating there, detached from his snake-like body...