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According to the wikia:

It is only by an edict of the High Lords of Terra that such an undertaking as the creation of new Chapters can be instigated, for it requires the cooperation and mobilisation of countless divisions within the Imperium's monolithic and vast governmental organisations. Establishing new Astartes Chapters on an individual basis is nigh impossible--the mobilisation of such vast resources is beyond the ability of any single segment of the Imperium.

Is it an exaggeration? Each of the segmentae are very vast, it wouldn't be too hard for them to mobilise resources for ONE chapter, even if they had to borrow resources from other segmentae. Of course, each marine is super duper, but it's only a thousand men, it's such a small number.

You need a lot more than just marines.
Ships, planet, fortress, land raiders, thunder hawks, power armour.

Add the fact new kit is hard to produce, and other chapters will have there own demands so new kit is excess upon that.

Ships are very expensive to build, battle barges are battleahip levels of cost. Strike cruisers are more advanced than regular navy.

The kit alone would take years to to compile and gather.

Yeah, a segmentum is large but it's not like every world there are producing war equipment and/or vehicles. And even then, how many of those worlds are producing equipment/vehicles specifically for the Space Marines rather then for the more numerous IG.

I imagine an "edict of the High Lords of Terra" is a little something like a single line on a enormous document that one of the High Lords' secretaries might complete in their entire lifetime.

Thing is, where do these requests come from? Meanwhile, all Chapters are constantly receiving an influx of Marines and equipment, so what if they just had enough to split off into two Chapters? It's happened before. Does that require such "countless divisions"? Chapters are also wiped out occasionally, and I assume the Imperium doesn't just abandon all of their leftover ships, armories, and Fortress-Monasteries.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
According to the wikia:

It is only by an edict of the High Lords of Terra that such an undertaking as the creation of new Chapters can be instigated, for it requires the cooperation and mobilisation of countless divisions within the Imperium's monolithic and vast governmental organisations. Establishing new Astartes Chapters on an individual basis is nigh impossible--the mobilisation of such vast resources is beyond the ability of any single segment of the Imperium.

Is it an exaggeration? Each of the segmentae are very vast, it wouldn't be too hard for them to mobilise resources for ONE chapter, even if they had to borrow resources from other segmentae. Of course, each marine is super duper, but it's only a thousand men, it's such a small number.

1000 Marines, sure.

Then all of their weapons and armor. And then all of their vehicles. And then an entire Space Fleet. And a massive retinue of servitors and serfs trained to support them.

jhe90 wrote:
You need a lot more than just marines.
Ships, planet, fortress, land raiders, thunder hawks, power armour.

Add the fact new kit is hard to produce, and other chapters will have there own demands so new kit is excess upon that.

Ships are very expensive to build, battle barges are battleahip levels of cost. Strike cruisers are more advanced than regular navy.

The kit alone would take years to to compile and gather.

for a homeworld they just need some feral world with constant tribal warfare. it's true that ships are costly, but for a 1,000 man crew it's comparatively little. something well within the limits of a single segmentum, unless that segmentum is in severe deficit or something

When a new chapter is founded its not founded at full strength.

What happens is the Mechanicus on Mars grows a new batch of geneseed based on one of the first founding chapters. They grow enough to give the chapter a head start. This takes a while to do.

Meanwhile, the basic starting gear for the chapter is made. A small fleet, and stores of weapons, vehicles, and armor.

Then some marines from an existing chapter that is from the same genetic line are chosen to be the starting members of the new chapter. There might be a couple dozen of these marines.

They're then given all the geneseed and equipment. And boom, you got a new chapter. It will take a few decades before they're full strength of course.

There's really no fluff one way or the other that says if a new Chapter is deployed at full strength or not. It's all fan speculation.

We just know the AdMech preps 1000 sets of geneseed.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
for a homeworld they just need some feral world with constant tribal warfare. it's true that ships are costly, but for a 1,000 man crew it's comparatively little. something well within the limits of a single segmentum, unless that segmentum is in severe deficit or something

I'm faily sure the quote didn't mean Segmentum. It said "segment of the Imperium" after talking about having to mobilize countless divisions in the bureaucracy. The sentence says no department of the government can do it alone.

I imagine getting the equipment isn't THAT hard the trick'll be getting eneugh gene seed. which is pretty much under lock and key. I suspect things are orginized into foundings because opening the vaults to make a new chapter is considered a big eneugh deal that they do it in groups.

Thing is that the only people with access to gene seed are the high lords, the adeptus Mechanicus, and well.. the space Marines.

And there ARE recorded instances of both the mechanius and space Marines trying to form their own chapters. (the steel confessors in the case of the AdMech) in all the recorded cases they've been caught but this shouldn't be a suprise. if they got away with it it'd be kind of a secrect

There are numerous considerations, some of which are outlined in Deathwatch: Rites of Battle. For instance, 'centuries of planning'; entire Forge Worlds turned over to the production of all the necessary weapons, ammunition, armour, vehicles and war ships; identification of suitable home worlds perhaps even with environmental engineering, with the natives, if deemed suitable as a recruitment pool, studied and tested for 'generations'; the fortress monastery built by the Imperium's most accomplished military architects; generations of Imperial servants toiling in preparation and finally, 'it is likely to be at least a century' before any new Chapters are ready to take to the field.

Index Astartes also tells us that it takes 55 years just to produce all of the gene-seed via Test-Slaves so it would seem that most of a century passes before the Mechanicus are ready to begin implanting recruits with the freshly grown gene-seed.

Maximus Bitch wrote:


for a homeworld they just need some feral world with constant tribal warfare.

You have to test them for genetic and cultural purity, too. Bad things happen when a feral world is selected that's dangerously borderline heretic (like the Sons of Malice or Blood Gorgans!)