Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Troike wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
(Don't you guys usually question single Codex quotes, reasoning it may just be codex bias?)

I for one tend not to do that, actually.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
which goes against reason (Space Marine armour is bigger; just look at those shoulderpads, logic certainly says it'd be more protective, though perhaps clunky),

Well, the codex quote does note that the SoB armour loses a lot of systems that Marine Armour has. It could be explained as SoB armour being built mostly for protection while Marine armour does more things beyond that.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
despite the fact that you insist that 'reason' is the way to go in an unreasonable universe.

If you're so comfortable with it being an "unreasonable" setting, then why the problem with SoB armour being as protective as Marine armour?

Any one that is not an astartes cannot fully use the Power Armor's augmentations such as strength and certain things. But the protection is not lost. So ever since they are not used they are removed. Which cuts down on power usage and being less bulky. But nowhere does it say they lose protection because of this.

The entire 40k universe is unreasonable already, so that makes that point moot. (i'm Agreeing with you Troike XD)

 Troike wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
(Don't you guys usually question single Codex quotes, reasoning it may just be codex bias?)

I for one tend not to do that, actually.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
which goes against reason (Space Marine armour is bigger; just look at those shoulderpads, logic certainly says it'd be more protective, though perhaps clunky),

Well, the codex quote does note that the SoB armour loses a lot of systems that Marine Armour has. It could be explained as SoB armour being built mostly for protection while Marine armour does more things beyond that.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
despite the fact that you insist that 'reason' is the way to go in an unreasonable universe.

If you're so comfortable with it being an "unreasonable" setting, then why the problem with SoB armour being as protective as Marine armour? If you think it's that illogical, then surely it's only a relatively small suspension of disbelief to make, considering some of the crazier stuff in 40K?

To be fair, I am not debating so much against you. I am fine with the whole Power Armour thing. But I am not okay with the rampant strawmen and hypocrisy I see when I try to give some quotes that actually have proper sources.

So, let's leave the SoB armour thing here.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
That Ceramite plate is impenetrable to lasguns?

A ludicrous claim unsupported by the lore.

To quote my earlier post: "You are making gak up."

But I am doing exactly what you are doing, ignoring sources from official documents to solve the deal with reason.

Are you saying I am wrong in copying your method?

More hypocrisy!

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
But I am doing exactly what you are doing,

No.

You can keep making that claim until your keyboard breaks, but it doesn't make it true.

 Melissia wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
But I am doing exactly what you are doing,

No.

You can keep making that claim until your keyboard breaks, but it doesn't make it true.

So you are saying that your claim that the official documents I've quoted are false is somehow different than my claim that your official documents are false?

Not that I seriously claim your documents are false, of course. It's just as an example.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
So you are saying that your claim that the official documents I've quoted are false

To quote my earlier post: "You are making gak up."

 Melissia wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
So you are saying that your claim that the official documents I've quoted are false

To quote my earlier post: "You are making gak up."

Ah, but I am referring to this.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Example sources:

Warhammer 40.000 compendium, page 129 explains

Marines are physically, mentally, and spiritually superior to any other Imperial soldier.

Space Marines 5th edition codex

They are mankind's foremost defence against a dark and brooding galaxy [...]

There is thus one Space Marine for each of the million worlds in the Imperium, a small number to be sure, yet sufficient for the task at hand.

That's two of them. Go check the 'Space Marines' section of the fluff parts in the 6th and 5th ed rulebook, as well as the latest codex, and you will see the rest. (If you insist, I can go grab them as well.)

You can only wave it off on 'codex bias' so many times, you know. And the rulebooks & compendium are not codices.

Or is it only fanfiction if it disagrees with you?

You know, the official sources you called fanfiction.

At this point, there is little left for the debate you are trying to escape to. But I will have this hypocrisy rooted out.

Or are you taking distance from your previous claims?

If you can't tell the difference between me ignoring Warhammer40k.wikia because it explicitly states that it allows fanfiction and fanon to be included within its pages, and your baseless, blind accusation that I make the same claim about codex: space marines, then frankly it isn't I that should be worried about accusations of hypocrisy.

Or, to be more blunt: "You are making gak up." Don't claim that I am making an assertion I am not making.

But you know what, I am done here. It is like arguing to a wall.(But no offense intended, mind)

Leaving it right here.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
But you know what, I am done here. It is like arguing to a wall

One made of straw, because you certainly haven't been arguing against what I have actually posted.

 Melissia wrote:
If you can't tell the difference between me ignoring Warhammer40k.wikia because it explicitly states that it allows fanfiction and fanon to be included within its pages, and your baseless, blind accusation that I make the same claim about codex: space marines, then frankly it isn't I that should be worried about accusations of hypocrisy.

Or, to be more blunt: "You are making gak up." Don't claim that I am making an assertion I am not making.

Yeah Warhammer40k.wikia has certain things that make it completely uncredible such as the fan lore. They need to split that up and make it a seperate site for it to be included in discussion. They also take the FFG lore of deathwatch into account which is interesting, because I do not.

 Melissia wrote:
If you can't tell the difference between me ignoring Warhammer40k.wikia because it explicitly states that it allows fanfiction and fanon to be included within its pages, and your baseless, blind accusation that I make the same claim about codex: space marines, then frankly it isn't I that should be worried about accusations of hypocrisy.

Or, to be more blunt: "You are making gak up." Don't claim that I am making an assertion I am not making.

Just as a final addition, I linked them to 40k wiki because it is rather hard to link my physical book pages, not because it is not written elsewhere. I stand by my sources.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Just as a final addition, I linked them to 40k wiki because it is rather hard to link my physical book pages

Just cite them. Say "Codex: Space Marines, p.##". Don't worry, we have copies we can look at.

I have and will always ignore citations of that wikia.

 Asherian Command wrote:
They also take the FFG lore of deathwatch into account which is interesting, because I do not.

To be fair, the Lexicanum does that too. I think it's a bit of an inherent thing in wikis, they catalogue all of the information on a subject and just put it all together. It'd probably be better if they had some sort of disclaimer that canon enforcement in 40K is rather lax, so some things don't always line up together nor are accepted by everyone.

 Melissia wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Just as a final addition, I linked them to 40k wiki because it is rather hard to link my physical book pages

Just cite them. Say "Codex: Space Marines, p.##". Don't worry, we have copies we can look at.

I have and will always ignore citations of that wikia.

This basically. If I weren't still home for break, I'd demonstrate page numbers for where Marines have indeed been killed by lasguns, mortars, et cetera. Or in the IG codex, strangled to death.

when concerning the survivability of a fluff marine you have to take into account on whether or not the marine has what I like to call "main character superiority". I am currently reading the Horus heresy for the first time and there are dozens of instances where other marines who were not the "Important" characters falling like flies left and right all around the main character. I know everyone dumps on black library, but you cannot just compare the character the story is focusing on at that time as "The" example of all marines, and also take into consideration that certain characters are of course going to survive stuff that a marine probably would not. it would not do for a character like Abaddon to bite it in one of the novels especially if GW is planning on another Black Crusade or something involving another important character. yes Space marines can probably survive a whole hell of a lot beyond what a normal guardsman or Xenos can, but they do fall.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

Spoiler:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
I want your babies, too.

Lolwut?

Also, again it should be noted that handwaving 70% of the Black Library simply because 'you dun like it' is ridiculous and trying to make it something it isn't, especially when as I stated earlier, hand-waving it is MORE complicated than accepting that W40K is as realistic and sensible as Marvel and DC comics, what with nearly every single race being a bunch of reality warpers operating with 'clap your hands if you believe' magic made the toys of four eldritch gods living in a dimension WHERE THERE IS NO BLOODY CAUSALITY.

W40K has and never have a shred of realism to it, nor sanity for that matter. If you, peregrine, and everyone else that takes offense to GW's portrayal of Astartes (especially post 2000 and later) to offense, you should also first take a long look at the factions you seem to hold higher than the Adeptus Astartes, who are in some degrees even more absurd than space marines themselves, what with most of the IG vehicles being designed by an inebriated armchair general with his face firmly wedged in a textbook on world war one with designs that make less sense than that of terminator armor.

As again, to repeat, W40K isn't realistic. It can't lay claim to even the smallest claim of realism. It has the logic of most modern comic-universe such as 616-Earth and any attempt to claim that it is realistic or serious, or try to warp it into realism is bloody hilarious. Nearly every bit of it is broken, stupid, nonsensical, absurd, and completely unreasonable and unrealistic, and this applies to all the factions in near equal amount.

(And the tank sloped armor comparison was fairly nonsensical as well, as energy weapons do not function at all like kinetic physical weapons. A better comparison would be PA ceramite armor being a silicon glove with the lasgun being a directional heat source like an oven-top flame. The glove can survived prolonged exposure and the hand inside it, because that's its job.[/i[)

So what do you do when an Astartes gets killed by a lasgun in the fluff? Just handwave it away?

In Storm of Iron, several Marines are killed by lasgun fire. In The First and Only, an Iron Warrior gets his head shot off by a guardsman with a lasgun.

Easily explained by having poor armor, because Astartes PA is variable in quality. Because, guess what kids!

Spoiler:

Things decay. Everything does, from atoms to armor. This is what old heavy armor looks like after simply decades of neglect. W40K takes place over a [i]ten thousand period of years. That alone is dwarfs the lifespan of our civilization the fallen before it, which simply over a period of a thousand years to dust. The typical mook CSM in a guardsmen book that gets hosed down by lasguns- even if not from the Horus Heresy, unless he's been properly outfitted, will be wearing power armor suffering from neglect and simple age. The fact that PA is even INTACT after ANY matter of centuries or millenniums alone is itself impressive.

That and there is this amazing thing called 'inconsistency' and 'variable' yields' that always cap out at a high end.
Because we also have numerous instances where Space Marines eat lasguns for breakfast, get stepped on by titans, slap bolter rounds out of the air, etc. Oh, and even if a lasgun of a bolter manages to penetrate, this isn't an instant kill, not nearly. Space marines have also survived being (and this was one NEOPHYTE)- buried under hundreds of RAGE-induced Khorne mooks, what were effectively Khorne 'zombies' and constantly punched, scraped, cut, kicked and sliced by the mob for hours until neophyte punched his way out of the mob with his bare hands. Then walked away alive not suffering from immense blood-loss- was later eviscerated by a nutjob Astartes with lightning claws, guts spilled on the ground, bleeding out, survived. Then while being carried back to base (still alive) by the hero, had everything below his abdomen bitten off by a daemon.

He, Omar the Scout Marine, was then stitched up (with no apothecary nearby) by a friendly brother and survived this- having been eviscerated by lightning claws and everything under his kidneys bitten off or mauled. He only died when he committed suicide with enough frags to bring down a stone pillar and kill a cluster of nearby furies.

And Melissa, are you simply going to ignore all evidence in a debate, or do I have to physically grab the quotes of enemies eating lasgun fire just to please you?

Wait, so Astartes power armor is awesome, except when it isn't, basically.

If Ceramite is so susceptible to decay despite the best efforts of the owners to repair it, perhaps it's a terrible material.

BrotherHaraldus wrote:

What ludicrous claims? That Ceramite plate is impenetrable to lasguns? Do I need to explain why they are? I am not sure if I am going to bother answering to the 'invulnerability of power armour' and 'Marines cannot be killed by lasguns' strawmen. They can, but it is too unlikely for me to bother debating percentages.

Except we have numerous examples of marines being killed in very likely scenarios not involving ridiculous one-in-a-million shots by stuff like lasguns. Hell we see SM's killed by knives.


Ultimately, either way, small arms kill relatively few in war, it's crew served and specialist weaponry, air attack, and especially artillery that does most of the killing. Space Marines have been shown to be killed quite easily by such weaponry, such that a Space Marine isn't coming away from an Earthshaker shell landing next to them or lascannon fire any better than a Guardsmen would. Given that such weapons are what does the vast majority of the killing, even if SM's were immune to small arms fire (which they're not), their casualties rates would be such that they'd quickly be depleted in any major pitched engagement.

That Space Marines are the foremost fighting force of the Imperium seems rather specific and factual to me.

Let's look at this. The Milky Way galaxy contains 400 billion stars with an area of 10,000,000,000,000 cubic light years, and in the 40k fluff, around a million notably populated/important Imperial worlds spread across this vast space, and wars going on all the time almost everywhere. Even in the fluff, the overwhelmingly vast majority of wars never see a single Space Marine boot. You're confusing aggrandizing progpaganda passages made for sounding cool with what actually happens. Space Marines would be so rare as to be mythical even for the most terrible of warzones.

Las-rounds whined past or pattered harmlessly off the warriors' armor. Scaevolla felt one brush his temple, but felt no pain. He pumped off another dozen rounds into the fog, each shot followed by a scream, closer this time. At his left, Opus, the bull of the squad, howled a tuneless battle-dirge accompanied by the roar of his autocannon.

Pg 92 of Space Marines, Honor Among Friends.

...whose bayonets stabbed feebly at their power armor. The troopers' attempts at swamping their attackers through sheer weight of numbers were like the ocean lashing in vain at a tidal wall.

Pg 93 of Space Marines, Honor Among Friends.

There were self-contained bunker pods strung out there, each equipped with pintle-mounted lasers.

Burns scored across ceramite and a few unlucky ones caught a charge in the face, blinded by the beams.

The battle-brother with the missile launcher was still with him, sporting an ugly singe mark from a glance on his torso, but otherwise untouched.

Pg 124 of The Flight Of The Eisenstein.

Emphasis mine. Those weren't lasguns, but rather heavier turrets that simply scorched the paint of their armor. The ones hit in the helmet simply were blinded by their auspex being scrambled, not killed or even wounded.Blinded..

Those are just immediate from the top of my head. I can look for more, and damned be any that decide to ignore these.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Wait, so Astartes power armor is awesome, except when it isn't, basically.

If Ceramite is so susceptible to decay despite the best efforts of the owners to repair it, perhaps it's a terrible material.

No, it's fething amazing because a tank with the same care would be a pile of scrap, PA actually manages to still function after ten thousand years of existence. But please, do lecture me on how blood-lusted psychopaths take such dear care of their armor, because CSM's are an assorted bunch of crazy with those being brought down by a simple lasgun likely forgetting that there is other things to war besides killing, such as 'logistics' and 'repair', because simply being a demigod doesn't excuse you from taking care of their gear.

 Vaktathi wrote:

BrotherHaraldus wrote:

What ludicrous claims? That Ceramite plate is impenetrable to lasguns? Do I need to explain why they are? I am not sure if I am going to bother answering to the 'invulnerability of power armour' and 'Marines cannot be killed by lasguns' strawmen. They can, but it is too unlikely for me to bother debating percentages.

Except we have numerous examples of marines being killed in very likely scenarios not involving ridiculous one-in-a-million shots by stuff like lasguns. Hell we see SM's killed by knives.


Ultimately, either way, small arms kill relatively few in war, it's crew served and specialist weaponry, air attack, and especially artillery that does most of the killing. Space Marines have been shown to be killed quite easily by such weaponry, such that a Space Marine isn't coming away from an Earthshaker shell landing next to them or lascannon fire any better than a Guardsmen would. Given that such weapons are what does the vast majority of the killing, even if SM's were immune to small arms fire (which they're not), their casualties rates would be such that they'd quickly be depleted in any major pitched engagement.

That Space Marines are the foremost fighting force of the Imperium seems rather specific and factual to me.

Let's look at this. The Milky Way galaxy contains 400 billion stars with an area of 10,000,000,000,000 cubic light years, and in the 40k fluff, around a million notably populated/important Imperial worlds spread across this vast space, and wars going on all the time almost everywhere. Even in the fluff, the overwhelmingly vast majority of wars never see a single Space Marine boot. You're confusing aggrandizing progpaganda passages made for sounding cool with what actually happens. Space Marines would be so rare as to be mythical even for the most terrible of warzones.

One in a million shots would come quite often if there is are thousands upon thousands of men on the ground in battle....

 Wyzilla wrote:
Emphasis mine. Those weren't lasguns, but rather heavier turrets that simply scorched the paint of their armor. The ones hit in the helmet simply were blinded by their auspex being scrambled, not killed or even wounded.Blinded..

Those are just immediate from the top of my head. I can look for more, and damned be any that decide to ignore these.

But those are BL books, and other BL books can and apparently do disagree with them. To quote somebody else earlier in the thread:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
In Storm of Iron, several Marines are killed by lasgun fire. In The First and Only, an Iron Warrior gets his head shot off by a guardsman with a lasgun.

So there's other BL books that contradict the BL books that support your position. Which is to be expected, since BL authors aren't too tightly restrained on small details like that.

 Wyzilla wrote:
But please, do lecture me on how blood-lusted psychopaths take such dear care of their armor

Power armour is long-lived, sure, but Chaos Marines do have access to Warpsmiths, the Dark Mechanicus and slaves to that sort of stuff for them, so they're not without means of maintenance.

Also, power armor is often repaired after it fails its previous owner, and then handed down to the next owner.

It's too valuable to do otherwise.

Marines are like the Spartans from Halo...they're shock troops and special forces, they operate behind enemy lands and disrupt their organization and morale,

 Imperial_Arson wrote:
Marines are like the Spartans from Halo...they're shock troops and special forces, they operate behind enemy lands and disrupt their organization and morale,

Yeah, but you know what else disrupts organization and morale? An ICBM launched from another continent. And it's much cheaper than the marines.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Imperial_Arson wrote:
Marines are like the Spartans from Halo...they're shock troops and special forces, they operate behind enemy lands and disrupt their organization and morale,

Yeah, but you know what else disrupts organization and morale? An ICBM launched from another continent. And it's much cheaper than the marines.

Lol we aren't even talking about ICBMs, we're talking about Marines, get with the program. plus, in-universe there are explanations as to why the various races do not use tactical WMDs in this manner.

 Imperial_Arson wrote:
Lol we aren't even talking about ICBMs, we're talking about Marines

Yes, and the point is that virtually everything marines do can be done better by WMDs. In real life you send your elite commandos after the enemy leadership because you need a precision strike that kills them without blowing up the school next door. In 40k you send an ICBM because blowing up the school at the same time as you kill the enemy leaders is an extra bonus and saves you the trouble of massacring all those children the hard way.

plus, in-universe there are explanations as to why the various races do not use tactical WMDs in this manner.

Not really. The major explanation is that GW wants the fluff to be all about superheroes fighting honorable duels with the enemy champion, not industrialized slaughter on a planetary scale. And so the fluff talks a lot about "grimdark", but is reluctant to portray the real horrors of war.

I don't see the relevance, really. Yes, it would make more sense to just bomb a planet or warzone into submission most of the time, but that applies for all of Imperial warfare. Why do Imperial Guard build trenches and have multi-year long trenchwars with rebels (First and Only, Straight Silver)? Why do they waste thousands of men and an entire marine chapter on boarding a a Craftworld to destroy it instead of just destroying it with their fleet?

Because Warhammer 40K. That isn't a criticism that can be allayed specifically to Space Marines, though.


- - - - - - -

Unrelated to that topic, it peeves me that people try to criticize the Black Library without being very knowledgeable about it at all. That scene with the Space Marines being killed by las-weapons in First and Only? Yeah, it was specifically noted multiple times in the story that the las-weapons being used by that particular regiment were considerably stronger than normal lasguns, and also used up much more ammo (they were basically hot-shot lasguns). Which completely fits the fluff of hotshot lasguns going through marine armor (they are AP3, afterall).

Context, children. People whine about the Black Library because "a guy who knew a guy who read the book told me that X happened. CONTRADICTION." Most of the "contradictions" people think they see in the Black Library are just lack of context.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
I don't see the relevance, really. Yes, it would make more sense to just bomb a planet or warzone into submission most of the time, but that applies for all of Imperial warfare. Why do Imperial Guard build trenches and have multi-year long trenchwars with rebels (First and Only, Straight Silver)?

Because sometimes you want to capture something intact, and it makes sense to spend cheap lives to do it. The problem is that marines are terrible at that kind of mission since they don't have the numbers to survive a planet-scale battle and hold the territory they just dropped into. And you certainly can't afford to throw them away on suicide missions or attrition warfare. So the supposed usefulness of marines is hit and run strikes on vital targets, where the marines drop in, kill everything in the area, and get out before they can be swarmed by a few million angry orks/guardsmen/whatever. And in that case, if you're just going to kill everything and leave you might as well just nuke it from a distance instead of using your unbelievably rare and precious space marines.

Lol. You already made the distinction that you're referring to a "blow up the school and everything around it" scenario. It's too late to fall back on a "because collateral damage!" argument. Considering your post about launching an ICBM was a direct response to someone pointing out the Marine's role in special-ops behind enemy lines gak, bringing up full-scale invasions and holding back the tide isn't relevant either.

Furthermore, even in that specific example I mentioned, there was no concern over collateral damage. They were literally fighting in the middle of a desert.

So we have it established that the Guard routinely engage in pointless fighting where just nuking everything would be more efficient, but they don't because welcome to Warhammer 40K.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Lol. You already made the distinction that you're referring to a "blow up the school and everything around it" scenario. It's too late to fall back on a "because collateral damage!" argument. Considering your post about launching an ICBM was a direct response to someone pointing out the Marine's role in special-ops behind enemy lines gak, bringing up full-scale invasions and holding back the tide isn't relevant either.

But you don't use guardsmen for the "blow up the enemy leaders" scenario either. You use an ICBM. I'm talking about two different situations:

1) Single specific target that needs to be killed, the role space marines are supposedly great at and guardsmen suck at. Use an ICBM and kill everything the easy way.

2) Large-scale war where you want to capture and keep a planet, the role space marines suck at and guardsmen are great (if slow) at. Send a few million guardsmen, wait until your have your planet back.

So you have one situation where marines are useless, and one situation where marines are redundant. What exactly is it that they're supposed to do that has any practical value?

So we have it established that the Guard routinely engage in pointless fighting where just nuking everything would be more efficient, but they don't because welcome to Warhammer 40K.

Sure, welcome to 40k, where if the Imperium has a choice between doing something stupid and doing something sensible they'll almost always pick the stupid option. That doesn't mean that those decisions should be viewed as reasonable and pragmatic ones.