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Basically with them replacing limbs with bionics, how much stronger and faster (and maybe durable) they are than regular Astartes?

Depends on the writer - generally they're tougher, and a little bit stronger but some books have them going full-on bullet time ("Calculus of Battle" and one of the Deathwatch books IIRC).

Something that a few authors have done is have the biological part of an Iron Hand get killed off, but the armour & bionics fight on...

beast_gts wrote:
Something that a few authors have done is have the biological part of an Iron Hand get killed off, but the armour & bionics fight on...

That sounds cool as feth.

And a neat way to get around Codex Astartes. ''Sure Guilliman, we only have a thousand alive Astartes, but nevermind the ten thousand dead ones still battling among us. You're just jelly ' cause your flesh is weak, and you know it...''

Do they have more Dreadnoughts that other chapters....or would it just be a lot of mechanical marines...sort of how high ranking Mechanicus types end up?

-STS

beast_gts wrote:
Depends on the writer - generally they're tougher, and a little bit stronger but some books have them going full-on bullet time ("Calculus of Battle" and one of the Deathwatch books IIRC).

Something that a few authors have done is have the biological part of an Iron Hand get killed off, but the armour & bionics fight on...

There are plenty of examples of non-augmented Marines going bullet-time as well.

And even a few examples of baseline humans.

slade the sniper wrote:
Do they have more Dreadnoughts that other chapters....or would it just be a lot of mechanical marines...sort of how high ranking Mechanicus types end up?

At one point they had more dreadnoughts than normal, but fewer suits of Terminator Armour. That seems to have switched round now - one of the recent novels have them attacking a friendly Marine vessel to steal a Dreadnought, and the Helfathers (cyborg Terminators) have been introduced.

Helfathers need to get rules already for Iron Hands specific units.

 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:
Basically with them replacing limbs with bionics, how much stronger and faster (and maybe durable) they are than regular Astartes?

In many ways, they should be weaker.
As their bionics become more extensive, the more super-magic semi-divine genetically engineered biology is getting removed. Its actually a step down from the signature transhuman state of the setting, to the mere cyborg level of those crazy Ad Mech cultists.

Even guardsmen and orks get bionics, and in most cases don't get notably better.

Agreed with Voss. The mechanical bits don't seem to be meaningfully better at exerting force than normal astartes physiology unless they're specifically designed to do so. So a servo arm (like on a servo harness) is stronger than an astartes hand, but a regular bionic limb seems to simply be roughly as strong as the meat one it replaces.

That said, cyborg bits are literally made of metal. They seem to be slightly tougher to damage with most weapons. Bullets might have trouble piercing the skin of an astartes, but they'll plink off of a metal arm (sometimes), and slashing weapons probably aren't quite as effective either. Plus, you probably don't feel (as much) pain from a mechanical limb unless you want to, and the mechanical bits theoretically don't have the (admittedly stupid high) fatigue limitations that astartes meat limbs do.

There are also the obvious benefits of a given piece of cybernetics. Astartes see in the dark pretty darn well, but a sufficiently fancy bionic eye can have all the auspex features of a helmet. If they have the right brain implants, they might also be able to interface with various firing solution cogitators, etc.


tldr; Iron Hands are probably a little tougher than average marines, but they're otherwise kind of playing a zero sum game. Computer calculated targeting and machine-steady movements improve your aim and ability to perform a kata, but it also makes you predictable and more locked into certain movements. Robot arms give you super strength, but so did the superhuman arm you lost to get it.

Voss wrote:

 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:
Basically with them replacing limbs with bionics, how much stronger and faster (and maybe durable) they are than regular Astartes?

In many ways, they should be weaker.
As their bionics become more extensive, the more super-magic semi-divine genetically engineered biology is getting removed. Its actually a step down from the signature transhuman state of the setting, to the mere cyborg level of those crazy Ad Mech cultists.

Even guardsmen and orks get bionics, and in most cases don't get notably better.

I mean, define better. Faster? Nah. But stronger? For sure. You don't want to have a handshake with a Nob wielding a power klaw. And i'm sure a techmarine would hide a one shot plasma gun or some nonsense in a cybernetic arm or as far as your imagination can take you.

Even basic bionics seem to be stronger than base human flesh (see Ciaphas Cain's augmetic fingers, deployed to good use in handshakes). How far that scales against Astartes physiology, who knows?

I like to think that given the opportunity for making a design with all the tech available to the Imperium; any tech-engineer worth his salt could easily make something stronger than that made of flesh and bone within equivalent size constraints.

How much faster? I doubt it would be much faster, speed is dictated by reaction time and nerve impulses coming from the brain. Even if you feed it into a machine, I doubt it'll move any quicker.

When it comes to durability, it depends on the degree of maintenance required. Assuming it doesn't need regular servicing, I'd estimate it about the same as flesh. Astartes have all sorts of biological tricks to eliminate muscle fatigue. They can fight for days on end.

That being said, you can probably armour up your limb somewhat and engineer in multiple redundancies to make it function better when damaged than the biological arm does comparatively.

tl;dr, probably stronger and more impervious to damage, not faster or a greater combat longevity.

Might require more of a logistical tail, given the ritual treatment of technology in 40k.

I would say that the difference between a Space Marine limb or organ and a bionic organ is rather slim since the tech of the Imperium isn't all tat great and Space Marines are basically arcanely well designed biological machines.

While a human can gain a lot from bionic limbs in terms of strength and resistence a Space Marine limb is probably much more comparable.