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From my understanding Chapters can forge Rhino hulls and everything down. I recall a bit somewhere (the old Index Astartes bit on Rhinos or predators I think.) that every 13th Rhino gets melted down as a sacrifice. And that some Rhino hulls are chosen for Predators etc.

How much capacity would be needed to keep on top of combat losses? Marines (fluff-wise) don't suffer many casualties often. When marines start dropping something out of the ordinary is happening (novel worthy events even). It matters less if it takes 6 months to build a vehicle, but you lose a vehicle on average every 30 years. I assume most (not all) marine vehicles that are knocked out can be repaired. And of course a steady supply of ammo.

Tygre wrote:
How much capacity would be needed to keep on top of combat losses? Marines (fluff-wise) don't suffer many casualties often. When marines start dropping something out of the ordinary is happening (novel worthy events even). It matters less if it takes 6 months to build a vehicle, but you lose a vehicle on average every 30 years. I assume most (not all) marine vehicles that are knocked out can be repaired. And of course a steady supply of ammo.

Novel-Worthy though it may be, it still happens. And as much as the idea seems heretical- sometimes fallen Astartes get left behind on the battlefield and can't be recovered (and their Heretical kinsmen will eagerly pillage their wargear). There's also those that get lost in the warp for centuries, perhaps forever- and along with the loss of the Astartes comes the loss of precious wargear (and serfs, etc.)

So it's my thinking that they get most of the major components from Forge Worlds- but the assembly, customization, maintenance, etc. falls onto the Chapter.

There are some significant fluff examples of big Marine losses, too - the Battle for Macragge, Blood Angels' Leonatos, Crimson Fists, and Scythes of the Emperor. We know from the latter two that replacing that many lost Marines is not an easy task (the Fists being half-wiped out and taking centuries to come anywhere close to recovering, and the Scythes being effectively wiped out). It goes some way to explaining why Chapters are so keen to recover lost geneseed in particular.

I can see an argument being made that that's the Marines themselves, though, and it wouldn't be so tricky to replace their gear.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Tygre wrote:
How much capacity would be needed to keep on top of combat losses? Marines (fluff-wise) don't suffer many casualties often. When marines start dropping something out of the ordinary is happening (novel worthy events even). It matters less if it takes 6 months to build a vehicle, but you lose a vehicle on average every 30 years. I assume most (not all) marine vehicles that are knocked out can be repaired. And of course a steady supply of ammo.

Novel-Worthy though it may be, it still happens. And as much as the idea seems heretical- sometimes fallen Astartes get left behind on the battlefield and can't be recovered (and their Heretical kinsmen will eagerly pillage their wargear). There's also those that get lost in the warp for centuries, perhaps forever- and along with the loss of the Astartes comes the loss of precious wargear (and serfs, etc.)

So it's my thinking that they get most of the major components from Forge Worlds- but the assembly, customization, maintenance, etc. falls onto the Chapter.

My point is that those kinds of permanent losses are relatively rare and are not common occurrences.

I would imagine that for ship based Chapters logistics would be horrendous if they had to rely on Forgeworlds. Imagine needing to replace some vehicles and forgeworld with the contract is 5 sectors away and you need to head in the opposite direction. I am not saying the Chapters do all their own manufacturing, exceptions like ships being the obvious example, but most stuff would be in-house.

Like ships, I could see some items would require a forgeworld. Terminator armour would be likely a Forgeworld product. Marines themselves would be the true bottleneck as Super Ready mentioned.

For Primaris making the various bolt rifles, armour etc in-house would make more sense than waiting for a Forgeworld to get around to making such a small order.

Here's a twist I'd like to see; Cawl's 'innovations' are mainly salvaged from previous era. As in the blueprints were actually created using the 31st-34th ish millenia when technology had not degraded so much, and the very idea of innovation was not quite as heretical. His main achievement is figuring out the production lines, not the inventing itself (still epic and named-character-worthy, but not a setting cracker).

Judging by the lore it seems to be routine for chapters to suffer heavy losses.

Chapters tend to deploy in three ways. The first, most common approach is to send out individual task forces (i.e. battle companies, either reinforced or understrength). These will either be on patrol and attack targets of opportunity, limiting their losses if possible, or they will be sent to reinforce a larger effort, like a crusade. The chapter will suffer few losses from this sort of deployment, as their aren't many marines being put at risk.

The second sort of deployment is standard for large battles or campaigns, and involves most or all of the chapter's four battle companies, potentially reinforced by select elements of the reserve companies, as well as the usual attachments from the 1st, 10th, and armory. This scale of deployment allows the chapter to engage in heavy fighting and take the leading role in a given operation. Losses will vary wildly depending on the nature of the battle, but they will likely be heavy as this scale of commitment is only employed against serious threats. However, the reserve companies will make the losses good relatively quickly, as a chapter is organized around keeping its battle companies at full strength. Space Marines are expected to die, die early, and die often. Not as often as Guardsmen, obviously, but very marines survive to be veterans.

The third kind of deployment involves the entire chapter, more or less, and this seems to be relatively rare. It has all of the same risks and characteristics as the "multiple battle companies" approach, save that losses are even more likely to be high, and more difficult to replace. In this sort of deployment a chapter can be worn down to almost nothing in fairly short order if a battle goes wrong.

In the Badab War books, for example, a chapter engaged in heavy fighting could be rendered ineffective after several battles or an extended campaign. Multi-company task forces were usually limited to handful of battles before they had to withdraw and reequip. The Badab War involved intense fighting against highly formidable foes, so the casualties were almost certainly higher than the norm. However, it is probable that a chapter fighting a major Chaos incursion, a Hive Fleet, or an Eldar Swordwind would probably suffer losses at an even higher rate.

You're forgetting the most common deployment method: A few squads and a Captain/Libby/Chaplain. All the way down to a demi-squad.

Uriel, Ragnar, the BT in Priests/Lords/Gods of Mars, its a pretty common thing.


A full company honestly is relatively rare, let alone multiple companies in the same war. That's reserved for the really big campaigns (Armaggeddon War, Battle of Macragge, etc).

Full chapter almost never happens At least a company stays home, and various detached elements generally add up to at least another.
When it does happens, its often when enemies come to them- the Crimson Fists, the BA in Devastation of Baal, Magnus vs Fenris, either time.

remember what we read about isn't the average bog standard deployment, it's the exciting bits. because "a squad of 10 marines drop podded down onto a world and slaughtered the unperpared cultists in an afternoon" is..... pretty dull.

One plot that would be fun to explore is the negative impact on logistics of having new state-of-the-art equipment.

Imagine a chapter that was given all the new bells and whistles that Cawl could offer. They've made big progress in their sector for a century or two. Then the wear-and-tear on their equipment starts to be a problem and they realize that because of the higher complexity, the techmarines don't have the capacity to manufacture enough of some critical replacement parts. They try to revert to older equipment, slowing down their manufacturing even more as all the machinery has to be reconfigured. Then they run into compatibility issues and have to maintain separately the older and newer stuff, putting even more strain on their forges... until the chapter is completely unable to fight effectively anymore and has to abandon its mission and rush to the nearest forge world to get that stuff sorted out.

Voss wrote:
You're forgetting the most common deployment method: A few squads and a Captain/Libby/Chaplain. All the way down to a demi-squad.

Uriel, Ragnar, the BT in Priests/Lords/Gods of Mars, its a pretty common thing.


A full company honestly is relatively rare, let alone multiple companies in the same war. That's reserved for the really big campaigns (Armaggeddon War, Battle of Macragge, etc).

Full chapter almost never happens At least a company stays home, and various detached elements generally add up to at least another.
When it does happens, its often when enemies come to them- the Crimson Fists, the BA in Devastation of Baal, Magnus vs Fenris, either time.

I included most of those smaller deployments when I mentioned "understrength companies." A few squads, a commander, and some vehicles. The important bit is that those deployments have their own space ship, which allows them to act independently.

You are right, though, that it is common to have a single squad, a dreadnought, or equivalent go out on it own. Sometimes they're an honor guard, sometimes they're a scouting force, and sometimes they're responding to a request from an Inquisitor or Imperial Commander. An omission on my part.

I disagree, though, that company-sized deployments are rare. GW goes to great lengths to emphasize that a company or demi-company is the standard size of deployment for Space Marines, especially in a warzone. There may be an argument that warzones are relatively rare compared to, say, "kill team"-type operations, but fighting in warzones is the primary purpose of Space Marines so I see no problem in emphasizing that sort of deployment.

 Tiennos wrote:
One plot that would be fun to explore is the negative impact on logistics of having new state-of-the-art equipment.

Imagine a chapter that was given all the new bells and whistles that Cawl could offer. They've made big progress in their sector for a century or two. Then the wear-and-tear on their equipment starts to be a problem and they realize that because of the higher complexity, the techmarines don't have the capacity to manufacture enough of some critical replacement parts. They try to revert to older equipment, slowing down their manufacturing even more as all the machinery has to be reconfigured. Then they run into compatibility issues and have to maintain separately the older and newer stuff, putting even more strain on their forges... until the chapter is completely unable to fight effectively anymore and has to abandon its mission and rush to the nearest forge world to get that stuff sorted out.

No, because that would stop the Primaris train from running.

Face it, there's no logic with this fluff.

Hecaton wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:
One plot that would be fun to explore is the negative impact on logistics of having new state-of-the-art equipment.

Imagine a chapter that was given all the new bells and whistles that Cawl could offer. They've made big progress in their sector for a century or two. Then the wear-and-tear on their equipment starts to be a problem and they realize that because of the higher complexity, the techmarines don't have the capacity to manufacture enough of some critical replacement parts. They try to revert to older equipment, slowing down their manufacturing even more as all the machinery has to be reconfigured. Then they run into compatibility issues and have to maintain separately the older and newer stuff, putting even more strain on their forges... until the chapter is completely unable to fight effectively anymore and has to abandon its mission and rush to the nearest forge world to get that stuff sorted out.

No, because that would stop the Primaris train from running.

Face it, there's no logic with this fluff.

if you go by logistical logic, then having a special elite quasi feudal knight class as a whole is not logic for a galaxy spanning imperium

Not Online!!! wrote:
if you go by logistical logic, then having a special elite quasi feudal knight class as a whole is not logic for a galaxy spanning imperium

I don't believe we have enough info for this. Compare a modern military situation: say, a soldier with a gun and some training and not much else, a soldier with a lot of training and gear, a helicopter with crew etc., a fighter with crew etc.

Like, military is not my thing, but there are wild disparities in cost, efficiency, and most importantly function.

It's entirely possible that said knight class is necessary or simply most efficient for the role in a thinly-spread empire facing all sorts of crazy horrors. Not that this is mechanically represented well or anything, but isn't the theoretical idea that they're most often seen when things are not able to be handled by regular soldiers? Isn't there a logic to having expensive specialists ready for jobs that cheap generalists would be inefficient at responding to? What if, when Marines aren't present, whatever super-duper threat typically wrecks several times more what it costs to deploy that knight class?

Yeah, it's silly that they have so many swords and their armies are teeny-tiny and would be wrecked by attrition faster than they could be replaced since they have tiny reserves. But I think there's nothing inherently wrong with the logic of sending in the space cavalry.

I'm not sure how rare Marines actually are, anyways. I know the usual estimate is 1000 chapters while the Imperium has 1000000 worlds, but I really don't trust any numbers GW writers throw around. If you really look into the details of about anything in the setting, it starts to fall apart.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
The new! big! extra-big! extra-new! Marines with special bolters as troops choices kinda got me thinking... What happened to Marines (of any kind) being special?

1) I admit that I'm not very up to date: hence, this is a real question, but it also might have a regular old answer I missed.

2) my favorite conflict (or at least representation of Marines) in 40k is the Badab war, in large part because a lot of it has to do with forces stretched thin.

But, like, I'm kinda used to Marines as relic everything, from storied and rebuilt suits of power armor, to basic bolters being armoury heirlooms, to of course esoteric stuff like dreads being not just sarcophagi but themselves important historical objects. (Yeah, STCs help recover, but they're still not exactly disposable.)

You've got your 10 companies built around maximizing resources and staying fighting fit, with the tactical squad at the hear of this that (rules don't always represent this the best) are supposed to be able to do whatever they need to as line troops.

But now we've got 5 primaris troops types that are within the narrative all filling the tactical marine role in battle companies? I get (assume) that the phobos stuff is replacing scouts down the line and seems to mechanically fill that role, but that's a ton of new types of specialists and gear available to basic marines. So, is there a narrative reason Marines (spread across the Imperium on a bajillion front) suddenly have access to a ton of gear with a lot of variation? Like, I liked that Marines, despite all their silly best whatever were balanced by every one of them being some storied hero in relic gear, even if mechanically they're still just tactical goons, and I feel like that's been lost--am I alone in losing the fun of marines? Primaris are nicely sculpted and all, but I'm missing the charm.

You either feel the charm or you don't. Nobody can make you feel it. The good news is that its a big galaxy. Your Tenebrous Edge of Grim Darkness Chapter can be cut off from logistical support, keeping things functional by using Oaths of Moment as guntape and eschewing all of the new gear. Others can choose to have fun with the shiny new stuff that Cawl produced.

There are only 1000 Chapters, each with 1000 marines. That is a trivial amount for a galaxy-spanning empire to support. WW2 Germany went through a rearmament cycle for its army (small arms, tanks) while engaged in a six-year multi-front war with access denied to outside resources.

In the 40K universe, a handful of forges/factories could develop and produce the range of Primaris weaponry for all Chapters. So yes, they do have access to what would seem like infinite resources compared to their size/demand signal.

ps - The logistics of ammunition natures in the Grimdark future is somewhat mysterious. I'm sure that the Logistics Officer for a Space Marine strike force would prefer as much commonality as possible. Wrong game, of course!

 Tiennos wrote:
I'm not sure how rare Marines actually are, anyways

If you're referring to my comment on tiny forces, I was referring to specific force attrition. Not that there aren't potentially marines to replace lost forces but like, how the hell are any first founding chapters still around? How have they never since the HH suffered losses which couldn't be recovered, whether biological, technological, or cultural? How have the Dark Angels (or whoever) more or less maintained continuity? I don't need a history of SM librarians or whatever, here. I mean that I just find it silly that, especially with all of the epic wipe-out historical conflicts and planet-decimating battles that SM function in their tiny armies (10,000 or even 50,000 would still be small cultures to try to maintain). IDK.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
If you're referring to my comment on tiny forces, I was referring to specific force attrition. Not that there aren't potentially marines to replace lost forces but like, how the hell are any first founding chapters still around? How have they never since the HH suffered losses which couldn't be recovered, whether biological, technological, or cultural? How have the Dark Angels (or whoever) more or less maintained continuity? I don't need a history of SM librarians or whatever, here. I mean that I just find it silly that, especially with all of the epic wipe-out historical conflicts and planet-decimating battles that SM function in their tiny armies (10,000 or even 50,000 would still be small cultures to try to maintain). IDK.

Well... yeah, the setting doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 10000 years is more than recorded human history so far. 10000 years ago, people were still hunter-gatherers using stone tools and barely beginning to figure out agriculture. The idea that anything (whether it's a space marine chapter or something else) can maintain its knowledge and traditions intact through literally hundreds of generations is ridiculous.

I think the loss of culture and the sheer scale is absolutely great for RPG-style stuff. But yes, between relics of older editions' fluff that don't make sense (chapter size) and new stuff (HH getting detailed, all sorts of denser history) I feel like something was lost. I guess 4/5 times at least I'd prefer to let things stay ambiguous and nebulous, since that imaginary space (which I think was really nicely integrated into early fluff) is more interesting than some decent writing.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Here's a twist I'd like to see; Cawl's 'innovations' are mainly salvaged from previous era. As in the blueprints were actually created using the 31st-34th ish millenia when technology had not degraded so much, and the very idea of innovation was not quite as heretical. His main achievement is figuring out the production lines, not the inventing itself (still epic and named-character-worthy, but not a setting cracker).

That's kind of how I see it, other than the problem is that while that works for vehicles, most of those weapons would not have had a reason to be designed at Astartes scale for. They'd be smaller human-portable frames.

Also, there could be an argument that Primaris were not suddenly thrown at players; several Editions back, there was at least one fluff piece that had Imperial Explorators coming across a secret lab that had been growing larger-than-average Astartes specimens, and it had been plundered by Fabius Bile's goons. I mean, they WERE literally suddenly introduced to the game with 8th edition, but older players can use some of the older fluff (that was really otherwise a throwaway) to flesh out the headcanon of Primaris by saying stories like the one above were secret Cawl labs.

40k also has a long proud tradtion of bringing something in, claiming it's been there for a long time/always been there, and fleshing it out after the fact., for an example... the Horus Heresy comes to mind

That is generally a practical way to write settings, if not the only practical way.