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BrotherVord wrote:

A 20% loss rate is completely stupid and would have to apply to space marines as well. If astartes lost their lives in 20% if warp travels they'd be gone in a year

20% isn't actually that difficult a statistic to believe tho. firstly. the Imperial navy consists of the merchant fleet, the civil fleet, and the warfleets, of which 90% are merchant vessals. Therefore, by its very nature, the merchant fleet will suffer the most losses due to them, eh, having to almost constantly travel between point to points. While the survival rate per trip is 80%, the casualty rate per ship over, say, n trips, is 1 - (0.8)^n (*cough*, just in case, 0.8^n is the probability of the ship to survive n trips). As you can see, due to the constant traveling, the casualty rate of a ship is increasing exponentially as the number of trips the ship makes increases. Therefore the merchant fleet must have taken the bulk of the losses. Second highest casualty is probably suffered by the warfleets as they are responsible for moving IG regiments across systems, even segmentums, almost unceasingly, IIRC, the IG codex states that many armies arrived to their destinations decades, or even centuries after the intended date, or maybe traveling back in time, some are never seen again. It stands for reason that the Inquisitorial Black Ships suffered a large lose as well, just not as significant due to their relatively small number and their secretive nature.

The Space Marine Chapters, while not on campaigns, typically stroll around their own sectors, thereby reducing their exposure to the wrap; crusading chapters, such as the Black Templars, has lost countless crusade over the millenaria, many of which had little records.

Yet, even with such conditions, quiet a few space marine chapters had been lost to the warp, in keeping up with the best efficiency that the Administratum can conjure up (after all, said organization managed to lose information on all but two of the 13th founding chapters, and of the two nothing about their history is known), of all 27 recorded lost space marine chapters, 3 chapters, the fire hawks, star scorpions, and tiger claws (not counting those lost during the Abyssal Crusade for obvious reasons) are recorded to have been lost to the warp. And many chapters have had elements, or even companies, lost to the warp, the most famous being the 13th Great Company, albeit one may argue they deliberately remained in the EoT of their own accord; the aforementioned Black Templars lost battle barge Hammer of War to the warp. Same can be said for countless Chapters created for various other reasons in the official 40K materials.

Since of the roughly thousand chapters that's said to exist, only around one hundred that's ever been confirmed either through GW official materials, BL publishings, and FW products, it stands to reasons many more chapters have been lost the warp over the l0,000 years.

tl;dr: due to the majority of the imperial vessels are constantly voyaging merchant ships, the casualty rate is actually quite believable.

 lcmiracle wrote:

BrotherVord wrote:

A 20% loss rate is completely stupid and would have to apply to space marines as well. If astartes lost their lives in 20% if warp travels they'd be gone in a year

20% isn't actually that difficult a statistic to believe tho. firstly. the Imperial navy consists of the merchant fleet, the civil fleet, and the warfleets, of which 90% are merchant vessals. Therefore, by its very nature, the merchant fleet will suffer the most losses due to them, eh, having to almost constantly travel between point to points. While the survival rate per trip is 80%, the casualty rate per ship over, say, n trips, is 1 - (0.8)^n (*cough*, just in case, 0.8^n is the probability of the ship to survive n trips). As you can see, due to the constant traveling, the casualty rate of a ship is increasing exponentially as the number of trips the ship makes increases. Therefore the merchant fleet must have taken the bulk of the losses. Second highest casualty is probably suffered by the warfleets as they are responsible for moving IG regiments across systems, even segmentums, almost unceasingly, IIRC, the IG codex states that many armies arrived to their destinations decades, or even centuries after the intended date, or maybe traveling back in time, some are never seen again. It stands for reason that the Inquisitorial Black Ships suffered a large lose as well, just not as significant due to their relatively small number and their secretive nature.

The Space Marine Chapters, while not on campaigns, typically stroll around their own sectors, thereby reducing their exposure to the wrap; crusading chapters, such as the Black Templars, has lost countless crusade over the millenaria, many of which had little records.

Yet, even with such conditions, quiet a few space marine chapters had been lost to the warp, in keeping up with the best efficiency that the Administratum can conjure up (after all, said organization managed to lose information on all but two of the 13th founding chapters, and of the two nothing about their history is known), of all 27 recorded lost space marine chapters, 3 chapters, the fire hawks, star scorpions, and tiger claws (not counting those lost during the Abyssal Crusade for obvious reasons) are recorded to have been lost to the warp. And many chapters have had elements, or even companies, to the warp, the most famous being the 13th Great Company, albeit one may argue they deliberately remained in the EoT of their own accord; the aforementioned Black Templars lost battle barge Hammer of War to the warp. Same can be said for countless Chapters created for various other reasons in the official 40K materials.

Since of the roughly thousand chapters that's said to exist, only around one hundred that's ever been confirmed either through GW official materials, BL publishings, and FW products, it stands to reasons many more chapters have been lost the warp over the l0,000 years.

tl;dr: due to the majority of the imperial vessels are constantly voyaging merchant ships, the casualty rate is actually quite believable.

If you where running a buisness or a real military or well anything important, a 20% loss is huge...

Also i am 100% certain i have seen all the chapters named and pictured in a GW book too so we know which ones exist.

And the reason there are so many merchant ships is because they are vital... so even if its beleivable to have losses like that, its not possible that the empire would be able to survive with losses like that.

Ok while I did disagree with Swastakowey as to the general rate of loss 20% is absurdly high and far in excess of what I'd imagine- especially for one of the more stable and established lanes. Even if we ignore the 20% loss rate we still have a 1-6 week arrival time which- excluding the outliers- is still a horrible time lag to coordinate maneuvers over. The only way to compensate would be to overdo everything such that the margin of error wasn't applicable.

 Swastakowey wrote:

If you where running a buisness or a real military or well anything important, a 20% loss is huge...

Also i am 100% certain i have seen all the chapters named and pictured in a GW book too so we know which ones exist.

And the reason there are so many merchant ships is because they are vital... so even if its beleivable to have losses like that, its not possible that the empire would be able to survive with losses like that.

First of all, not all of the Space Marine chapters are listed, there are official list of known space marine chapters, be it loyalist or renegade, but not all space marine chapters, and several foundings had any of their chapter listed in known official materials. It is stated in, as far as I know, in both the 5E and 6E 40K rule book, there are roughly one thousand Space Marine Chapters in service of the Imperium, and many has been lost during the millennia, either disbanded/annihilated. or became renegade/excommunicated. There is no, at least no official list of complete list of SM chapters, anywhere. It is first because that will a ton of work, and second to allow fans some room for customizable chapters.

Second, 40K is soft sci-fi, it doesn't have to follow scientific methods, or carefully explain they machinations of its techs. It's essentially high fantasy medieval Europe to around the beginning of the age of enlightenment, with certain advanced techs. Many of its themes are taken from events from ancient to semi-modern human history. The status of the merchant fleet is likely taken from the events of the Age of Discovery, where the voyaging technologies were immature (lack of proper self-locating devices), merchant ships suffered from widespread piracy, and the number of ships lost were high. It was, however, a time of great opportunities, when the cost of manpower were low, and the profit was high. Also, The worlds needs these products, it was not a matter of choice, it was either die on a streamline on a forgeworld from working overtime everyday from age 16, starve to death in the lower hive, or die in a gang fight for stupid reasons.

Of all the choice a imperial citizen could have, many who had the fortune to purchase a small vessel, who could not stand the torment of a hiveworld, and yet is not fortunate enough to be amongst the upper hive nobles, would likely choose to risk venturing out for unknown fortunes. It is a believable situation, under the already established settings of the world, and is actually not that far off from the realm possibility, then, say, hordes of Daemons swarming through portals to another dimension.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kojiro wrote:
Ok while I did disagree with Swastakowey as to the general rate of loss 20% is absurdly high and far in excess of what I'd imagine- especially for one of the more stable and established lanes. Even if we ignore the 20% loss rate we still have a 1-6 week arrival time which- excluding the outliers- is still a horrible time lag to coordinate maneuvers over. The only way to compensate would be to overdo everything such that the margin of error wasn't applicable.

Ok, I'm done here, but I've got a few more arguments to make: previously I brought up the topic of the age of discovery, of which only tales and incomplete statics seems to remain, which is rather unfortunate as it would have made an excellent point had there been readily available numbers somewhere I can grab with no effort. So I'll try to make a slipper-slope argument, using what I found from my half-ass google searches.

The Age of discovery on the high sea arguably ended sometime around late 16th century to early 17th centry (1550s - 1600s), with the advent of advanced seafaring tools, the establishing of trade routes, and the lack of new lands to be discovered. Afterwards trading was common between the old worlds and the new. Since the only list of ships sunk during, and shortly after that period I can find, is about the East Indian Company vessels, and no one seemed to give a casualty rate, I'll pull out a bunch of stat sheets provided by the International Maritime Organization based in Britain, that has nothing to do with the ancient ages: CASUALTY STATISTICS AND INVESTIGATIONS Loss of life from 2006 to date. Note: this is a PDF file. Notice on the first table provided, Annex, page 1, the lose ratio of most long voyaging vessels to total lost vessels are around 7% - 13%, The trend of both ship lose and lose to total ratio is decreasing by year.

Now since I've got no other statistics, and couldn't find any other useful researches, I shall argue that: since voyaging techs have a tendency of being improved by year, and logically, such techs should decrease lose rate of vessels, thus when techs were more primitive, the vessel lose ratios must have been higher.

Here ends my slippery-slope argument; now you might be asking, why the @#$( are you talking about seafaring, these are space ships we are talking about you @#$*#!... well that's not very nice, is it now? So allow me to elaborate: as I established before, the space-faring in the Warhammer 40K universe, is a colloquialism for pre-modern seafaring. The 40K naval ships have not reliable way of navigating, and their chance to survive a voyage depends on the experience of the crew, the condition (weather) of the warp (sea), and the absence of pirates that frequents busy trade routes. Still the profit of a successful trade out-weights the risk (cost of losses, lives, etc.), hence it continued despite high casualty rates.

Last Edited: Fixed incorrect pdf file hyperlink.

 lcmiracle wrote:
Here ends my slippery-slope argument; now you might be asking, why the @#$( are you talking about seafaring, these are space ships we are talking about you @#$*#!... well that's not very nice, is it now? So allow me to elaborate: as I established before, the space-faring in the Warhammer 40K universe, is a colloquialism for pre-modern seafaring. The 40K naval ships have not reliable way of navigating, and their chance to survive a voyage depends on the experience of the crew, the condition (weather) of the warp (sea), and the absence of pirates that frequents busy trade routes. Still the profit of a successful trade out-weights the risk (cost of losses, lives, etc.), hence it continued despite high casualty rates.

I'm really not sure what you're arguing. It *seems* like you're trying to say that warp travel is perilous but essential and so still done, which no one is denying. My only claim was that co-ordination (especially military) must be a bitch when you've got a 1-6 week travel time for a safe and well known route. Even if the number was only 10% for military vessels you're still talking about a fleet being decimated just for being deployed. Even at 1% you're only going to get so many trips before disaster strikes.

 Kojiro wrote:

I'm really not sure what you're arguing. It *seems* like you're trying to say that warp travel is perilous but essential and so still done, which no one is denying. My only claim was that co-ordination (especially military) must be a bitch when you've got a 1-6 week travel time for a safe and well known route. Even if the number was only 10% for military vessels you're still talking about a fleet being decimated just for being deployed. Even at 1% you're only going to get so many trips before disaster strikes.

... I don't see how that's gonna be a problem, considering not matter how untold trillions of guardsmen have died from countless campaigns they participated in, it seems to never deter the imperium from committing more guardsmen to the meat grinder. It is but minor nuisance for the Adminstratum to call for more imperial guard regiments to replace the loses. Besides, they probably never expected all of them to make it there to begin with. Even if only one-tenth of the total expected regiments show up, they'll just call for more. Let's just say... they are collateral damages

The Kieldar Offensive, as described in both the 5E rulebook and the Imperial Guard codex, showing that the Imperium is willing to commit 90 regiments of Infantry, Airdrop troops, Armour, and naval detachments from Cadia, Morax, Loriar, Elysia, Catacan, Aegis, Tallarn, Harkoni, Neocassan, Paragon, Vostroya, Brimigham, Mordian, Jjojos, Pintax, Athanos, K'phrani, Rassiosan, and Bannan, just to prevent one world from seceding, while suffering heavy casualties in the process. (Warhammer 40K Rulebook, 5E, p142-143; Codex: Imperial Guard, 5E, p24).

The Imperial Guards can also be raised per-needed:
"...As war descends upon neighbouring systems new regiments will be raised and army groups formed, drawn from the resources of all nearby planets... When Waaagh! Grax invaded the Ryza system in 925.M41, all planets within ten light years were ordered to recruit and raise at least an additional fifty regiments ...to counter the Ork invasion. Should the Imperium's response not prove to be decisive... reinforcements will be drawn from further away and more regiments are raised to replace the losses." (Codex: Imperial Guard, 5E, p10).
The regiments aren't a problem of the Adminstratum, they are the problem of the Recruiting Worlds that raised them: they are supported by their homeworlds and likely compensated for their service according to their homeworld's customs. Their service is a payment to the Imperium as a sort of "feudal duty".

 Kojiro wrote:

 lcmiracle wrote:
Here ends my slippery-slope argument; now you might be asking, why the @#$( are you talking about seafaring, these are space ships we are talking about you @#$*#!... well that's not very nice, is it now? So allow me to elaborate: as I established before, the space-faring in the Warhammer 40K universe, is a colloquialism for pre-modern seafaring. The 40K naval ships have not reliable way of navigating, and their chance to survive a voyage depends on the experience of the crew, the condition (weather) of the warp (sea), and the absence of pirates that frequents busy trade routes. Still the profit of a successful trade out-weights the risk (cost of losses, lives, etc.), hence it continued despite high casualty rates.

I'm really not sure what you're arguing. It *seems* like you're trying to say that warp travel is perilous but essential and so still done, which no one is denying. My only claim was that co-ordination (especially military) must be a bitch when you've got a 1-6 week travel time for a safe and well known route. Even if the number was only 10% for military vessels you're still talking about a fleet being decimated just for being deployed. Even at 1% you're only going to get so many trips before disaster strikes.

Yep, that's how it works, basically.

Of course, getting lost in the Warp isn't a death sentence automatically.... people do return, whole and unharmed, from Warp trips years, even centuries, later.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 lcmiracle wrote:

BrotherVord wrote:

A 20% loss rate is completely stupid and would have to apply to space marines as well. If astartes lost their lives in 20% if warp travels they'd be gone in a year

20% isn't actually that difficult a statistic to believe tho. firstly. the Imperial navy consists of the merchant fleet, the civil fleet, and the warfleets, of which 90% are merchant vessals. Therefore, by its very nature, the merchant fleet will suffer the most losses due to them, eh, having to almost constantly travel between point to points. While the survival rate per trip is 80%, the casualty rate per ship over, say, n trips, is 1 - (0.8)^n (*cough*, just in case, 0.8^n is the probability of the ship to survive n trips). As you can see, due to the constant traveling, the casualty rate of a ship is increasing exponentially as the number of trips the ship makes increases. Therefore the merchant fleet must have taken the bulk of the losses. Second highest casualty is probably suffered by the warfleets as they are responsible for moving IG regiments across systems, even segmentums, almost unceasingly, IIRC, the IG codex states that many armies arrived to their destinations decades, or even centuries after the intended date, or maybe traveling back in time, some are never seen again. It stands for reason that the Inquisitorial Black Ships suffered a large lose as well, just not as significant due to their relatively small number and their secretive nature.

The Space Marine Chapters, while not on campaigns, typically stroll around their own sectors, thereby reducing their exposure to the wrap; crusading chapters, such as the Black Templars, has lost countless crusade over the millenaria, many of which had little records.

Yet, even with such conditions, quiet a few space marine chapters had been lost to the warp, in keeping up with the best efficiency that the Administratum can conjure up (after all, said organization managed to lose information on all but two of the 13th founding chapters, and of the two nothing about their history is known), of all 27 recorded lost space marine chapters, 3 chapters, the fire hawks, star scorpions, and tiger claws (not counting those lost during the Abyssal Crusade for obvious reasons) are recorded to have been lost to the warp. And many chapters have had elements, or even companies, to the warp, the most famous being the 13th Great Company, albeit one may argue they deliberately remained in the EoT of their own accord; the aforementioned Black Templars lost battle barge Hammer of War to the warp. Same can be said for countless Chapters created for various other reasons in the official 40K materials.

Since of the roughly thousand chapters that's said to exist, only around one hundred that's ever been confirmed either through GW official materials, BL publishings, and FW products, it stands to reasons many more chapters have been lost the warp over the l0,000 years.

tl;dr: due to the majority of the imperial vessels are constantly voyaging merchant ships, the casualty rate is actually quite believable.

If you where running a buisness or a real military or well anything important, a 20% loss is huge...

Also i am 100% certain i have seen all the chapters named and pictured in a GW book too so we know which ones exist.

And the reason there are so many merchant ships is because they are vital... so even if its beleivable to have losses like that, its not possible that the empire would be able to survive with losses like that.

No. As of yet a thousand current chapters have not been named.

Someone already made a point of telling me that haha. Im not a huge fan of the fluff so i get a fair amount wrong. I also hate space marines So how many are named? Because i have seen many pages of named ones with colour chemes.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Someone already made a point of telling me that haha. Im not a huge fan of the fluff so i get a fair amount wrong. I also hate space marines So how many are named? Because i have seen many pages of named ones with colour chemes.

WellI, by simply copy-pasting the list of known space marine loyalist and renegade chapters, Chaos legions and warbands on lexicanum as seen here here (web, accessed 1/14/14), to notepad++. I can see there are 356 lines, which means there are 356 named space marine chapters/legions, and warbands found on lexicanum. I'd say that's probably a good approximation, as long as the BL writers don't make up more chapters for their books of course...

Poly Ranger wrote:
So one day during the christmas holidays I spent a day reading about every single subsector and listed planet on lexicanum including the current conflicts going on in these subsectors. Now I know it only covers a very small fraction of the actual amount of imperial worlds, fair enough, but looking at the subsectors, not planets, it seems pretty much everyone of them is embattled. If this is the case, then from where do these massive imperial reinforcement fleets come from? And how can the Imperium raise gigantic crusading fleets? I mean I get its all grimdak, but surely at least ONE subsector barring Sol and Ultimar must be having some breathing room, otherwise nobody would be able to afford to send reinforcements to anyone else!

Just wanted to point out (hopefully nobody beat me to it) - the list on lexicanum is only of "known" sectors/subsectors/planets, etc. There are a LOT more, and chances are high that the ones listed come from Black Library/other sources, and chances are that they are mentioned in those sources because there is something worth writing about going on... like a war...