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How do?

So this is a broadening of a thread I've previously raised, and as the title suggests its about the logistic side of things, and who might have the upper hand.

Previously, it's been a straight discussion about the advantages and disadvantages faced by The Imperium and Chaos Renegades of all stripes. But recently, I've been thinking about the other races, and how they manage to fuel the war machine.

The main one that's stuck in my head are Orks.

Orks, arguably, have it the best. They've got ridiculous numbers, get 'arder the more they fight, and are entirely self contained nomadic war machines.

There's nothing centralised about Da Boyz. When a population gets to the right density, the right sort of Oddboyz start showing up to shepherd it into the next density. Starting from lowly Pigdokz and Runtherdz, via Painboyz and Mekboyz, right up to Ghaz. See, Ghaz may in fact represent yet another form of Oddboy - a natural leader caste. One big enough, ugly enough, 'ard enough and smart enough to marshall truly colossal Waaaaghs!

None of those Oddboyz require actual training. None of them have ever actually studied their specialisation. It's all just Know Wotz. You either know it, making you an Oddboy, or you don't, making you a Boy.

And that's a significant advantage over other species, except perhaps Tyranids. Because they simply don't need the same supply chains that others do. There's rarely an Ork manufacturing world to hit and mess up in the way one could a Forgeworld. If you take out the main Mekboss, someone else will just fill that void, without much faffing.

Then there's their Teknologee. It's rough, but it works. Whereas some races might attempt to tackle Titans and their ilk with ever more complex weapons, a classic Orky gambit is chain shot from a bellygun. No more than two steel balls connected with a thick chain, it's fired toward enemy Titans, aiming to entangle their legs.

And again, that's all on a near-instinctual level. Give a Mekboy enough scrap, helpers and time, and there's no limit to what they can build.

Their main, if not sole, drawback is a relative lack of ability (and arguably interest) to actually guide their ships to anywhere in particular. They're happy enough to just pile on board, punch their way into Da Warp, and see where they end up. There are of course exceptions to this (Ghaz has Weirdboyz doing the job of Navigators, with surprising success), but for the most part, they just go wherever, then pick a fight with whoever they run into.

So there's a taster of the thinking I'm looking to discuss. Please don't take my utterings as gospel though!

Eldar are an interesting thought, from this point of view. They likel have no issue with supply - they effectively have very short supply lines due to the webway, and I feel like the craftworlds would have huge stockpiles of war machinery. On the other hand, they're hampered by comparatively low numbers, and their strategic mobility is ... odd; They can move rapidly and securely via the webway, but only to places where there are webway portals.

It has been hinted that psychoplastics other than wraithbone may require a material component. Wraithbone appears to be purely solidified warp energy. However even then, the Eldar have the limitation of the number of Bonesingers available and how much working time they have. That is why for example Iyanden and Biel-Tan are described as still partly in ruins.

Iracundus wrote:
It has been hinted that psychoplastics other than wraithbone may require a material component. Wraithbone appears to be purely solidified warp energy. However even then, the Eldar have the limitation of the number of Bonesingers available and how much working time they have. That is why for example Iyanden and Biel-Tan are described as still partly in ruins.

Thetes also maitience duties too. Eldar are not going to be able to devote entire time to production, such vast ships will require maintaining and repairs from time to time.

Thr fleet will, the war machines. Wraithbone is not entirely 100% durable forever.

I've not read the series yet, but I think War of the Beast sheds more light on the ultimate evolution of Orks. They basically get more and more organised as they reach greater numbers.

They also enslave humans and do have resource and manufacturing worlds, so it is possible to hit their logistics, just difficult, and less effective than targetting resources for other races. Orks just find another pile o' crap to build gargants with.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jhe90 wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
It has been hinted that psychoplastics other than wraithbone may require a material component. Wraithbone appears to be purely solidified warp energy. However even then, the Eldar have the limitation of the number of Bonesingers available and how much working time they have. That is why for example Iyanden and Biel-Tan are described as still partly in ruins.

Thetes also maitience duties too. Eldar are not going to be able to devote entire time to production, such vast ships will require maintaining and repairs from time to time.

Thr fleet will, the war machines. Wraithbone is not entirely 100% durable forever.

It is frequently described as living though- to what extent is it self-repairing? That would reduce maintenance considerably, but still not eliminate it.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Eldar are an interesting thought, from this point of view. They likel have no issue with supply - they effectively have very short supply lines due to the webway, and I feel like the craftworlds would have huge stockpiles of war machinery. On the other hand, they're hampered by comparatively low numbers, and their strategic mobility is ... odd; They can move rapidly and securely via the webway, but only to places where there are webway portals.

They can create temporary portals to exit or deploy things wherever they please though. The only things really limited to certain portals are Titans.

 Haighus wrote:
I've not read the series yet, but I think War of the Beast sheds more light on the ultimate evolution of Orks. They basically get more and more organised as they reach greater numbers.

They also enslave humans and do have resource and manufacturing worlds, so it is possible to hit their logistics, just difficult, and less effective than targetting resources for other races. Orks just find another pile o' crap to build gargants with.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jhe90 wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
It has been hinted that psychoplastics other than wraithbone may require a material component. Wraithbone appears to be purely solidified warp energy. However even then, the Eldar have the limitation of the number of Bonesingers available and how much working time they have. That is why for example Iyanden and Biel-Tan are described as still partly in ruins.

Thetes also maitience duties too. Eldar are not going to be able to devote entire time to production, such vast ships will require maintaining and repairs from time to time.

Thr fleet will, the war machines. Wraithbone is not entirely 100% durable forever.

It is frequently described as living though- to what extent is it self-repairing? That would reduce maintenance considerably, but still not eliminate it.

To some degree I'm sure, but even then I'm sure if a area has been damaged ernough, un unsed for too long or the craft world will exceed its self repair and require attention of a bone singer.

Plus if a "living" material it may need some tending from time to time to ensure the material is healthy. And thus the ship is.

Hmm yeah. It could need feeding... something. Psychic something-or-other I reckon.

 Haighus wrote:
Hmm yeah. It could need feeding... something. Psychic something-or-other I reckon.

Yeah... Somthing. I'm sure that Eldar ships are excellent but not 100% self maintaining and need no assistance at all.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Spoiler:

How do?

So this is a broadening of a thread I've previously raised, and as the title suggests its about the logistic side of things, and who might have the upper hand.

Previously, it's been a straight discussion about the advantages and disadvantages faced by The Imperium and Chaos Renegades of all stripes. But recently, I've been thinking about the other races, and how they manage to fuel the war machine.

The main one that's stuck in my head are Orks.

Orks, arguably, have it the best. They've got ridiculous numbers, get 'arder the more they fight, and are entirely self contained nomadic war machines.

There's nothing centralised about Da Boyz. When a population gets to the right density, the right sort of Oddboyz start showing up to shepherd it into the next density. Starting from lowly Pigdokz and Runtherdz, via Painboyz and Mekboyz, right up to Ghaz. See, Ghaz may in fact represent yet another form of Oddboy - a natural leader caste. One big enough, ugly enough, 'ard enough and smart enough to marshall truly colossal Waaaaghs!

None of those Oddboyz require actual training. None of them have ever actually studied their specialisation. It's all just Know Wotz. You either know it, making you an Oddboy, or you don't, making you a Boy.

And that's a significant advantage over other species, except perhaps Tyranids. Because they simply don't need the same supply chains that others do. There's rarely an Ork manufacturing world to hit and mess up in the way one could a Forgeworld. If you take out the main Mekboss, someone else will just fill that void, without much faffing.

Then there's their Teknologee. It's rough, but it works. Whereas some races might attempt to tackle Titans and their ilk with ever more complex weapons, a classic Orky gambit is chain shot from a bellygun. No more than two steel balls connected with a thick chain, it's fired toward enemy Titans, aiming to entangle their legs.

And again, that's all on a near-instinctual level. Give a Mekboy enough scrap, helpers and time, and there's no limit to what they can build.

Their main, if not sole, drawback is a relative lack of ability (and arguably interest) to actually guide their ships to anywhere in particular. They're happy enough to just pile on board, punch their way into Da Warp, and see where they end up. There are of course exceptions to this (Ghaz has Weirdboyz doing the job of Navigators, with surprising success), but for the most part, they just go wherever, then pick a fight with whoever they run into.

So there's a taster of the thinking I'm looking to discuss. Please don't take my utterings as gospel though!

One of the issues I actually have with the Ork fluff is that their preference of weapons is for the type that unfortunately DOES require supply lines. Outside of ork magic, you can't just scavenge up complex chemicals to fuel their chemical based slug throwers. Those require complicated supply chains of resource extraction. Were the orks based along more energy weapons, this would be less of a problem. But no, orks prefer chemical explosives for the bang. Combustion engines for the smoke and noise. So someone must be building exraction facilities, refinement facilities, and then transports to move it all around. If Orks stuck to energy weapons they'd need a much simpler supply line, which would make sense based on what we know of their culture.

Of course what we know is all from imperial sources, so its naturally a biased point of view. And the imperium has been repeatedly shown as racist with an extreme disregard of xenos capabilities, to a point where they feed their soldiers inaccurate propaganda even in combat. There's probably a thriving economy (mostly based on Gretchen labor) within ork culture that does all that extraction and refinement work, we just don't get to hear about it because of our imperial focused pov. In older codexes we got mention of all the non-combat oddboyz, although that seems to have largely been dropped.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haighus wrote:
I've not read the series yet, but I think War of the Beast sheds more light on the ultimate evolution of Orks. They basically get more and more organised as they reach greater numbers.

They also enslave humans and do have resource and manufacturing worlds, so it is possible to hit their logistics, just difficult, and less effective than targetting resources for other races. Orks just find another pile o' crap to build gargants with.

Orks also seem to respond to threats. They're almost like a galactic immune system. My take on the Beast was that it was entirely a reaction to the Great Crusade. It takes time for that reaction to build, but when it does its equivalent in strength.

We've seen it in fluff before in the story about the Ork Mekboy who sees an enemy titan and then is inspired with the ability to build his own equivalent Gargant. I imagine if the brain boys were around, they'd be able to activate these responses as desired, but without them to lead it just has to happen automatically.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Eldar are an interesting thought, from this point of view. They likel have no issue with supply - they effectively have very short supply lines due to the webway, and I feel like the craftworlds would have huge stockpiles of war machinery. On the other hand, they're hampered by comparatively low numbers, and their strategic mobility is ... odd; They can move rapidly and securely via the webway, but only to places where there are webway portals.

Also keep in mind that eldar don't typically plan on being in a given warzone very long. If they're on a given planet for an extended period of time, it probably means something has gone very wrong or that the planet is an exodite world that they refuse to forfeit. In the case of the latter, I suspect they usually have a pretty solid webway system to move supplies into place with. Also, iirc, the rules for a Dire Avenger's weapon in the Fantasy Flight books indicate that their weapon magazine are kind of huge. So if we can assume that other eldar weapons are similarly good at carrying a lot of ammo per clip, and if we assume that eldar warfare favors short bursts over spray and pray, the average aspect warrior might simply go through clips less quickly than the next guy. Also, eldar lore seems to mention eldar eating due to hunger pretty rarely. This is probably mostly an aesthetic thing (it's harder to be an elegant space elf when you're forking some meat into your mouth), but it has always given me the impression that they might not require as much food as a human. I wouldn't be surprised if their armor has a few tricks for lowering their need to resupply too.

So yeah. They probably don't need resupply as often as human forces.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

pm713 wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Eldar are an interesting thought, from this point of view. They likel have no issue with supply - they effectively have very short supply lines due to the webway, and I feel like the craftworlds would have huge stockpiles of war machinery. On the other hand, they're hampered by comparatively low numbers, and their strategic mobility is ... odd; They can move rapidly and securely via the webway, but only to places where there are webway portals.

They can create temporary portals to exit or deploy things wherever they please though. The only things really limited to certain portals are Titans.

Isn't this point a little inconsistent though? In some stories, it seems like they can pretty much push their way in or out of the webway wherever they want, but it takes specialized knowledge and/or tons of energy to do so. In Asurmen, I think there's a plot point about the webway on a planet being messed up so they have to approach the planet from space. In Jain Zar, I believe there's a bit where an (especially strange and tumultuous) patch of the webway could potentially push you through its "walls", but you'd have roughly even odds of being stranded in the middle of nowhere or expelled into the warp instead of the materium. In Valedor, some harlequins show a guy how to pop out of the webway without a portal, but he seemed completely unaware that that was an option until they showed him the path.

So you're right, but it seems like the plot can opt to say that showing up wherevs just isn't an option sometimes.

 argonak wrote:
Of course what we know is all from imperial sources, so its naturally a biased point of view. And the imperium has been repeatedly shown as racist with an extreme disregard of xenos capabilities, to a point where they feed their soldiers inaccurate propaganda even in combat. There's probably a thriving economy (mostly based on Gretchen labor) within ork culture that does all that extraction and refinement work, we just don't get to hear about it because of our imperial focused pov.

This basically sums up my head canon in general, that most of what we know is just Imperial propaganda. I can imagine either Gretchin or human slave labour being used to work a production line for making ammo for example, and likely there's an Ork(s?) getting rich selling desperately needed supplies to the highest bidder. Or possibly being cowed into supplying by threats. Maybe even human worlds that agree to pay a supply "tax" to the Orks, including shipping, in order to avoid having their worlds ravaged?

I think Ork biology is also a big help- it seems they can produce all the chemicals they need from Orkoid biological substances, in the same manner as fungus beer. Actually, fungus beer seems to double up as a combustible fuel already.

I imagine Orks to run on a sort of mass cottage industry, with loads of smallholdings of a few Gretchin and an Ork producing some kind of gubbins from scrap or Orkoid produce of some kind. Most of the hard chemistry is already done by their fabulous biology.

We know they use slave labour (Grots and aliens such as Humans) from multiple BL books. We also know they have targetable industry from the (admittedly failed) Kastorel-Novem raid. It is just not as well defined as other races because Orks don't do mass-production, they do large-scale cottage industry.

Amusingly, this would make Orks somewhat like the Roman Empire, with heavily distributed, uncentralised production for most goods, based on a slave economy. Obviously the Romans had a considerably higher degree of standardisation, but used a similar pattern of industry.

Having the orkoid biological network self-produce combustible material and other chemicals for firearms would be a supremely useful thing for a species-scale superweapon to have, so it would be neat if that were the case.

I do prefer the idea of incredibly numerous small-scale mining operations by slaves and gretchin though. Fits nicer with my slightly more low-key realist preferred perspective

It's also interesting that people believe that the eldar are a post-scarcity society. On the face of it they are,but they have one absolute limiting factor: their population.

As far as I can tell, they don't have vast automated foundries and things like that pumping out equipment. It's all built by eldar. It's not a great deal of use if one person can magic up tye resources to build a space ship...if that one person is the only one around to do it and it takes decades to conjure enough wraithbone. Population and time are the eldar's (severely) limiting factors.

I'm also of the opinion that the webway isn't as supremely useful as it appears. Not only is it broken and fractured, but i don't believe that there's a path to every planet. Even if they can force their way out instead of using a gate, as far as i can tell they'd only be able to force their way out of a place that's already got a path going through it (metaphorically speaking of course as it's abother dimension).

Even if it does connect to fethloads of places, it was probably built to connect every place of value together...at the point of its construction 60-million years ago. It's so out of date the dinosaurs were around when it was built.

Not that it's not fantastically useful and better than warp travel in the majority of cases, but it definitely has its drawbacks.

Orks do still have supply lines to hit. While assassinating key leaders may not be terribly effective as replacements will auto generate, if you carpet bomb the cottage industry areas they will still need to rebuild their tools and replace lost materials before they can get going again.

Viwed a lot of Ork stuff as a lot of small scale workshops as others have noted, the sort of stuff you can flatten with a few missiles - once you identify the workshops from other huts and what have you.

But view the economics as roughly that of using a cruise missile to destroy a battered old truck - its likely its not done all that often as the reward for doing so simply isn't worth the cost of the operation compared to using the same weapons on the fighting front and actual boyz.

Can see a lot of grots with pretty basic tools kicking out ammo, and the low accuracy of work weapons being not so much their inability to aim much more than "that way somewhere", as horrible tolerances and variations, under sized rounds, frequent jams etc.

Throw in a few specialist oddboyz the ork war bosses are a bit more protective of who can bread just the right sort of squid etc.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
Having the orkoid biological network self-produce combustible material and other chemicals for firearms would be a supremely useful thing for a species-scale superweapon to have, so it would be neat if that were the case.

I do prefer the idea of incredibly numerous small-scale mining operations by slaves and gretchin though. Fits nicer with my slightly more low-key realist preferred perspective

It's also interesting that people believe that the eldar are a post-scarcity society. On the face of it they are,but they have one absolute limiting factor: their population.

As far as I can tell, they don't have vast automated foundries and things like that pumping out equipment. It's all built by eldar. It's not a great deal of use if one person can magic up tye resources to build a space ship...if that one person is the only one around to do it and it takes decades to conjure enough wraithbone. Population and time are the eldar's (severely) limiting factors.

I'm also of the opinion that the webway isn't as supremely useful as it appears. Not only is it broken and fractured, but i don't believe that there's a path to every planet. Even if they can force their way out instead of using a gate, as far as i can tell they'd only be able to force their way out of a place that's already got a path going through it (metaphorically speaking of course as it's abother dimension).

Even if it does connect to fethloads of places, it was probably built to connect every place of value together...at the point of its construction 60-million years ago. It's so out of date the dinosaurs were around when it was built.

Not that it's not fantastically useful and better than warp travel in the majority of cases, but it definitely has its drawbacks.

The Orks have squigs that produce their fuel oil. That is stated in one of the very early Ork books. However this still effectively creates a logistics chain as it means they will need a large mass of squigs together to produce the amounts a mechanized force needs, and this means they will either have to have fuel convoys or effectively a fuel depot.

Now with the Eldar and the Webway: There appear to be 2 kinds of Webway tunnels. There are the permanent ones leading to stable exits, which are usually denoted by some form of gateway structure. Some of these are big enough to accommodate starships. The other ones, called in the Path of the Eldar books "temporary burrowings", appear to be temporarily created/budded off of the permanent ones and are small, sometimes requiring Eldar to move single file through them. Their openings seem to just be holes in the air, and seem to be the portable "Webway portal" used in rules for fast moving strike forces.

Just like the rest of the orkoids that grow from the fungus, massive amounts of squigs of all types for whatever is needed. Gotta picture the real threat as the fungus. A highly aggressive fungus that produces everything it needs to compete and spread across the galaxy which includes biological agents to wage war to take more space as well as gething it up into the stars. The whole thing is an artificially created doomsday weapon out of control but overall it's quite the sophisticated plant form.

Logistics isn't something the orks themselves individually have to worry about. The predominant slave race that deals with this is the grots. They pop out of the ground before orks and after squigs and snots. Just like the other they have instinctive pretty programming and start resource gathering and infrastructure building. By the time orks sprout out a shanty town is already started and growing. Throughout all this the snotlings continue farming fungus and animal husbandry with the squigs. All of this allows the average ork to only have to concentrate on is swaggering about and getting into fights.

Enough orks grow and unite the more oddboyz appear and more cunningly sophisticated they get. At some point in time the fungus out competes all flora, squigs are the fauna in all their colourful variety, and the orks wipe out all thing unorky. When their number become too much for the planet a warboss that unites them all appear and triggers a Waaaaaaagh!. Now oddboyz suddenly know how to build space ships...

tl:dr It's a galaxy spreading plant that brings it's industry and war machine with it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ProwlerPC wrote:
Just like the rest of the orkoids that grow from the fungus, massive amounts of squigs of all types for whatever is needed is always on hand. Gotta picture the real threat as the fungus. A highly aggressive fungus that produces everything it needs to compete and spread across the galaxy which includes biological agents to wage war to take more space as well as gething it up into the stars. The whole thing is an artificially created doomsday weapon out of control but overall it's quite the sophisticated plant form.

Logistics isn't something the orks themselves individually have to worry about. The predominant slave race that deals with this is the grots. They pop out of the ground before orks and after squigs and snots. Just like the other they have instinctive pretty programming and start resource gathering and infrastructure building. By the time orks sprout out a shanty town is already started and growing. Throughout all this the snotlings continue farming fungus and animal husbandry with the squigs. All of this allows the average ork to only have to concentrate on is swaggering about and getting into fights.

Enough orks grow and unite the more oddboyz appear and more cunningly sophisticated they get. At some point in time the fungus out competes all flora, squigs are the fauna in all their colourful variety, and the orks wipe out all thing unorky. When their number become too much for the planet a warboss that unites them all appear and triggers a Waaaaaaagh!. Now oddboyz suddenly know how to build space ships...

tl:dr It's a galaxy spreading plant that brings it's industry and war machine with it.

 ProwlerPC wrote:
Just like the rest of the orkoids that grow from the fungus, massive amounts of squigs of all types for whatever is needed. Gotta picture the real threat as the fungus. A highly aggressive fungus that produces everything it needs to compete and spread across the galaxy which includes biological agents to wage war to take more space as well as gething it up into the stars. The whole thing is an artificially created doomsday weapon out of control but overall it's quite the sophisticated plant form.

Logistics isn't something the orks themselves individually have to worry about. The predominant slave race that deals with this is the grots. They pop out of the ground before orks and after squigs and snots. Just like the other they have instinctive pretty programming and start resource gathering and infrastructure building. By the time orks sprout out a shanty town is already started and growing. Throughout all this the snotlings continue farming fungus and animal husbandry with the squigs. All of this allows the average ork to only have to concentrate on is swaggering about and getting into fights.

Enough orks grow and unite the more oddboyz appear and more cunningly sophisticated they get. At some point in time the fungus out competes all flora, squigs are the fauna in all their colourful variety, and the orks wipe out all thing unorky. When their number become too much for the planet a warboss that unites them all appear and triggers a Waaaaaaagh!. Now oddboyz suddenly know how to build space ships...

tl:dr It's a galaxy spreading plant that brings it's industry and war machine with it.

Awesome way of looking at the Orks. I like it!

Yeah, Orks were "special" meant to be a self-contained ecosystem.
There is all kinds of fluff on them being a created race with all their knowledge embedded in their genetic heritage.
Knowledge and "occupations" manifest as each level of Ork civilization is reached.
Any society successfully living on a Spacehulk for centuries at a time pretty much set the standard.

Speaking of Spacehulks, the other successful species is Tyranid.
They are pretty easy: either imprint your DNA onto a host species or grow your own troops.
The ripper swarms stripping biomass and hopping into pools to be rendered down and be sucked up a straw to bio-ships is pretty much a simple logistics affair.

Eldar: Pull stuff through webways or get those Bone-Singers to grow your tech.
I am sure given time they would fit in with the nature of whatever planet they visit.

Space Marines: According to the fluff they can pretty much live anywhere short of a vacuum and eat pretty much anything.
I think the main logistics issue is ships filled with ammo. Problem with slug throwers is the physical element of making the specialized packages.
I keep expecting to see servitors with big hoppers of clips trundling around. You see so few mag-bolted clips to their armor to break the clean look.
Armor replacement parts would be a bit of thing but they are pretty standardized.

Imperial Guard / Astra Militarum: They are the logistical joke of the universe. They had a few stories of clothes going on a separate ship that then gets lost in the warp while the troops go through some time issue and miss the fight by some 20 years or so.
All you can be assured is if the big grinding Departmento Munitorum still hears reports of fighting, more bodies and equipment will be sent.
It is pretty well summed up here: "It is a testament to the sheer size of the Imperial Guard -- and to human courage and ingenuity -- that they are able to absorb the Munitorum's frequently disastrous errors only to emerge victorious. Yet for every regiment that overcomes such adversity, another finds itself deployed to inimical environments without vital survival gear, or sent into battle against overwhelming or nonexistent foes."
One thing you keep hearing is losing your lasgun is penalty of death. You pretty much are a self-sufficient threat with that weapon so replacement is not an expected thing.

Tau: Well, get the locals to join your cause or destroy them and take their stuff. Enough said. Plus a fair bit of tech to adapt to wherever they end up. I suspect they do not camp out much and stay in the "trailer". The Earth Caste is pretty much the dedicated group to attend to the details.

Dark Eldar or whatever they are called now: Take everyone's stuff AND take them and bring them all home through webways. When you only have to survive off of suffering it makes survival pretty easy. They pretty much strap on what they think they need, no supply needed; it is only a raid.

Mechanicus: Some concentrated paste for sustenance and pretty much setup a factory wherever they go. Pretty self-sufficient. The "boyscouts" of the universe.

It is rather funny when you look at it.

Regarding "someone else will just fill that void, without much faffing." There is a point to consider that eventually the Klingon promotion will deplete the baseline resources. Sure, Orks are effectively fungus, but there will be a point that even fungus can't survive on the available resources - oiler squigs notwithstanding.


As for the faffing; if a Waaghboss and his coterie of immediate successors are wiped out by a Heroic Action, there's evidence that the entire social structure collapses just as often as it replaces itself.

That aside, I do agree Orks have it best, with Necrons a close second (which kind of makes applicable sense)

 Talizvar wrote:
ISpace Marines: According to the fluff they can pretty much live anywhere short of a vacuum and eat pretty much anything.
I think the main logistics issue is ships filled with ammo.

Their most important long-term logistics issue is actually a large enough pool of genetically compatible recruits. Marines being able to survive stuff is meaningless if they can't keep regular humans living somewhere safe enough that losses can be replaced. Their survival is tied to the survival of the human race. No humans, no marines after X years of battle losses.

Spetulhu wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
ISpace Marines: According to the fluff they can pretty much live anywhere short of a vacuum and eat pretty much anything.
I think the main logistics issue is ships filled with ammo.

Their most important long-term logistics issue is actually a large enough pool of genetically compatible recruits. Marines being able to survive stuff is meaningless if they can't keep regular humans living somewhere safe enough that losses can be replaced. Their survival is tied to the survival of the human race. No humans, no marines after X years of battle losses.

Almso spare parts etc

Marines gear is advanced and cannot be gained at basic hive cities like guard, They need there own skilled tech marines or advanced foregworlds to make there weapoinry


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 malamis wrote:
Regarding "someone else will just fill that void, without much faffing." There is a point to consider that eventually the Klingon promotion will deplete the baseline resources. Sure, Orks are effectively fungus, but there will be a point that even fungus can't survive on the available resources - oiler squigs notwithstanding.


As for the faffing; if a Waaghboss and his coterie of immediate successors are wiped out by a Heroic Action, there's evidence that the entire social structure collapses just as often as it replaces itself.

That aside, I do agree Orks have it best, with Necrons a close second (which kind of makes applicable sense)

Orks will in that case fall apart and fight again on a smaller scale till those fights make larger bosses, and larger, stronger ork leaders.

The syste, will breed a new overlord with time and they will rebuild. Orks are never beaten only slowed down

 jhe90 wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
ISpace Marines: According to the fluff they can pretty much live anywhere short of a vacuum and eat pretty much anything.
I think the main logistics issue is ships filled with ammo.

Their most important long-term logistics issue is actually a large enough pool of genetically compatible recruits. Marines being able to survive stuff is meaningless if they can't keep regular humans living somewhere safe enough that losses can be replaced. Their survival is tied to the survival of the human race. No humans, no marines after X years of battle losses.

Almso spare parts etc

Marines gear is advanced and cannot be gained at basic hive cities like guard, They need there own skilled tech marines or advanced foregworlds to make there weapoinry


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 malamis wrote:
Regarding "someone else will just fill that void, without much faffing." There is a point to consider that eventually the Klingon promotion will deplete the baseline resources. Sure, Orks are effectively fungus, but there will be a point that even fungus can't survive on the available resources - oiler squigs notwithstanding.


As for the faffing; if a Waaghboss and his coterie of immediate successors are wiped out by a Heroic Action, there's evidence that the entire social structure collapses just as often as it replaces itself.

That aside, I do agree Orks have it best, with Necrons a close second (which kind of makes applicable sense)

Orks will in that case fall apart and fight again on a smaller scale till those fights make larger bosses, and larger, stronger ork leaders.

The syste, will breed a new overlord with time and they will rebuild. Orks are never beaten only slowed down

We know from the Horus Heresy that Marines are very good at improvising and remaining combat effective without a dedicated supply train. Provided they have someone sufficiently tech-savvy (this appears to be less than full Techmarine level) they can jury rig equipment to keep it functioning (MkV power armour was born this way) and use poorer quality weaponry if necessary. Granted, this degrades their efficacy somewhat, but a Marine in less efficient power armour using an autogun is still a massive combat threat.

One of the HH books actually has a Marine raider list, which can take Marines with autoguns and other substandard equipment.

 Haighus wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
ISpace Marines: According to the fluff they can pretty much live anywhere short of a vacuum and eat pretty much anything.
I think the main logistics issue is ships filled with ammo.

Their most important long-term logistics issue is actually a large enough pool of genetically compatible recruits. Marines being able to survive stuff is meaningless if they can't keep regular humans living somewhere safe enough that losses can be replaced. Their survival is tied to the survival of the human race. No humans, no marines after X years of battle losses.

Almso spare parts etc

Marines gear is advanced and cannot be gained at basic hive cities like guard, They need there own skilled tech marines or advanced foregworlds to make there weapoinry


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 malamis wrote:
Regarding "someone else will just fill that void, without much faffing." There is a point to consider that eventually the Klingon promotion will deplete the baseline resources. Sure, Orks are effectively fungus, but there will be a point that even fungus can't survive on the available resources - oiler squigs notwithstanding.


As for the faffing; if a Waaghboss and his coterie of immediate successors are wiped out by a Heroic Action, there's evidence that the entire social structure collapses just as often as it replaces itself.

That aside, I do agree Orks have it best, with Necrons a close second (which kind of makes applicable sense)

Orks will in that case fall apart and fight again on a smaller scale till those fights make larger bosses, and larger, stronger ork leaders.

The syste, will breed a new overlord with time and they will rebuild. Orks are never beaten only slowed down

We know from the Horus Heresy that Marines are very good at improvising and remaining combat effective without a dedicated supply train. Provided they have someone sufficiently tech-savvy (this appears to be less than full Techmarine level) they can jury rig equipment to keep it functioning (MkV power armour was born this way) and use poorer quality weaponry if necessary. Granted, this degrades their efficacy somewhat, but a Marine in less efficient power armour using an autogun is still a massive combat threat.

One of the HH books actually has a Marine raider list, which can take Marines with autoguns and other substandard equipment.

True and a hardwired las weapon would with marine armour prove to have near infinite power supply. if your cut off its better than punching them to death.

probbly burn the las guns power relays and laser section out first. and not like a bol;ter built to be used as a marine melee weapon.
Marines are trained to adapt to situations and events and just get job done regardless.

There are enough Handwavium deposits in the grim darkness of the far future to sustain anything. Its good stuff. Would have made our lives easier on the patrol base.

Do we actually have proof that Ork weapons even need bullets? Doesn't the whole thing run on psychic feel-good?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And that's a significant advantage over other species, except perhaps Tyranids. Because they simply don't need the same supply chains that others do. There's rarely an Ork manufacturing world to hit and mess up in the way one could a Forgeworld. If you take out the main Mekboss, someone else will just fill that void, without much faffing.

Eh, no. Every major waagh needs whole manufacturing worlds, and destroying one might delay or even stop it completely. This is whole plot of Imperial Armour book on Kastorel-Novem, assassination of main mek, blowing up titan factories, and destroying ammo depots. Even though it fails, it clearly shows a lot of ork supply chain.

The problem with specialists is even worse, not only they do spring at random, meaning replacement isn't sure, they do tend to have malfunctioning knowledge leading to loss of it and focus on particular bits. So, even if you do get another mek after SM killed your gargant specialist, this one might like flashy plasma guns and tellyportas instead and have little interest or even know wotz on gargants. Besides, mek is listened to like other orks - he needs to be big, survive lots of scraps, have a reputation. Freshy bred, small grunt will have zero respect and little resources to work with.

 ProwlerPC wrote:
Enough orks grow and unite the more oddboyz appear and more cunningly sophisticated they get. At some point in time the fungus out competes all flora, squigs are the fauna in all their colourful variety, and the orks wipe out all thing unorky. When their number become too much for the planet a warboss that unites them all appear and triggers a Waaaaaaagh!. Now oddboyz suddenly know how to build space ships...

Feral orks using spears and sticks are a thing. If orks can get stuck on being cavemen and stop progressing while being target practice for even local PDF, then the process is not 100% sure and can fail. Suddenly knowing how to build space ships? Not even advanced orks on Gorkamorka could quite agree how to build one and started war over it, so I'd like some citation feral ork riding boars and wielding maces can suddenly gain deus ex machine knowledge. Maybe I missed some books but to my best recollection it doesn't work that way.

Mechaniaks, Painboyz and the other specialised castes arise in a sufficiently large population; IIRC, chronic feral Ork infestations are due to them being perpetually culled to sufficiently low population densities that the more advanced castes don't arise.

Related to the orks; in the early material like Waaagh! The Orks and Ere We Go, they were mentioned to have particularly advanced field technology; generally employed in a robust manner, and so appearing relatively simple.

For example, while Imperial Titans were protected by repairable void fields, Gargants used banks of power fields – achieving the same aim through quantity rather than quality.

However, this simplicity of application belied their use of fields that is in most ways superior to the Imperial (and even Eldar) equivalent: we see fields employed them in a number of aggressive ways, such as the ork field artillery: Shokk Attack Gun, Bubble Chukka, Traktor Kannon etc. – all demonstrating an ability to use advanced field tech.

This ties back into their logistics through their ability to capture, shield and propel Space Hulks; allowing them to move from planet to planet.