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As the title says. What happened to all of the supply and production facilities established for the 30K world by the time of 40K? In order to hunt for and then support the Primarchs, the Emperor exploded out of Terra to conquer a vast portion of the Universe, made a deal with the Mechanicus, and somehow in doing so acquired sufficient production apparatus and personnel in order to create and kit out twenty Space Marine Legions and countless Guard regiments. Yet by 40K, the Imperium has trouble sourcing sufficient equipment and personnel to fight off the various threats encroaching on their borders.

This leads to two conclusions, either what the Imperium fights now is on a greater magnitude than any of the Great Crusade wars, or somehow, the Imperium is producing less men and material.

The evidence would appear to indicate the latter as things stand, given that there are a mere million Marines in existence, a number approximately half of what existed within the Legions during the Great Crusade. So the question remains, what happened to make it so that the Imperium cannot simply ramp up Marine production to fight off the various alien threats?

The research and development is already complete for Mk 2+ Space Marine armour, the STC production templates for mass production of the more common vehicles is in use, and the population remains as vast as ever for recruiting purposes. The Primarchs cannot be replicated and more complicated components take longer (Terminator armour for example), but the raw materials for the basic Space Marine are neither rare nor unknown.

The only thing I can think of is that the tech for creating raw geneseed independent of other geneseed must somehow have been lost/damaged, as clearly the Primarchs themselves were not crucial to the process (the Emperor had the Legions engaged in multiple wars before the Primarchs were located). But even so, sufficient stocks remain for there to still be a million marines, and each chapter returns a tithe to earth. Numerically speaking, there should still be a more than sufficient supply to at least double their numbers.

So what's gone wrong?

There are two questions here:

1) What happened to Imperial production after the Heresy?

2) Why does the Imperium not want a larger force of Space Marines hanging about?

For #1 - I always saw the decline in technological sophistication as a consequence of the ideology of the Imperial Church. I pictured every production line in the Imperium as being incredibly inefficient, where most of the work being done is blessings from techpriests and enginseers as opposed to making things.

Production would likely be also be very encapsulated. where one planet may be producing the nuts, while another is producing the bolts, and yet another is screwing them together for use in assembling the chassis of a Rhino, before sending them to another to attach the chassis to a frame.

You can't do anything really sophisticated under these conditions, at least not in large quantities.

For #2 - The reason the Imperium does not want a lot of Space Marines is because having a bunch of genetically modified super soldiers hanging around is a threat to Galactic power structures. As you pointed out, the number of Space Marines in existence at the time of the Heresy was around double what it is in the present day (40k.) That number almost overthrew the Imperium altogether.

When they broke up the Space Marine chapters after the Heresy, it was really to make sure no single Legion would be powerful enough to do something like that again. While it's imperfect, look at what 1 million chapters has been able to do in the 10k years since. They are not crushing all other races, but they have certainly been effective in keeping the Imperium from falling apart.

 techsoldaten wrote:

For #2 - The reason the Imperium does not want a lot of Space Marines is because having a bunch of genetically modified super soldiers hanging around is a threat to Galactic power structures.

Source please, because considering they have a million of them still hanging around, claiming that they don't want a lot of them about the place in case they get ideas appears somewhat redundant.

As you noted, splitting them up into Chapters was sufficient with regards to breaking the chain of command and eliminating the threat of a future Heresy. There's no reason two million couldn't be retained under the same command structure, and it would be no larger a threat than the million currently in existence.

After all, any circumstance that could unify two million could easily unify one million, and a million space marines would still be sufficient overthrow the Imperium as it stands.

In the Heresy, Mars gets almost completely destroyed as a little more than half of the Ad Mech sides with Horus. After the battle of terra, the Dark Mech retreat with Horus from Sol but if you think about it most of the Dark Mech isnt in the Sol system. There are forge worlds all over the imperium, and if over half of the Ad Mech fell to chaos, you would expect most of those forge worlds to either completely fall to Chaos or also erupt in civil war. So perhaps 1/3 of them fall to chaos, 1/3 stay loyal, 1/3 are destroyed in some degree by civil war. During the great scouring, loyalists go search and destroy throughout the galaxy on anything with a taint of traitor or chaos. So the 1/3 that fell to chaos are also likely destroyed.

So the IoM has 1/3 of the manufacturing capacity it had before the scouring. Perhaps less.

Ketara wrote:As the title says. What happened to all of the supply and production facilities established for the 30K world by the time of 40K? In order to hunt for and then support the Primarchs, the Emperor exploded out of Terra to conquer a vast portion of the Universe, made a deal with the Mechanicus, and somehow in doing so acquired sufficient production apparatus and personnel in order to create and kit out twenty Space Marine Legions and countless Guard regiments.

Ketara wrote:
Yet by 40K, the Imperium has trouble sourcing sufficient equipment and personnel to fight off the various threats encroaching on their borders.

Source?

Ketara wrote:
This leads to two conclusions, either what the Imperium fights now is on a greater magnitude than any of the Great Crusade wars, or somehow, the Imperium is producing less men and material.

The evidence would appear to indicate the latter as things stand, given that there are a mere million Marines in existence, a number approximately half of what existed within the Legions during the Great Crusade. So the question remains, what happened to make it so that the Imperium cannot simply ramp up Marine production to fight off the various alien threats?

The research and development is already complete for Mk 2+ Space Marine armour, the STC production templates for mass production of the more common vehicles is in use, and the population remains as vast as ever for recruiting purposes. The Primarchs cannot be replicated and more complicated components take longer (Terminator armour for example), but the raw materials for the basic Space Marine are neither rare nor unknown.

The only thing I can think of is that the tech for creating raw geneseed independent of other geneseed must somehow have been lost/damaged, as clearly the Primarchs themselves were not crucial to the process (the Emperor had the Legions engaged in multiple wars before the Primarchs were located). But even so, sufficient stocks remain for there to still be a million marines, and each chapter returns a tithe to earth. Numerically speaking, there should still be a more than sufficient supply to at least double their numbers.

So what's gone wrong?

GW sense of scale.

Exergy wrote:In the Heresy, Mars gets almost completely destroyed as a little more than half of the Ad Mech sides with Horus. After the battle of terra, the Dark Mech retreat with Horus from Sol but if you think about it most of the Dark Mech isnt in the Sol system. There are forge worlds all over the imperium, and if over half of the Ad Mech fell to chaos, you would expect most of those forge worlds to either completely fall to Chaos or also erupt in civil war. So perhaps 1/3 of them fall to chaos, 1/3 stay loyal, 1/3 are destroyed in some degree by civil war. During the great scouring, loyalists go search and destroy throughout the galaxy on anything with a taint of traitor or chaos. So the 1/3 that fell to chaos are also likely destroyed.

So the IoM has 1/3 of the manufacturing capacity it had before the scouring. Perhaps less.

Seems a good guess.

The toll the Horus Heresy took on the Imperium cannot be understated - the war itself, the loss of half the Mechanicum and their respective production facilities, the loss of manpower in normal humans, the loss of huge amounts of starships, entire planets worth of materials, constant raids by aliens and Chaos, the increasingly secular nature of the Imperium in 40k...these things all add up and contribute.

TLDR; The Imperium ain't what it used to be.

GW writers happened.

 Ketara wrote:
and a million space marines would still be sufficient overthrow the Imperium as it stands.

Or not. Marines aren't(anymore in 40k) exactly independent force capable of doing everything. Their space ships are specialized vessels not really suited mass fleet engagements and on ground war they are (very effective) specializers. Not good for fighting alone against entire Imperium. After HH Imperium did all it could to ensure no one faction could overcome. Marines would need more than just themselves to overthrow imperium.

 Ketara wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

For #2 - The reason the Imperium does not want a lot of Space Marines is because having a bunch of genetically modified super soldiers hanging around is a threat to Galactic power structures.

Source please, because considering they have a million of them still hanging around, claiming that they don't want a lot of them about the place in case they get ideas appears somewhat redundant.

The fact that marine foundings are not a continuous thing the way Guard regiments are made. Instead they are only approved whenever there is a need for more marines (Or someone in the AdMech or Inquisition gets some crazy new idea).

tneva82 wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
and a million space marines would still be sufficient overthrow the Imperium as it stands.

Or not. Marines aren't(anymore in 40k) exactly independent force capable of doing everything. Their space ships are specialized vessels not really suited mass fleet engagements and on ground war they are (very effective) specializers. Not good for fighting alone against entire Imperium. After HH Imperium did all it could to ensure no one faction could overcome. Marines would need more than just themselves to overthrow imperium.

jareddm wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

For #2 - The reason the Imperium does not want a lot of Space Marines is because having a bunch of genetically modified super soldiers hanging around is a threat to Galactic power structures.

Source please, because considering they have a million of them still hanging around, claiming that they don't want a lot of them about the place in case they get ideas appears somewhat redundant.

The fact that marine foundings are not a continuous thing the way Guard regiments are made. Instead they are only approved whenever there is a need for more marines (Or someone in the AdMech or Inquisition gets some crazy new idea).

Precisely the point. If a million marines in their current force structure could not threaten the Imperium, neither could two million. As such, being scared of having a multiplicity of Marines about the place simply cannot be the reason for the Imperium to not be spamming out Marines as fast as they can lay their hands on quality recruits, in the same way the Emperor did when he controlled less territory than the Imperium. It has to be something else, something more resource based. But what is it?

 1hadhq wrote:

Ketara wrote:
Yet by 40K, the Imperium has trouble sourcing sufficient equipment and personnel to fight off the various threats encroaching on their borders.

Source?

....errrr, the existence of the Tau?

 Ketara wrote:
This leads to two conclusions, either what the Imperium fights now is on a greater magnitude than any of the Great Crusade wars, or somehow, the Imperium is producing less men and material.

[citation needed]
Basically, the Imperium is fighting on waaaay more fronts than during the Heresy. Let's start with the Tau, Tyranids, and Necrons. The Tau literally didn't exist during the Heresy but are now the fourth largest galactic power, the Tyranids are a Galaxy-wide extinction-level event, and the Necrons are an enemy capable of standing toe-to-toe with the Eldar Empire and Orks combined that has just now started waking up after being dormant for the entirety of human history.
That's three new significant threats right there.
Then there's the Eldar; they basically weren't on the playing field during the Heresy. Having just accidentally created their own worst nightmare while simultaneously destroying their own interstellar empire along with 90% of their population, they weren't even properly settled into their various Paths and Aspects yet, let alone in a position to fight much of anyone. They have since rallied and are now a credible galactic scale threat once more.
And speaking of the Eldar Empire: all the threats they were helpfully keeping bottled up are now, having recovered from the shock removal of their overlords, in a position to raid and threaten human worlds all over the Galaxy.
And then, of course, there's the biggest issue of all: chaos. Not only is the primordial annihilator once again fully engaged and active in galactic politics again, having gone quiescent during much of the reign of the Eldar for some reason, it has this handy supply of unlimited manpower and ultra-elite hardened combat troops right next door. And they keep just offering to help, exchanging their souls for beads and trinkets all the while. Plus this is another faction that basically didn't exist during the Great Crusade.


So, yeah, the Imperium is massively more bogged down with enemies than during the Great Crusade; be they returning foes, entirely new ones, or even ones of their own making.

In the FFG RPG books they state that much of the technological stagnation in the imperium is a side effect of the Mechanicum leadership choosing Horus over the Emperor.

When Horus was defeated, the mechanicum had to submit to significant oversight and censorship by the Inquisition, and this caused additional internal security measures to be taken by the Arch Fabricator as well.

Those two factors combined caused the wider Mechanicum to slip into severe self censorship, such that much knowledge was restricted, discarded, and proscribed, and any who dared question the status quo were eliminated.

Similar to questioning global warming today, any magos questioning the official tenants of the Mechanicum is branded a heretek and eliminated. Naturally this prevents any research that may infringe, and widely deters any innovation or improvement.

Combine that with 10k years of war and damage to the imperium, and the most complicated and advanced pieces of infrastructure are clearly going to be eroded over time and replaced with cheaper, lower tech equivalents.

Likewise, the space marines were limited in size by the Imperium to limit their ability to revolt against the Imperium. The Legions were of such huge sizes they could topple empires easily, as seen in the Heresy. The imperium is designed such that no one leader has that level of direct control over enough of the military to ever repeat that event again.

regarding space marines I suspect we're going to discover that the 2nd founding was a comprimise Gulliman arrived at with the high lords, many of whom demanded an end to the Astartes.

The Horus Heresy crippled/destroyed many Imperial worlds taking with it much of Big E's technological prowess. Then in the 10000 years since many STC's were lost on forge worlds due to any of the following factors:

Warp Storms destroyed the world and turned it into a Daemon pool party
Orks showed up and killed every puny humie
Tyranids showed up and nommed everyone
Necrons woke up/ showed up and disintegrated the kids on their lawn
Dark Eldar showed up and abducted/killed/raped everyone
Eldar showed up and eradicated the Mon'Keigh vermin
Chaos marines showed up and killed/maimed/burned everything
The Tau showed up and either "peacefully" annexed the planet or blasted anyone who resisted
Exterminatus by a trigger-happy Inquisitor
A war caused much to be lost
The planet's life ended naturally and blew up (most unlikely)
The planet was blown up by the Imperium before the Tyranids could turn it into a buffet

As you can see, the worlds of the Imperium haven't had a very good 10000 years.

I get the feeling the problem might be cultural rather then physical. For all of it's achievements the great crusade was ultimately a failure. I believe that without a unifying leader the Imperium will not attempt a second massa production of Astartes, espescially after how the last project turned out.

Besides, the production in the Imperium is insanely high. Just because it's not reflected in the astartes, who's largely self sustained btw, doesn't mean it's not active. The Imperium has survived intact for 10.000years with renegade astartes added to it's list of adversaries and the Imperial Guard/navy/pdf has so far proved sufficient to the task. Manpower is often said to be the cheapest reasource in the Imperium. I believe the Imperium would need a "re-birth" or new set of policies to warrant new Space marine legions.

Besides, new chapters are being made for special situations. Most commonly created to guard specific areas but sometimes made to replace a fallen chapter. It's heavily ritualist though and not effecient at all, it probably takes a huge ammount of time and investment to make an astartes chapter. Why do that when you can send a few million guardsmen to combat a threat? Worlds they conquer will provide more guardsmen and tithes, which is not the case with worlds given to Space marines.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
The toll the Horus Heresy took on the Imperium cannot be understated - the war itself, the loss of half the Mechanicum and their respective production facilities, the loss of manpower in normal humans, the loss of huge amounts of starships, entire planets worth of materials, constant raids by aliens and Chaos, the increasingly secular nature of the Imperium in 40k...these things all add up and contribute.

TLDR; The Imperium ain't what it used to be.

This.


And toss in the War of the Beast, Age of Apostasy/Reign of Blood, The Beheading, and the chaos of the Nova Terra Interregnum (the major upheavals since the Heresy) along with what you posted above, one can see why things are deep in the crapper by the end of the 41st Millennium.

 Exergy wrote:
In the Heresy, Mars gets almost completely destroyed as a little more than half of the Ad Mech sides with Horus. After the battle of terra, the Dark Mech retreat with Horus from Sol but if you think about it most of the Dark Mech isnt in the Sol system. There are forge worlds all over the imperium, and if over half of the Ad Mech fell to chaos, you would expect most of those forge worlds to either completely fall to Chaos or also erupt in civil war. So perhaps 1/3 of them fall to chaos, 1/3 stay loyal, 1/3 are destroyed in some degree by civil war. During the great scouring, loyalists go search and destroy throughout the galaxy on anything with a taint of traitor or chaos. So the 1/3 that fell to chaos are also likely destroyed.

So the IoM has 1/3 of the manufacturing capacity it had before the scouring. Perhaps less.

This. The IoM immediately lost half the Mechanicum at the onset of the Hersey, including half of Mars. Then stuff started blowing up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ketara wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
and a million space marines would still be sufficient overthrow the Imperium as it stands.

Or not. Marines aren't(anymore in 40k) exactly independent force capable of doing everything. Their space ships are specialized vessels not really suited mass fleet engagements and on ground war they are (very effective) specializers. Not good for fighting alone against entire Imperium. After HH Imperium did all it could to ensure no one faction could overcome. Marines would need more than just themselves to overthrow imperium.

jareddm wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

For #2 - The reason the Imperium does not want a lot of Space Marines is because having a bunch of genetically modified super soldiers hanging around is a threat to Galactic power structures.

Source please, because considering they have a million of them still hanging around, claiming that they don't want a lot of them about the place in case they get ideas appears somewhat redundant.

The fact that marine foundings are not a continuous thing the way Guard regiments are made. Instead they are only approved whenever there is a need for more marines (Or someone in the AdMech or Inquisition gets some crazy new idea).

Precisely the point. If a million marines in their current force structure could not threaten the Imperium, neither could two million. As such, being scared of having a multiplicity of Marines about the place simply cannot be the reason for the Imperium to not be spamming out Marines as fast as they can lay their hands on quality recruits, in the same way the Emperor did when he controlled less territory than the Imperium. It has to be something else, something more resource based. But what is it?

No, it's what Jareddm said. After the heresy it just wasn't politically feasible to continue having Legions and so they where broken up because no one felt safe with someone commanding the power of a Space Marine Legion. The inquisition keeps keeps individual chapters from exceeding the limit but in reality they usually don't even need to do that as it was a decree from Roboute Guilliman himself which 60% of chapters call their Primarch. For them its just following orders.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:

No, it's what Jareddm said. After the heresy it just wasn't politically feasible to continue having Legions and so they where broken up because no one felt safe with someone commanding the power of a Space Marine Legion. The inquisition keeps keeps individual chapters from exceeding the limit but in reality they usually don't even need to do that as it was a decree from Roboute Guilliman himself which 60% of chapters call their Primarch. For them its just following orders.

If you're going to quote me and disagree generally, it might move the conversation along faster if you actually said something to contradict/disprove what I said. Because nothing of your comment actually addresses the counter-point I made. Namely, that two million marines in a chapter-style force organisation is no more or less of a threat to the Imperium than a million marines organised the same way. Therefore it would be illogical to refuse to double the numbers of Astartes based on fear of another Heresy, because they've already got a million of the buggers hanging about. Any circumstance that could unify two million Astartes into toppling the Imperium could equally easily unify a million into doing so, or three million, or five hundred thousand.

Ergo, fear of having too many marines can't really be the reason for not increasing production.

 Exergy wrote:
In the Heresy, Mars gets almost completely destroyed as a little more than half of the Ad Mech sides with Horus. After the battle of terra, the Dark Mech retreat with Horus from Sol but if you think about it most of the Dark Mech isnt in the Sol system. There are forge worlds all over the imperium, and if over half of the Ad Mech fell to chaos, you would expect most of those forge worlds to either completely fall to Chaos or also erupt in civil war. So perhaps 1/3 of them fall to chaos, 1/3 stay loyal, 1/3 are destroyed in some degree by civil war. During the great scouring, loyalists go search and destroy throughout the galaxy on anything with a taint of traitor or chaos. So the 1/3 that fell to chaos are also likely destroyed.

So the IoM has 1/3 of the manufacturing capacity it had before the scouring. Perhaps less.

Sure, if you assume that in ten thousand years, not a single factory has been built, Forgeworld created, or STC recovered. But that's clearly not going to be the case. The Emperor managed to spread out from the Sol system creating the manufacturing infrastructure as he went, he didn't start off with twenty full legions, uncountable regular units, and so forth, he created it (well, caused it to be created) and in under a thousand years. The Imperium's had a lot longer.

 Nerak wrote:
I get the feeling the problem might be cultural rather then physical. For all of it's achievements the great crusade was ultimately a failure. I believe that without a unifying leader the Imperium will not attempt a second massa production of Astartes, espescially after how the last project turned out.

Besides, the production in the Imperium is insanely high. Just because it's not reflected in the astartes, who's largely self sustained btw, doesn't mean it's not active. The Imperium has survived intact for 10.000years with renegade astartes added to it's list of adversaries and the Imperial Guard/navy/pdf has so far proved sufficient to the task. Manpower is often said to be the cheapest reasource in the Imperium. I believe the Imperium would need a "re-birth" or new set of policies to warrant new Space marine legions.

Besides, new chapters are being made for special situations. Most commonly created to guard specific areas but sometimes made to replace a fallen chapter. It's heavily ritualist though and not effecient at all, it probably takes a huge ammount of time and investment to make an astartes chapter. Why do that when you can send a few million guardsmen to combat a threat? Worlds they conquer will provide more guardsmen and tithes, which is not the case with worlds given to Space marines.

This is an interesting perspective. So you think that rather than the manufacturing capacity not being available to create another million Astartes, they simply find it more efficient to expend those resources on Guardsmen instead?

 Mr_Rose wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
This leads to two conclusions, either what the Imperium fights now is on a greater magnitude than any of the Great Crusade wars, or somehow, the Imperium is producing less men and material.

[citation needed]
Basically, the Imperium is fighting on waaaay more fronts than during the Heresy. Let's start with the Tau, Tyranids, and Necrons. The Tau literally didn't exist during the Heresy but are now the fourth largest galactic power, the Tyranids are a Galaxy-wide extinction-level event, and the Necrons are an enemy capable of standing toe-to-toe with the Eldar Empire and Orks combined that has just now started waking up after being dormant for the entirety of human history.
That's three new significant threats right there.
Then there's the Eldar; they basically weren't on the playing field during the Heresy. Having just accidentally created their own worst nightmare while simultaneously destroying their own interstellar empire along with 90% of their population, they weren't even properly settled into their various Paths and Aspects yet, let alone in a position to fight much of anyone. They have since rallied and are now a credible galactic scale threat once more.
And speaking of the Eldar Empire: all the threats they were helpfully keeping bottled up are now, having recovered from the shock removal of their overlords, in a position to raid and threaten human worlds all over the Galaxy.
And then, of course, there's the biggest issue of all: chaos. Not only is the primordial annihilator once again fully engaged and active in galactic politics again, having gone quiescent during much of the reign of the Eldar for some reason, it has this handy supply of unlimited manpower and ultra-elite hardened combat troops right next door. And they keep just offering to help, exchanging their souls for beads and trinkets all the while. Plus this is another faction that basically didn't exist during the Great Crusade.


So, yeah, the Imperium is massively more bogged down with enemies than during the Great Crusade; be they returning foes, entirely new ones, or even ones of their own making.

This could be a potential explanation, but can't really be proved or disproved either way. We simply don't know what the yearly casualty rates, and warzone numbers are comparatively between 40K and the Great Crusade.

Durandal wrote:
In the FFG RPG books they state that much of the technological stagnation in the imperium is a side effect of the Mechanicum leadership choosing Horus over the Emperor.

When Horus was defeated, the mechanicum had to submit to significant oversight and censorship by the Inquisition, and this caused additional internal security measures to be taken by the Arch Fabricator as well.

Those two factors combined caused the wider Mechanicum to slip into severe self censorship, such that much knowledge was restricted, discarded, and proscribed, and any who dared question the status quo were eliminated.

Similar to questioning global warming today, any magos questioning the official tenants of the Mechanicum is branded a heretek and eliminated. Naturally this prevents any research that may infringe, and widely deters any innovation or improvement.

Combine that with 10k years of war and damage to the imperium, and the most complicated and advanced pieces of infrastructure are clearly going to be eroded over time and replaced with cheaper, lower tech equivalents.

Thisis a good possible answer, that it's not that the Imperium doesn't necessarily have the ability to ramp up production. It's more that warfare over ten thousand years generally has reduced available production plant for Marine equipment and training to less than what was around in the Great Crusade, whilst cultural stagnation/suppression has ensured that no additional plant is created. It certainly sounds the most likely.

 Ketara wrote:

 Exergy wrote:
In the Heresy, Mars gets almost completely destroyed as a little more than half of the Ad Mech sides with Horus. After the battle of terra, the Dark Mech retreat with Horus from Sol but if you think about it most of the Dark Mech isnt in the Sol system. There are forge worlds all over the imperium, and if over half of the Ad Mech fell to chaos, you would expect most of those forge worlds to either completely fall to Chaos or also erupt in civil war. So perhaps 1/3 of them fall to chaos, 1/3 stay loyal, 1/3 are destroyed in some degree by civil war. During the great scouring, loyalists go search and destroy throughout the galaxy on anything with a taint of traitor or chaos. So the 1/3 that fell to chaos are also likely destroyed.

So the IoM has 1/3 of the manufacturing capacity it had before the scouring. Perhaps less.

Sure, if you assume that in ten thousand years, not a single factory has been built, Forgeworld created, or STC recovered. But that's clearly not going to be the case. The Emperor managed to spread out from the Sol system creating the manufacturing infrastructure as he went, he didn't start off with twenty full legions, uncountable regular units, and so forth, he created it (well, caused it to be created) and in under a thousand years. The Imperium's had a lot longer.

With Mars nearly destroyed who would be doing the rebuilding?
With the lower tech level, factories that were built were less productive.
STCs recovered still have not been enough to bring the tech level back up to the 30k standard.

The Emperor was the Emperor, a living god, who could do all sorts of stuff. He no longer walks among the living, so he cant help rebuild. When he did build all the gak though, the IoM had no maintenance costs. Just build and go forth and conquer. Start with one legion, go forth and conquer a few worlds. No supply lines, no rebuilding junk that has worn out, just pure creation. And he had the entire Mechanicum to help him do it.

I havent read of any forgeworlds being created in recent memory, only a few being rebuilt from ruin. Just like there havent been any battleship class vessles built(or not many). The tech to produce them is not there, the production facilities are gone, it is easier to rebuild a scavenged hulk.

But even if some new production is coming online every century. There are still the traitor legions coming out and raiding. The eldar are back, more assertive. Necrons are waking up. 'nid fleets are arriving. Orks are a greater threat. During the great crusade, there were no traitor legions, Eldar were stunned trying to figure out what happened and the Orks were fighting among themselves. Now virtuallty everything in the galaxy ends up battling the IoM and hurting the IoM.

From what I understand there is no factory making space marine equipment, everything from bolters ammo to spacecraft is handbuilt by AdMech personnel. The guard are the ones who get the factory surplus.

 mondo80 wrote:
From what I understand there is no factory making space marine equipment, everything from bolters ammo to spacecraft is handbuilt by AdMech personnel. The guard are the ones who get the factory surplus.

This. Space Marine equipment is considered the peak of technology, and as such is a closely guarded secret, and therefor only taught to an apprentice when it is deemed that they have learnt enough of the mysteries. There is also an element of mysticism regarding power armour that only the emperors children (space marines) are worthy of wearing power armour and using the holy boltgun, this has been expanded to 'chosen of the emperor' (Sisters of Battle, Officers of the Imperial Guard) over time. Hell if my hive world was taught how to mass produce Power Armour and Bolters, there would be literally thousands of regiments with them.

 Ketara wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:

No, it's what Jareddm said. After the heresy it just wasn't politically feasible to continue having Legions and so they where broken up because no one felt safe with someone commanding the power of a Space Marine Legion. The inquisition keeps keeps individual chapters from exceeding the limit but in reality they usually don't even need to do that as it was a decree from Roboute Guilliman himself which 60% of chapters call their Primarch. For them its just following orders.

If you're going to quote me and disagree generally, it might move the conversation along faster if you actually said something to contradict/disprove what I said. Because nothing of your comment actually addresses the counter-point I made. Namely, that two million marines in a chapter-style force organisation is no more or less of a threat to the Imperium than a million marines organised the same way. Therefore it would be illogical to refuse to double the numbers of Astartes based on fear of another Heresy, because they've already got a million of the buggers hanging about. Any circumstance that could unify two million Astartes into toppling the Imperium could equally easily unify a million into doing so, or three million, or five hundred thousand.

Actually I'm not disagreeing with you it's the Imperium that is. Sounds logical to me to double the amount Marines active but The Imperium doesn't usually do what's logical, that's my point. They are were they are because of power struggles, politics, bureaucracy and historical legacies.

In my opinion moving to the chapter system outlined in Codex Astartes was a mistake.


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 Ketara wrote:
quote=Exergy 712326 9100815 4f51cf2b15930c57fb609a08b362bdb2.jpg]In the Heresy, Mars gets almost completely destroyed as a little more than half of the Ad Mech sides with Horus. After the battle of terra, the Dark Mech retreat with Horus from Sol but if you think about it most of the Dark Mech isnt in the Sol system. There are forge worlds all over the imperium, and if over half of the Ad Mech fell to chaos, you would expect most of those forge worlds to either completely fall to Chaos or also erupt in civil war. So perhaps 1/3 of them fall to chaos, 1/3 stay loyal, 1/3 are destroyed in some degree by civil war. During the great scouring, loyalists go search and destroy throughout the galaxy on anything with a taint of traitor or chaos. So the 1/3 that fell to chaos are also likely destroyed.

So the IoM has 1/3 of the manufacturing capacity it had before the scouring. Perhaps less.

Sure, if you assume that in ten thousand years, not a single factory has been built, Forgeworld created, or STC recovered. But that's clearly not going to be the case. The Emperor managed to spread out from the Sol system creating the manufacturing infrastructure as he went, he didn't start off with twenty full legions, uncountable regular units, and so forth, he created it (well, caused it to be created) and in under a thousand years. The Imperium's had a lot longer.

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 Ketara wrote:
As the title says. What happened to all of the supply and production facilities established for the 30K world by the time of 40K? ...So what's gone wrong?

Basically, the imperium rises to power in the aftermath of 'The Fall'. The Fall was when the previous galactic superpower collapsed. This collapse left a power vacuum which allowed previously suppressed powers to rise. One of these powers was The Emperor. A long-lived super human, who united the warring barbarians of Earth and secured the alliance of Mars, a high tech world.

Together they were able to create and supply armies which could spread across the galaxy under his name, quashing other powers before they were really able to gain momentum and ostensibly uniting mankind.

One of these other powers that had been incubating during the time of the Eldar was the Chaos Gods. They made a gambit where by manipulating a few key figures they were able to once again become galactic powerhouses.

Under their influence, the nascent imperium fell into civil war. The Imperium suffered a brain-drain as many of the best and brightest defected. The bitterest fighting was at the heart of the empire; Mars and Terra. Entire planets were wasted, and these twin crown jewels of the imperium were no exception. Forbidden technologies scoured the surface of Mars, corrupting the libraries and production facilities (as on many other worlds). On Terra the uniting figure and architect of the Imperium was deposed, becoming little more than a figurehead. Internal political problems meant the Imperium had to significantly weaken itself in order to prevent self destruction.

After the initial flashpoint was resolved the war went ignored. The leaders of the Imperium believed the galaxy was theirs and bickering amongst themselves in a power-grab.This negligence allowed the civil war to continue, over 10 thousand years of insurrection, propaganda and defection sapping the strength of the Imperium. New factions were allowed to gain a foothold unchecked. New wars tore through the Imperium again, planets were razed. Technology and resources of those planets either lost or working against the imperium in enemy hands.

The imperium went from a technological production powerhouse, gaining production facilities and power in exchange for expending resources on war (Great Crusade) with a good return on investment. The Imperium became a weakened coalition with severe political, logistical and production problems; it was now expending resources on losing facilities and power (40k). This was exacerbated by the fact that it's key resources (i.e. Mars and the Forge Worlds) were now far weaker than they had been before the Imperium came along and it's enemies were all growing in power.

Schism of Mars happened.

Also, this:

Martel732 wrote:
GW writers happened.

 Exergy wrote:

With Mars nearly destroyed who would be doing the rebuilding?

The survivors? Humans tend to reproduce.

With the lower tech level, factories that were built were less productive.
STCs recovered still have not been enough to bring the tech level back up to the 30k standard.

My query was about existing technology which is already mass produced, not the long lost tech of yesteryore.

The Emperor was the Emperor, a living god, who could do all sorts of stuff. He no longer walks among the living, so he cant help rebuild.

err....he didn't just wave his hand and make a million suits of power armour appear.

When he did build all the gak though, the IoM had no maintenance costs. Just build and go forth and conquer. Start with one legion, go forth and conquer a few worlds. No supply lines, no rebuilding junk that has worn out, just pure creation.

....with all due respect, you clearly seem to have an exceedingly different view on logistics and 40k history to me, so it's probably best to leave our exchange there.

 mondo80 wrote:
From what I understand there is no factory making space marine equipment, everything from bolters ammo to spacecraft is handbuilt by AdMech personnel. The guard are the ones who get the factory surplus.

A factory system is just system that employs mass production, not necessarily a system of mass production via mass production machinery. If I have a thousand workshops situated next to each other with Admech personnel fashioning power armour helmets, I have a factory.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Actually I'm not disagreeing with you it's the Imperium that is. Sounds logical to me to double the amount Marines active but The Imperium doesn't usually do what's logical, that's my point. They are were they are because of power struggles, politics, bureaucracy and historical legacies.

So your viewpoint is that the Imperium would like a million more marines, but doesn't because....reasons?

I'll be honest, I'm trying to discern if there's something more specific than that.

No, The Emperor basically did start out with all of that. He started with 20 Legions and The Martian Factory Empire already existed out there. After allying with Mars he simply repatriated every Forge World he came across on behalf of Mars.
Forge Worlds are still created but like every other type of world in the IoM it seems like for every one they gain they lose one somewhere else.

He started out with Thunder Warriors, actually. Unification of Earth, etc. The Legions came later. In the middle must come a lot of conquering and industrial expansion. The question therefore being what stops the Imperium from duplicating it.

nareik wrote:
The imperium went from a technological production powerhouse, gaining production facilities and power in exchange for expending resources on war (Great Crusade) with a good return on investment. The Imperium became a weakened coalition with severe political, logistical and production problems; it was now expending resources on losing facilities and power (40k). This was exacerbated by the fact that it's key resources (i.e. Mars and the Forge Worlds) were now far weaker than they had been before the Imperium came along and it's enemies were all growing in power.

So to extract your viewpoint from the above, you personally reckon it's down to maladministration?

 Ketara wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

For #2 - The reason the Imperium does not want a lot of Space Marines is because having a bunch of genetically modified super soldiers hanging around is a threat to Galactic power structures.

Source please, because considering they have a million of them still hanging around, claiming that they don't want a lot of them about the place in case they get ideas appears somewhat redundant.

As you noted, splitting them up into Chapters was sufficient with regards to breaking the chain of command and eliminating the threat of a future Heresy. There's no reason two million couldn't be retained under the same command structure, and it would be no larger a threat than the million currently in existence.

After all, any circumstance that could unify two million could easily unify one million, and a million space marines would still be sufficient overthrow the Imperium as it stands.

Source: THE HORUS HERESY!! lol

The imperium has the capability to make much much more than 1 million marines, if they wanted they could production line it, even with the failure rate they could easily pump out millions of millions of marines, got to remember the guys in charge of the imperium don't really trust marines 100% even they do respect some of them.

The Imperium's production facilities were almost all controlled by the Mechanicum, most of which either sided with Horus or was destroyed in the subsequent Mechanicum civil war. Apart from facilities, an immense amount of knowledge was also lost. This meant that destroyed facilities could not easily be replaced.
And after the Heresy, the Imperium has almost constantly been besieged by Chaos and Xenos, leading to the destruction of many more facilities. Likely, due to the constant conflict assets are being lost faster than they can be replaced, if they can still be replaced at all.

I think this subject is explored in both Mechanicum and Fallen Angels. In Mechanicum the civil war within the Mechanicum starts with a malicious scrap code that spreads through the forges on Mars, this not only corrupts a lot of the adepts and fabricators, but also the data held in those forges.

The Horus aligned admech then set about destroying any opponents, and their production facilities.

In Fallen Angels, it is shown that the split has also occurred on other forgeworlds like Diamat.

In both books the facilities take severe damage, it's not unreasonable to suggest that a lot if knowledge was lost during these kind of catastrophes.

But the fact that the admech split and so many of them turned to chaos would not have been the end if it after the HH. I'm sure many checks and balances were put in place to ensure they couldn't cause problems again. Decentralising production etc.

As for the Space Marines, we know that a lot of their geneseed is unstable, making more Space Marines requires large amounts of stable geneseed. The IoM could make unlimited amounts of Marines were they willing to tinker with the geneseed, but its venerated as holy, something passed down to mankind by the Emperor. So it's not done...much.

One more thing to consider is that the IoM is a minefield of beuracracy. Getting anything done is a nightmare. When you're beset on all sides, and being worn down by numerous alien and internal threats, it's just enough to keep what you have, let alone expand your assets.

I don't think maladministration is quite the word.

The way knowledge was kept and transferred meant the losses of the Horus Heresy hugely regressed technologically advanced worlds; tech savants didn't write dummies guides, instead jealously guarding their own knowlege. When these died or defected their knowledge was lost or worse.

The weapons used in the Horus Heresy permanently corrupted data and machinery, that would now try to kill you.

These two factors meant things simply could not be repaired or rebuilt.

Economically the Great Crusade was based on growth; spend a moderate amount of resources (war) to capture a vast amount of resources (planets, ships, tech, etc).

There were not an infinite amount of valuable planets so this model was not sustainable.

In 40k huge resources are spent on protecting planets that have been bled dry by millennia of industry, everything has to be imported and the only viable export of these planets is the commodity of manpower.

Basically preHH investments were profitable. post HH they are sunk costs or cutting losses.

The Death of Innocence as described in Mechanicum by Graham McNeil (mighty is he!) alone could account for it. Prevailing martian dogma at the time, and to this day (IA1V2) was that Mars was the central catalog of all technological advancement.

With the loss of Mars, the most technologically advanced foundry in the Imperium, alongside the consequences of losing its central administration, the Martian facet of the Imperium can not, feasibly, recover.

That's entirely apart from the actual hostile action.