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So the marauder is the guards super heavy flyer and a pretty big plane with four jet engines, yet it can only carry 6000 pounds of ordinance. Modern bombers like the B-1 can carry 75,000 pounds and the sorts of planes it is modelled on like the Lancaster can carry 13,000 pounds despite using propellers. So my question is there a specific reason for this pathetic bomb load or has GW just not looked at their numbers and scale again?

All of the numbers provided in the early Imperial Armor books are baffling. According to them, a Land Raider has less armor than a modern battle tank.

this is why in sci-fi never ever ever think about any numbers given is always a smart idea

Other than it being the typical case of Sci-fi writers being well sci-fi writers, I always figured it was because the Marauder isnt supposed to be a Lancaster.

Its supposed to be a B-25 Mitchell, an A-26 Invader or the B-26 Marauder with which it shares its name.

Knowing the empire there's probably a bunch of crew serfs on bikes to power the engines that take up all the space

If you read into GW's numbers to hard you'll drive yourself mad. GW is terrible at math and scale even within their own setting. Sometimes I wish they would hire someone to try and clean some of that up.

Note that the Marauder is tiny compared to a B1. It's a superheavy rules-wise but fluff-wise it's really not a very big or significant unit. This is mostly just a case of the rules not matching up very well with the fluff.

Probably the same reason the Russ ony has a 120mm cannon.
IA was written when tank cannons were only around 90 to 100mm.

At the time of writing it sounded good. Now its outdated

In 2nd edition Epic, the Marauder was originally a fighter-bomber or tactical bomber. Forgeworld upscaled it and changed its role.

Imperial armour was written in the 1950s?

T62 - 115mm gun
T72 - 125mm gun
Chieftan (60s) - 120mm gun
Challenger 120mm gun
Leopard 2 120mm gun

Only the original Abrams seems to have kept the 105mm and they upgunned that to 120mm from 1985 onward.

Don't forget that superstition, dogma and degradation define technology in 40k, it makes sense that they would have worse military hardware than modern day earth. All they value is robustness and the ability to mass produce it!

 Flinty wrote:
Imperial armour was written in the 1950s?

T62 - 115mm gun
T72 - 125mm gun
Chieftan (60s) - 120mm gun
Challenger 120mm gun
Leopard 2 120mm gun

Only the original Abrams seems to have kept the 105mm and they upgunned that to 120mm from 1985 onward.

in fairness if they researched WW1 and WW2 tanks but nothing beyond it would explain much

Eh you get this in a lot of fiction writing. Honestly when you consider how many subjects, concepts and aspects there might be in a single fiction story it can be rather mind boggling the amount of research one might potentially need to get everything accurate.

That's before you throw the spanner in the works of a futuristic setting and then couple it to a society that both uses future tech and old tech and mad ideas because its in the plans that are religiously followed without question.

Warhammer adds another dimension because its not written by one author, so you can get increased variation depending on who writes what. It can sometimes cause a moment of pause because one writer might interpret and take a different approach to another; or might simply know more than the other about a specific subject area.

 Overread wrote:
Eh you get this in a lot of fiction writing. Honestly when you consider how many subjects, concepts and aspects there might be in a single fiction story it can be rather mind boggling the amount of research one might potentially need to get everything accurate.

That's before you throw the spanner in the works of a futuristic setting and then couple it to a society that both uses future tech and old tech and mad ideas because its in the plans that are religiously followed without question.

Warhammer adds another dimension because its not written by one author, so you can get increased variation depending on who writes what. It can sometimes cause a moment of pause because one writer might interpret and take a different approach to another; or might simply know more than the other about a specific subject area.

it's why one of my first bits of advice to anyone considering writing is "NEVER GIVE NUMBERS!"

Iracundus wrote:
In 2nd edition Epic, the Marauder was originally a fighter-bomber or tactical bomber. Forgeworld upscaled it and changed its role.

It's not even scaled up that much. The "upscaled" Marauder is comparable in size to real fighter-bombers, it just looks big because most 40k models are absurdly tiny.

 Peregrine wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
In 2nd edition Epic, the Marauder was originally a fighter-bomber or tactical bomber. Forgeworld upscaled it and changed its role.

It's not even scaled up that much. The "upscaled" Marauder is comparable in size to real fighter-bombers, it just looks big because most 40k models are absurdly tiny.

Periginre's not wrong here, most vehicle minis are actually undersized, take the rhino for example, there;s no way ten marines would fit inside it, they'd be like sardines.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Eh you get this in a lot of fiction writing. Honestly when you consider how many subjects, concepts and aspects there might be in a single fiction story it can be rather mind boggling the amount of research one might potentially need to get everything accurate.

That's before you throw the spanner in the works of a futuristic setting and then couple it to a society that both uses future tech and old tech and mad ideas because its in the plans that are religiously followed without question.

Warhammer adds another dimension because its not written by one author, so you can get increased variation depending on who writes what. It can sometimes cause a moment of pause because one writer might interpret and take a different approach to another; or might simply know more than the other about a specific subject area.

it's why one of my first bits of advice to anyone considering writing is "NEVER GIVE NUMBERS!"

Agreed, sometimes they help when given about general simple subjects, but more over the average reader only needs generalised concepts to work things out. Rough numbers, guess work or just the visual impression.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
In 2nd edition Epic, the Marauder was originally a fighter-bomber or tactical bomber. Forgeworld upscaled it and changed its role.

It's not even scaled up that much. The "upscaled" Marauder is comparable in size to real fighter-bombers, it just looks big because most 40k models are absurdly tiny.

Periginre's not wrong here, most vehicle minis are actually undersized, take the rhino for example, there;s no way ten marines would fit inside it, they'd be like sardines.

As is much of the terrain and even boardsize. Very few games for for a pure 100% scaling and of those that do many are either very small skirmishers like Infinity or they are different scales like Dropzone. Even then sometimes there's still some wriggling room for variation in size here and there. Heck even in computer games we get these strange scales in many RTS games - and yet we are quite happy with it. All we need is a simulation and approximate representation.

I get that people see the Marauder and immediatly think it's comparable to the biggest bombers we have, such as the B-52, B-1 and the Tu-95. Looks like it's much less the case, it's designed more like a heavy fighter-bomber, much faster and more manuveurable than a B-52, designed to speed in, drop a small but precise load and get out again. If I had to compare it to contemporary bombers I'd say it's more like the Vulcan or H-6.

The marauders are 40k-ified B-17 flying fortress and B-25 Mitchell bombers.

Not futurefied B-52s.

 chromedog wrote:
The marauders are 40k-ified B-17 flying fortress and B-25 Mitchell bombers.

Not futurefied B-52s.

and it lines up nicely with the B-17. the B-17 copuld carry 8000 lbs of bombs for short range missions, but for long range missions (and more often then not they where proably on long range missions) they only; carried half that. what's the average between 8000 and 4000?

eh?! ehhhh! yeah now you're catching on!

The IRL Marauder Bomber (The B26 Marauder) had an internal load of 4000lbs. And there were models for close ground support that put multiple 0.50cals in the nose (sort of like the Marauder Destroyer). One variant even had a nose howitzer instead (like the old epic I think). It also did not have a belly gun (like the current forgeworld model).

It was a medium bomber sometimes modified as a ground attack aircraft. Seems to fit it pretty well.

The classic Imperial Army stuff (pre elysians) is inspired by a mix of WW1, WW2 and 1950-1970 equipment. There is very little modern about it - except some weird quirks, like VTOL capability on said Marauders, Thunderbolts,...

If anyone wants something better than what we have in 20xx, 40k Imperial army is not the right adress, TAU are.

because GW writers and BL authors need to actually consult SMEs when attempting to describe things.

Just read flight of the eisenstein, and witness the horrendous depiction of the virus bombs... clearly the author has no clue what CBRN weapons look like and took his description from the movie the rock. great book otherwise though, but yeah technically most of those guys dont have a clue what theyre on about.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
because GW writers and BL authors need to actually consult SMEs when attempting to describe things.

Just read flight of the eisenstein, and witness the horrendous depiction of the virus bombs... clearly the author has no clue what CBRN weapons look like and took his description from the movie the rock. great book otherwise though, but yeah technically most of those guys dont have a clue what theyre on about.

That's a problem for all fiction writers, really. You can't be an expert about every single thing you want to have in your story and there will always be people who will spot every little inconsistency. Ideally, authors should do research to at least make their stuff believable, but time spent researching isn't spent writing.
The way BL churns out books, I don't know if their writers have that much time to spend on each book...

Of course, but then if you don't have suitable knowledge on a subject, then keep the details simple.

 Keep wrote:
The classic Imperial Army stuff (pre elysians) is inspired by a mix of WW1, WW2 and 1950-1970 equipment. There is very little modern about it - except some weird quirks, like VTOL capability on said Marauders, Thunderbolts,...

If anyone wants something better than what we have in 20xx, 40k Imperial army is not the right adress, TAU are.

The Harrier first saw use in the 60's so VTOL capability isn't even that modern either.

Looking at the model itself it is definitely more B-25 than B-29. It's pretty small.

A true heavy bomber in 40k is probably the size of a Thunderhawk.

You wan a heavy bomber? There's the big Chaos plane from Aeronautica Imperialis.