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I've tried figuring it out, but I simply can't. I get the logistical aspect, but not the genetic stability issue. Does anyone care to explain?

Stable geneseed needs to be grown in basically human servitors, it takes years and years even with a starting point store of stable good quality geneseeds.

Its a slow careful process to multiply the geneseed for ernough to found a chapter + ernough to be reserve and only the best will be selected naturally.

Think its ten years to grow a cloned geneseed or even 20.

The issue that came about with the mutated Gene Seed (the Cursed Founding) was believed to be due to not getting the Emperor's Blessing.. As such now no new chapters will be created before it is given.

Since the Emperor is a bit...busy that duty falls to the Lords of Terra, who have quite a bit else to do.

jhe90 wrote:
Stable geneseed needs to be grown in basically human servitors, it takes years and years even with a starting point store of stable good quality geneseeds.

Its a slow careful process to multiply the geneseed for ernough to found a chapter + ernough to be reserve and only the best will be selected naturally.

Think its ten years to grow a cloned geneseed or even 20.

But don't normal SMs replenish their numbers in this way too?

As a Progenoid Gland matures it collects genetic material from the other implants and from the Marine himself, this can cause 'genetic instability' resulting in flawed or even non-functional gene-seed.

That issue may well affect a Chapter but should not really be a problem for the Mechanicus when creating a Founding as they should have already identified suitable gene-seed to use (most commonly Ultramarines derivatives as they are less prone to genetic instability) and the Test-Slaves themselves should also be screened.

Generally it takes fifty-five years to generate one thousand sets of healthy organs, starting with the initial test-slave and working from there. Presumably when creating a Chapter the Mechanicus just pick one set of healthy gene-seed for implantation, which would mean the new Chapter has a thousand sets of identical gene-seed rather than multiple sets of varying gene-seed.

It is also possible to mix gene-seed, as in gene-seed from different Primarchs, as was the case with the Cursed Founding but, as its name implies, that didn't go so well.

 ChazSexington wrote:

jhe90 wrote:
Stable geneseed needs to be grown in basically human servitors, it takes years and years even with a starting point store of stable good quality geneseeds.

Its a slow careful process to multiply the geneseed for ernough to found a chapter + ernough to be reserve and only the best will be selected naturally.

Think its ten years to grow a cloned geneseed or even 20.

But don't normal SMs replenish their numbers in this way too?

It grows in a marine but a test slave is not wasting a space marine + if somthing goes a wrong it's cheap and easy to replace.

For mass producing it, brain dead criminals and such are perfect. They just stand there living for years while they develop the parts needed to found the chapter. Remove organs and get a new slave. 100% expendable for the ad mech.

I think they might got the seed off the Raven Guard. After it was tainted. No one else had it before that apart from the Emp.

So blame the Alphas dropping warp blood in the sample i guess

I still don't quite see why it's difficult. There can't be much of a shortage of criminals who can be ordered to volunteer their bodies, and 55 years is nothing in Imperial reckoning.

I know op mentions it but 1000 suits of power armour, tanks, ships, a fortress monastery, maybe some termies armour, dread shells if very lucky, a planet with suitable population, geneseed, weaponry, ammunition, hell of a lot to gather and build.

Ships alone can take decades to build, big ones.
And power armour, bolters and such is produced but its top level kit and require skilled tech priests and advanced materials.

Not somthing you can do in few years.

 ChazSexington wrote:
I still don't quite see why it's difficult. There can't be much of a shortage of criminals who can be ordered to volunteer their bodies, and 55 years is nothing in Imperial reckoning.

You also have to get "founding" marines from existing chapters to teach the new ones how to space marine like a space marine.
Which means somehow getting a couple dozen active-service marines to agree to sit at home all century training rookies and not fighting xenos. It also means making them surrender their chapter associations, and being cut off from their brothers for the rest of their lives.

As a show of how difficult it can be to get a SM to agree to anything he doesn't like, refer to the time the SW nearly got into a war with the Inquisition.
You can't get them to like it, and if you press them further, you'll just piss them off. Then you go kaboom.

jhe90 wrote:
I know op mentions it but 1000 suits of power armour, tanks, ships, a fortress monastery, maybe some termies armour, dread shells if very lucky, a planet with suitable population, geneseed, weaponry, ammunition, hell of a lot to gather and build.

Ships alone can take decades to build, big ones.
And power armour, bolters and such is produced but its top level kit and require skilled tech priests and advanced materials.

Not somthing you can do in few years.

I don't buy this. Let us not forget how large the galaxy is, with millions of imperial planets. Let us say there are 100 Forge Worlds/factories that produce each of the items you listed, which is a very generous number(.0001% of planets) for your side of the discussion. They should have no problem re-supplying existing forces and supplying new forces... An example I will use is Baneblades. In the fluff it is noted how hard they are to produce. The novel Baneblade sheds some light in their production, while hard to do, they are still rolling off the production line one after another.

 Selym wrote:
You also have to get "founding" marines from existing chapters to teach the new ones how to space marine like a space marine.
Which means somehow getting a couple dozen active-service marines to agree to sit at home all century training rookies and not fighting xenos. It also means making them surrender their chapter associations, and being cut off from their brothers for the rest of their lives.

Aye, this may well be the hardest part in founding a new Chapter. While a few Comissars and priests could teach new marines the why, they still need some veteran marines to teach them the how. It's not really much touched upon in GW fiction but very many fans assume a new Chapter has to be assisted by a cadre of veterans from an existing Chapter. Without the guidance of a few veterans, well, who knows what they'll become?

And ofc the High Lords would prefer veterans from the same heritage (not necessarily the same Chapter) that delivered the gene-seed help out. So UM disciples will have a few UM-descended veterans showing them the ropes, and same for any loyalist Chapter being deemed worthy of founding a new Chapter. Some more often than others, as it's guessed something like 65+ % of the current crop of Space Marines are UM heritage.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Founding

This spells out the process behind a space marine founding. It looks like a lot of effort but we all know how GW messes up with scale sometimes

Edit: Nothing to see here....

ChazSexington wrote:But don't normal SMs replenish their numbers in this way too?

And that's the real reason more chapters aren't being founded more quickly.

The gene seed has to come from somewhere, and anyone who gives away some of theirs necessarily won't have it to replace their own losses. If the Imperium weren't in a constant state of war, this might not be a problem, but as it's somewhat dubious if space marines are even able to replace their own casualties at a fast enough rate, how are they going to have extra material left over to make marines for a different chapter?

Power armor, Rhinos, Land Raiders, Stormraven and every special snowflake piece of equipment for Space Marines are invariably called "Hard to make" or "All but lost technology".

The few forge worlds with the resources and expertise to make this crap are probably inundated with orders for the special crap they make. Getting enough crap from them to make a new chapter would probably take a long time just for them to get through their back log.

 Selym wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
I still don't quite see why it's difficult. There can't be much of a shortage of criminals who can be ordered to volunteer their bodies, and 55 years is nothing in Imperial reckoning.

You also have to get "founding" marines from existing chapters to teach the new ones how to space marine like a space marine.
Which means somehow getting a couple dozen active-service marines to agree to sit at home all century training rookies and not fighting xenos. It also means making them surrender their chapter associations, and being cut off from their brothers for the rest of their lives.

As a show of how difficult it can be to get a SM to agree to anything he doesn't like, refer to the time the SW nearly got into a war with the Inquisition.
You can't get them to like it, and if you press them further, you'll just piss them off. Then you go kaboom.

I seriously doubt the training would be a problem. Give ten Chapters an extra neophyte company to train. I doubt any Chapter would reject that.

 Ailaros wrote:

ChazSexington wrote:But don't normal SMs replenish their numbers in this way too?

And that's the real reason more chapters aren't being founded more quickly.

The gene seed has to come from somewhere, and anyone who gives away some of theirs necessarily won't have it to replace their own losses. If the Imperium weren't in a constant state of war, this might not be a problem, but as it's somewhat dubious if space marines are even able to replace their own casualties at a fast enough rate, how are they going to have extra material left over to make marines for a different chapter?

All you need is an industrial amount of lobotomised criminals to produce the geneseed. Think about it - they produce geneseed on an exponential scale. At some point they could produce a million, or a billion, progenitor glands a day if they wanted.

I've already mentioned I get the somewhat flawed logistical issue of issuing a navy and arms and armour, but I'm trying to figure out what their sci-fi reason for geneseed being a limiting factor, as that's what the fluff emphasises. I know the reason isn't likely to hold up against real genetics, but I'm wondering what their reasoning is.

Politics.

 ChazSexington wrote:
I've already mentioned I get the somewhat flawed logistical issue of issuing a navy and arms and armour, but I'm trying to figure out what their sci-fi reason for geneseed being a limiting factor, as that's what the fluff emphasises. I know the reason isn't likely to hold up against real genetics, but I'm wondering what their reasoning is.

It takes five years for the first progenoid gland to become ready for harvesting, ten years for the second. And marines usually don't harvest the second gland until the carrier dies in combat - they have the superstitious belief that it will have soaked up some of the carrier's experience and in essence will produce a "better" recruit when used to make a new marine.

And the stuff has religious significance to a marine, as a link to the Emperor, their Primarch and all those who went before. If the AdMech just trucked in a ship full of geneseed (certified pure and of your stock) few Chapters would even want to use it unless desperate. It's not been harvested in combat from proper marines serving the Chapter.

 1hadhq wrote:
Politics.

Re-read OP, I'm wondering about the genetic aspect. I'm aware of the problems some of the problems, but there's not a lot of emphasis on other issues in the fluff.

Spetulhu wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
I've already mentioned I get the somewhat flawed logistical issue of issuing a navy and arms and armour, but I'm trying to figure out what their sci-fi reason for geneseed being a limiting factor, as that's what the fluff emphasises. I know the reason isn't likely to hold up against real genetics, but I'm wondering what their reasoning is.

It takes five years for the first progenoid gland to become ready for harvesting, ten years for the second. And marines usually don't harvest the second gland until the carrier dies in combat - they have the superstitious belief that it will have soaked up some of the carrier's experience and in essence will produce a "better" recruit when used to make a new marine.

And the stuff has religious significance to a marine, as a link to the Emperor, their Primarch and all those who went before. If the AdMech just trucked in a ship full of geneseed (certified pure and of your stock) few Chapters would even want to use it unless desperate. It's not been harvested in combat from proper marines serving the Chapter.

This is a graph explaining the rate of which geneseed grows when used for creating new Chapters.

Existent Chapters are, barring Hive Fleets or such, fully capable of replenishing their own.

Spetulhu wrote:
...very many fans assume...

I've never bought into this theory personally although I know that in Deathwatch: Rites of Battle it says existing Chapters might have a hand. To my mind it goes against the dictates of the Codex Astartes; can a Chapter really be independent if its officer cadre are all from a particular Chapter? Then you have the Dark Founding for example where every Chapter created vanished without trace where you would think, if a cadre of officers were selected for each Chapter from a pre-existing Chapter at least one of them might have got the word out to their parent Chapter by now; it makes much more sense that no such convention takes place, at least not as a matter of course.

To my mind, a new Chapter should generate its own officers, natural leaders coming to the fore during the creation of the Chapter and these individuals earning their place in the Chapter's hierarchy rather than a group of outsiders being imposed. I don't necessarily say that other Space Marines are required during this process, especially as it logically follows that the Imperium would want these new Chapters to look to ordinary humans for direction first and foremost but if it were absolutely necessary than an organisation like the Deathwatch is something I have long considered to be a possibility for new Foundings, whereby existing Chapters would send officers, most likely from their own Tenth Company as these will have the most experience in actually training Space Marine recruits, to oversee the training of the new Chapters who then return to their parent Chapter at the conclusion of the Founding.

 ChazSexington wrote:
I still don't quite see why it's difficult. There can't be much of a shortage of criminals who can be ordered to volunteer their bodies, and 55 years is nothing in Imperial reckoning.

criminals and time are not the limiting factor. Cost is. The IoM, vast as it is, has finite resources. Most of them are consume just maintaining what currently exists.

 Exergy wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
I still don't quite see why it's difficult. There can't be much of a shortage of criminals who can be ordered to volunteer their bodies, and 55 years is nothing in Imperial reckoning.

criminals and time are not the limiting factor. Cost is. The IoM, vast as it is, has finite resources. Most of them are consume just maintaining what currently exists.

I've mentioned logistics (arms and armour) in OP. I'm talking about the genetic problems.

ChazSexington wrote:



This is a graph explaining the rate of which geneseed grows when used for creating new Chapters.

Existent Chapters are, barring Hive Fleets or such, fully capable of replenishing their own.

Yep. I just made a post about this recently. A First Founding chapter should theoretically have somewhere in the neighborhood fo 13,000-14,000 recovered progenoid glands, and that's with accounting for a high failure/loss rate. The number in a "perfect" world would be more than twice that. Even a 23rd Founding Chapter could have nearly 3,000 stored sets.

That's why I always kinda laugh at the idea of a "dying chapter" as a cheap narrative hook rather than an actual possibility. The only way I can see a Chapter dying off is if its fleet and homeworld were destroyed and they just got forgotten about or intentionally abandoned. A lack of geneseed would never factor into that equation though.

ChazSexington wrote:

Wait, this is ridiculous. It assumes that space marines never die, and are never killed, and that the creation of a gene-seed is always successful. None of which is true.

The way you're arguing, the earth should have three trillion people on it, not seven billion. It turns out, though, that people die all the time, and before they're able to reproduce (among other problems). There may be an attempt at an exponential graph, but it's seriously depressed by complicating factors.

I mean, it's possible for a single couple to have over 50 children, and for each of their children to have 50 children. It's biologically possible. It doesn't mean that everybody does.

 Ailaros wrote:

ChazSexington wrote:

Wait, this is ridiculous. It assumes that space marines never die, and are never killed, and that the creation of a gene-seed is always successful. None of which is true.

The way you're arguing, the earth should have three trillion people on it, not seven billion. It turns out, though, that people die all the time, and before they're able to reproduce (among other problems). There may be an attempt at an exponential graph, but it's seriously depressed by complicating factors.

I mean, it's possible for a single couple to have over 50 children, and for each of their children to have 50 children. It's biologically possible. It doesn't mean that everybody does.

And when you take into account the distinct possibility of being shot in the geneseed, or it never being recovered, or being corrupted by the warp, SM reproduction rates begin to feel depressingly low.

Mmm... Tasty grim darkness in the grimdark future.

 Ailaros wrote:

Wait, this is ridiculous. It assumes that space marines never die, and are never killed, and that the creation of a gene-seed is always successful. None of which is true.

The way you're arguing, the earth should have three trillion people on it, not seven billion. It turns out, though, that people die all the time, and before they're able to reproduce (among other problems). There may be an attempt at an exponential graph, but it's seriously depressed by complicating factors.

I mean, it's possible for a single couple to have over 50 children, and for each of their children to have 50 children. It's biologically possible. It doesn't mean that everybody does.

I said geneseed, not SMs, and I was referring to growing geneseed in criminals. So as long as they have enough criminals, that is what the graph would look like. If you always double something it's exponential.

 Selym wrote:

And when you take into account the distinct possibility of being shot in the geneseed, or it never being recovered, or being corrupted by the warp, SM reproduction rates begin to feel depressingly low.

Mmm... Tasty grim darkness in the grimdark future.

Not that low though. Like I mentioned, unless there's some sort of calamity, they should be able to replenish their own numbers without too much hassle.

 ChazSexington wrote:
I said geneseed, not SMs, and I was referring to growing geneseed in criminals. So as long as they have enough criminals, that is what the graph would look like. If you always double something it's exponential.

But it's still technology, and created by the Emperor himself to boot. For the AdMech it's the same as any other technology in the IoM - a thing to be hoarded and made to seem rare, not something to spread to the masses.

And a Chapter that has too much geneseed is seen as a problem - if not earlier then Huron and his Astral Claws proved that a Chapter with too much resources can quickly expand to disastrous numbers. They had a rich and competent industrial sector at their command, other Chapters indebted to them and enough stowed-away geneseed used on making new recruits to seriously outnumber any reasonable Codex Chapter when they finally rebelled. After this disaster the Inquisition is going to watch every Chapter's geneseed stores more closely than before, and they used to inspect them earlier too.

Spetulhu wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
I said geneseed, not SMs, and I was referring to growing geneseed in criminals. So as long as they have enough criminals, that is what the graph would look like. If you always double something it's exponential.

But it's still technology, and created by the Emperor himself to boot. For the AdMech it's the same as any other technology in the IoM - a thing to be hoarded and made to seem rare, not something to spread to the masses.

And a Chapter that has too much geneseed is seen as a problem - if not earlier then Huron and his Astral Claws proved that a Chapter with too much resources can quickly expand to disastrous numbers. They had a rich and competent industrial sector at their command, other Chapters indebted to them and enough stowed-away geneseed used on making new recruits to seriously outnumber any reasonable Codex Chapter when they finally rebelled. After this disaster the Inquisition is going to watch every Chapter's geneseed stores more closely than before, and they used to inspect them earlier too.

Still doesn't address my original point -

What genetic problems are associated with making new Chapters?

Gogsnik wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:
...very many fans assume...

I've never bought into this theory personally although I know that in Deathwatch: Rites of Battle it says existing Chapters might have a hand. To my mind it goes against the dictates of the Codex Astartes; can a Chapter really be independent if its officer cadre are all from a particular Chapter? Then you have the Dark Founding for example where every Chapter created vanished without trace where you would think, if a cadre of officers were selected for each Chapter from a pre-existing Chapter at least one of them might have got the word out to their parent Chapter by now; it makes much more sense that no such convention takes place, at least not as a matter of course.

To my mind, a new Chapter should generate its own officers, natural leaders coming to the fore during the creation of the Chapter and these individuals earning their place in the Chapter's hierarchy rather than a group of outsiders being imposed. I don't necessarily say that other Space Marines are required during this process, especially as it logically follows that the Imperium would want these new Chapters to look to ordinary humans for direction first and foremost but if it were absolutely necessary than an organisation like the Deathwatch is something I have long considered to be a possibility for new Foundings, whereby existing Chapters would send officers, most likely from their own Tenth Company as these will have the most experience in actually training Space Marine recruits, to oversee the training of the new Chapters who then return to their parent Chapter at the conclusion of the Founding.

This is all exactly right. The way you would corrupt an existing chapter, and the way the traitors corrupted the legions, is for traitors to appoint members of their factions to the most powerful positions possible. The entire point of separate chapters is preventing Calgar and Pugh from choosing the chapter masters of other chapters.

On contrary, when a new chapter selects its own chapter master and then works, voluntarily, with another chapter, they get the benefit of experienced leadership but both of the chapters have the independence to notice if the other starts growing tentacles.

Also, 1-5 tech marines with an entry level forge, constrained veteran/terminator support, and a starter kit chapter fleet are not at all as good as being a couple companies of reserve and scouts in a new chapter plus assistance of the MotF, the entire first company of the Imperial Fists, and the Phalanx.

It's totally normal for a chapter to have main line battle companies, and lesser companies that cover their flanks or provide support. This seems like a totally useful way for a new chapter to build a corps of marines good enough to form its own battle companies.

ChazSexington wrote:

I seriously doubt the training would be a problem. Give ten Chapters an extra neophyte company to train. I doubt any Chapter would reject that.

See, the OP even has a handle on it.


Here is ailaros being boring again. Remember being chased off of a website for starting your own tribute thread? I mean, your own retrospective?