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If all the loyal Space Marine Chapters cut ties with the IOM and all became either neutral or even hostile could the IOM hold together?

If not, how long would it take to fall apart and how long would it take for the High Lords of Terra to lose control of Terra itself?

It wouldn't completely fall apart. I would turn into like the Craft world Eldar. Doomed to live a slow death. or quick, Chaos and Nids would be night unstoppable.

Yeah, it would hold. In some parts of galaxy definetly not easily, some part of IoM would be lost, but in the end, Astartes are not only and main line of defence.

 UlrikDecado wrote:
Yeah, it would hold. In some parts of galaxy definetly not easily, some part of IoM would be lost, but in the end, Astartes are not only and main line of defence.

What parts do you think they would lose control of?

The Ultramar sector would become a Mini IOM.

The Imperium would likely fall apart faster than its already high corrosion rate. The Ultramarines and their descendants would take Ultramar with them, the Grey Knights are the main force staving off uber-daemonic incursions, the Dark Angels would likely form into a full legion again after dropping the codex, etc. The Imperium would hold together for another couple thousand years (barring some uber threat rolling around and just bulldozing the IOM, like a full Necron attack with something like another World Engine, another Tyranid Hive fleet, or Daemons and more Daemons), but they'd certainly lose multiple sectors of space, likely all of the galactic east. They'd also lose fringe territories on the edge of the galaxy, as they're maintained by some chapters keeping the peace there.

Nobody will rebel and attack Terra (it's damn near impossible if you're not Necrons), but something like Old Night may return and swallow up humanity.

The Imperium would likely have to go on the defensive, and would lose control of some worlds/sectors, and their rapid reaction capability would be severely reduced, but they'd be far from defenseless. They'd still have the Guard and the Sisters, as well as the Inquisition and the Assassins for the really desperate threats. They'd also still have the Imperial Navy.

Also, unless the Astartes turned to Chaos in their entirety, the newly neutral marine chapters would still bear the brunt of a lot of Chaos aggression. The traitor legions have long memories and they're not going to ignore their most hated foes just because they're no longer part of the IoM.

Without the Space Marines, the Imperium would be even more doomed than it already is. The Marines has been stated consistently as being something the Imperium would not have survived this far without.

Yea, it's generally acknowledged that the Imperium is already dying NOW (which is why this era is referred to as "The Time of Ending". Castellan Crowe feels his immortality is a curse because it let him see first hand the Imperium's slow decline over the course of several generations)

No Space Marines would just speed up a process that's already taking place.

Castellan Crowe is not immortal.

Justicar Anval Thawn is.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Castellan Crowe is not immortal.

Justicar Anval Thawn is.

'

Sorry, yea, that's right. I got the names mixed up.

Yeah, its just going to have to recruit more.

TiamatRoar wrote:
Yea, it's generally acknowledged that the Imperium is already dying NOW (which is why this era is referred to as "The Time of Ending". Castellan Crowe feels his immortality is a curse because it let him see first hand the Imperium's slow decline over the course of several generations)

No Space Marines would just speed up a process that's already taking place.

But how long would it take without Space Marines? A year? A decade? A century? A millennium?

Zookie wrote:

 UlrikDecado wrote:
Yeah, it would hold. In some parts of galaxy definetly not easily, some part of IoM would be lost, but in the end, Astartes are not only and main line of defence.

What parts do you think they would lose control of?

Well, they've already lost massive portions of the Segmentum Pacificus to rebellions, not all of which are chaos influenced.

Almost everything marines do can be done by other forces, but the IoM would have to severely increase recruitment of elites like the Stormtroopers and Adepta Sororitas. Also naval units would have to be used for patrolling fringes previously watched over by this and that Chapter.

The blow to morale would do far more damage than the loss of the fraction of Imperial military power the marines represent.

It would. See the not-yet-release Astra Militarum codex for reference :

Last three lines : it says because of the Imperial Guard, not because of the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines .

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
It would. See the not-yet-release Astra Militarum codex for reference :

Last three lines : it says because of the Imperial Guard, not because of the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines .

And then Terra is promptly bulldozed by a Necron fleet. The imperial guard are good, but they're worthless against such threats as full powered Necron attacks or Daemonic infestations or infections like doubtworm.

 Wyzilla wrote:
And then Terra is promptly bulldozed by a Necron fleet.

The Imperial Guard would be helpless against a Necron fleet. And, guess what ? A Space Marine chapter would be only slightly helpless. Necron fleet advancing toward Terra ? Bring in the fleet ! Of course it is the Imperial Fleet that deals with those threats.

 Wyzilla wrote:
The imperial guard are good, but they're worthless against such threats as full powered Necron attacks or Daemonic infestations or infections like doubtworm.

Imperial Guards are more likely to hold against some Necron attack because of their numbers. I am pretty sure Catachans can deal with a daemonic infestation, they are used to deal with devils ( ). Doubtworm infestation ? Send in the Death Korps. You are clearly underestimating the Guard.

Assuming there aren't any space marines, would that mean there aren't any chaos either or at least chaos's attention would be split, which could go one of two ways they lose sight of terra and humanity and go to bring down the last of their bretheren knowing if they did the final conquest would likely be easier. Alternatively if they crusaded on the IOM or what is left with it and the space marines idly sat by it probably could spell then end of them. I don't think IOM would survive if there are marines on the enemies side but not on there own.

It's obvious that they would be forced to lose ground because without the rapid response of marines coming in to deal with threats in areas where imperium forces are too spread out to cope they would have to consolidate into a much more concentrated force in order to deal with the same things that space marines usually do.

In place of space marines however all their weaponry and even armor and cost would likely be found being spent on imperial guard, giving them things that usually their brief lives would not be worth possessing. All the weaponry would remain, all the technology bar space marines them self would remain, the adeptus mechanicus aren't entirely space marines so they would still be their pumping out vehicles. There is no reason a land raider could not be piloted by imperial guardsmen. Titans themselves ARE piloted by imperial guard.

I think with the removal of space marines the IOM would suffer but I think it would fall back to a more defendable location allowing it to equal the deficit the lack of space marines creates.

The only problem really would be the increased likelyhood of uprising, mutiny and turn to chaos as they wouldn't have grey nights or super loyal marines to keep them inline or watch over them and when you take away space marines from the inquisition there isn't overly much to fear beyond exterminatus and if they did that they would be forced to lose even more ground.

As someone said If the marines were suddenly gone I would see a time like old night returning for the imperium. The guard are the shield but they are a blunt instrument of war. Astartes have always provided the foil against the alien menace. I think if the imperium lost the Astartes we would all be drones of the greater good

 Imperious wrote:
Astartes have always provided the foil against the alien menace.

The Astartes always do the backseat drivers against alien menace, but because of their numbers, they do not do much more than galactic-partridging the guard .

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
It would. See the not-yet-release Astra Militarum codex for reference :

Last three lines : it says because of the Imperial Guard, not because of the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines .

That says nothing about SM. It says that the IoM would fall apart without the IG, which is true. But the Imperium would also fall apart without the SM, or the Inquisition, or the Ecclessiarchy, or the Mechanicus, or the Navigators. The Imperium needs everything in order to survive.

If all the SM were to suddenly turn hostile, it would be the Horus Heresy all over again. The IoM would not survive that.
If they were suddenly to turn neutral and cut ties with the IoM, the IoM could still survive. It still has the IG, and the SM would likely continue to protect humanity even without accepting the Imperium's authority. Both the IoM and SM would be severely weakened though.
If the SM were to suddenly disappear, the IoM would suddenly lose a lot of territory, as a lot of it, especially in the galactic east and along the borders is protected by the SM. The IoM would likely be able to survive; at least until the Tyranids show up or Chaos unifies and launches an all-out crusade.

The Imperium would not survive without the Space Marines. Then again, it won't survive with the Space Marines. In the overall scheme of the IoM, the Space Marines mean very little. Their contributions, while strategically important in a few occassions, are a terrible waste of resources and false faith.

If nothing else changed, and the IoM still had access to the production capabilities and recruitment ability of the Marines, I'd imagine a net loss and gain of nothing. They'd simply use those assets to build more of other types of combat units that would be just as effective.

Minus there elite combat arm, they would not last as long. Baselines humans cannot fight with same sheer aggression and durability

jhe90 wrote:
Minus there elite combat arm, they would not last as long. Baselines humans cannot fight with same sheer aggression and durability

But they do have the bloody mindedness and massive numbers to make up for it.

Easily.

The bedrock of the Imperium's defence is not a million space marines.

It's over a quadrillion guardsmen and navymen with trillions of vehicles and billions of ships and boats.

Everyone else is just support.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
It would. See the not-yet-release Astra Militarum codex for reference :

Last three lines : it says because of the Imperial Guard, not because of the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines .

That says nothing about SM. It says that the IoM would fall apart without the IG, which is true. But the Imperium would also fall apart without the SM, or the Inquisition, or the Ecclessiarchy, or the Mechanicus, or the Navigators. The Imperium needs everything in order to survive.

If all the SM were to suddenly turn hostile, it would be the Horus Heresy all over again. The IoM would not survive that.
If they were suddenly to turn neutral and cut ties with the IoM, the IoM could still survive. It still has the IG, and the SM would likely continue to protect humanity even without accepting the Imperium's authority. Both the IoM and SM would be severely weakened though.
If the SM were to suddenly disappear, the IoM would suddenly lose a lot of territory, as a lot of it, especially in the galactic east and along the borders is protected by the SM. The IoM would likely be able to survive; at least until the Tyranids show up or Chaos unifies and launches an all-out crusade.

Even with the highest end interpretations of Space marines supported by fluff; a mere million space marines would get crushed by a foe that outnumbers them quite literally more than a billion to one.

ClockworkZion even did some rather conservative estimates of the Sisters of Battle that placed them alone as numbering over ten billion.

The Adeptus Mechanicus could throw trillions of Skitarii and countless millions of Titans into the fray and simply cut off the Space marines from their logistical support and tell any techmarines that if they support the Astartes in their rebellion they're exocommunicated from the Machine Cult. Many will stay, but many others will heed the Fabricator General's orders.

The Space marines; as presented; loyal or chaotic, make up infintisemally puny segments of their faction's actual military power.

If the lost and the damned and dark mechanicus decided to kill all the chaos space marines and the daemons didn't play favorites; the Marines won't be the ones winning.

But the loyalists? The number of marines is about similar, but there's far more of everything else.

The Marines not only can't win, they can't really do much more than get steamrolled and die.

On a macro-scale, the Space marines are even less meaningful to the overall military power of the factions they serve than real world special forces.

They don't have the numbers nor the industry to matter.

They however fill some pretty key roles, could you imagine humans fighting as grey knights?

No deathwatch, grey knights, so that's 2 elite units gone. Small units but furfil very key roles vs size.

Yes a no great instant doom minus the sm chapters. However that a huge loss of rapid reaction troops and storm troopers can furfil but not with same ability per person.

More accurately it would be huge loss in tactical capability, is minus terminaitors to take on hulks, marines for rapid assaults, the huge loss in tactical, strategic skills, is can you replace a great wolf and campaign chomandor with 700+ years experience, or Dante at over 1000 years to draw back on?

jhe90 wrote:
They however fill some pretty key roles, could you imagine humans fighting as grey knights?

No deathwatch, grey knights, so that's 2 elite units gone. Small units but furfil very key roles vs size.

Yes a no great instant doom minus the sm chapters. However that a huge loss of rapid reaction troops and storm troopers can furfil but not with same ability per person.

More accurately it would be huge loss in tactical capability, is minus terminaitors to take on hulks, marines for rapid assaults, the huge loss in tactical, strategic skills, is can you replace a great wolf and campaign chomandor with 700+ years experience, or Dante at over 1000 years to draw back on?

I'm not sure if you quite comprehend how massive the gap in numbers is.

At the numbers gap involved; you could just have the DKoK flood space hulks with combat engineers, combat servitors, and bullgryns until everything is dead.

I do get, there are billions of guardsmen to one marine.

However, can you compare a admiral in navy Or IG general to a space marine chapter master with hundreds of years of experience to mere human lifespan, rare ones high hundreds of years, thousands of battles vs every enemy known to impirium.

Such officers are rare yes, but can turn a campaign.

jhe90 wrote:
I do get, there are billions of guardsmen to one marine.

However, can you compare a admiral in navy Or IG general to a space marine chapter master with hundreds of years of experience to mere human lifespan, rare ones high hundreds of years, thousands of battles vs every enemy known to impirium.

Such officers are rare yes, but can turn a campaign.

"Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics."

Tactics and planning ultimately are supplementary to advantages in economics.