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.

I thought geneseed problems arose much the same way as genetic issues in real life human beings! Aging in humans is considered to happen because as cells reproduce they create a copy of themselves and that copy makes a copy. Take video footage as an example, you make a copy, you will not notice any differance from the original, however if you make a copy of a copy of a copy, and so on, imperfections start to show. and no matter what you do to try and restore the image you can never get it to look as good as the original recording
Also cancer is the human genetic structure going out of control and turning on the body.

If you apply this thinking to the SM geneseed, small flaws become exaggerated over thousands of replecations, over thousands of years! And if you start with flawed geneseed, such as the Blood Angels, you end up with an amplified flaw such as found in the Flesh Tearers, occuring much faster!

Also problems can arise from the genetics of the populace of a planet that the chapter recruites from, it may be that the people of the planet have no outward mutation, but when combined with SM geneseed it creates one!

The genetics are a problem because after the horus heresy the mechanicum became stupid (must have been because of the Dark magos demon virus that happened during the war on Mars) and they don't have the technical knowledge how to correct things in a process as delicate as gene seed copying.

 Boss Stompa wrote:
I thought geneseed problems arose much the same way as genetic issues in real life human beings! Aging in humans is considered to happen because as cells reproduce they create a copy of themselves and that copy makes a copy. Take video footage as an example, you make a copy, you will not notice any differance from the original, however if you make a copy of a copy of a copy, and so on, imperfections start to show. and no matter what you do to try and restore the image you can never get it to look as good as the original recording
Also cancer is the human genetic structure going out of control and turning on the body.

If you apply this thinking to the SM geneseed, small flaws become exaggerated over thousands of replecations, over thousands of years! And if you start with flawed geneseed, such as the Blood Angels, you end up with an amplified flaw such as found in the Flesh Tearers, occuring much faster!

Also problems can arise from the genetics of the populace of a planet that the chapter recruites from, it may be that the people of the planet have no outward mutation, but when combined with SM geneseed it creates one!

I get how mutation works (I'm a geneticist), my question is, in the fluff, why do mutations affect the Founding of a Chapter, but seemingly not the replenishment of the SMs (at least to the same degree)?

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.

There's really no way that the Inquisition can closely watch Space Marine Chapters.

The reality is that Space Marine Chapters operate on the Honor System, which is exactly why Huron was able to get away with what he did.

Of course, you also have to understand that the "Chapter" structure has built in cross checking. Guilliman did all of that on purpose, so that under most circumstances, Chapters wouldn't rebel or go rogue. And it worked. Less than 1% of Chapters have turned traitor since the Horus Heresy. I usually use this example when offering feedback on peoples' custom chapter fluff.

A Chapter has no single point of authority. The Chapter Master is its military leader, and its de facto policy maker, but at the same time, he still answers to the Librarians, and the Chaplains, and the Apothecaries, who have their own internal agendas. Huron was only able to break the "laws" of the Codex Astartes because he had the buy-in of the other leadership. Under normal circumstances, if the Chapter Master was doing something heretical, he'd have to deal with the Chaplains and their fanatical obsession with the Chapter's spiritual well being, and the Librarius, which is already worried about its own internal corruption.

The Inquisition tries to keep track of the Space Marine chapters, but the reality is that it doesn't have the resources to keep track of highly mobile, highly insular groups like the Space Marines. It's also important to remember that "The Inquisition" isn't a singular, cohesive entity, just like everything else in the Imperium. It's a bunch of loose cannons with their own individual agendas and a rough, ambiguous consensus as to their mission. The Imperium going to war with a Space Marine chapter is rare as hell (to the tune of being measured in the "few dozens" across ten thousand years). So it's likely that even when an individual Inquisitor decides he doesn't like what a Space Marine Chapter is doing, he still has to get the buy-in of others on the idea in order to mobilize enough assets against them. If you look at the Celestial Lions, the most "famous" example of Space Marines vs the Inquisition, most of their destruction was via treachery, and done covertly (blue on blue fire, and misdirection in their operations on Armageddon). Not by a massive fleet showing up on their doorstep and engaging them in open battle.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:

Of course, you also have to understand that the "Chapter" structure has built in cross checking. Guilliman did all of that on purpose, so that under most circumstances, Chapters wouldn't rebel or go rogue. And it worked. Less than 1% of Chapters have turned traitor since the Horus Heresy. I usually use this example when offering feedback on peoples' custom chapter fluff.

There's around 1000 SM Chapters I think. There's more than ten that have gone Renegade, take the Abyssal Crusade where loads more went Traitor. Even if you discount the Abyssal Crusade as an anomaly, there's gonna be more than 10; off the top of my head the Crimson Slaughter, Blood Gorgons, Astral Claws, Bleak Brotherhood, the Purged, Adharon's Reavers, Angels of Ecstasy, Angels of Flame, Blood Disciples, Damned Company of Lord Caustos, Dragon Warriors, Soul Drinkers, Silver Guards, The Scourged and Skyrar's Dark Wolves.

But agree with all the other points.

 ChazSexington wrote:

I get how mutation works (I'm a geneticist), my question is, in the fluff, why do mutations affect the Founding of a Chapter, but seemingly not the replenishment of the SMs (at least to the same degree)?

It would seem that during a Founding there really isn't any problem with mutation; Imperial Fists successors will lack the same implants that Imperial Fists do naturally but then most Chapters use Ultramarines derived gene-seed for that reason.

Generally we see Chapters suffering genetic instability after the Founding when they are fending for themselves and, according to the background, this can come about due to 'debased' practices as they often don't know about maintain strict hygiene in the Apothecarion or some ritual of how the gene-seed is handled can create a situation where it can become damaged.

In some instances we see freak genetic mutation happening without much warning as with the Flame Falcons but these were members of the Cursed Founding and it would seem that that is the only instance in the background where genetic instability was present from the Founding onwards. The Black Dragons were another Cursed Founding Chapter to suffer mutations but they actively cultivate their mutations.

However, a Codex Adherent Chapter can't have more than a thousand Marines (not counting the command staff and the support staff).

That means that no Chapter is getting an extra thousand, or even hundred, Battle-brothers to train, who are then going to split off and into their own Chapters. It simply doesn't work like that.

You get 1000 viable, recently-implanted recruits (which might have taken 10,000 attempts). You get a solid core of veterans from the parent-Chapter from which the geneseed came from (in most cases), who also gives the Successor some relics, some PA and wargear gifts, and the command structure of the First Company is all Marines from this parent Chapter. The Company Commanders and Sergeants of the rest are going to be drawn from whoever can prove themselves up to the task from the "new guys".

But this is all after you get enough viable geneseed to implant into enough viable candidates. This is the hard part, because *no one* has stable geneseed. The UM simply have the *most* stable, which is why 60% of all Chapters currently existing in the Imperium are descended from their stock.

However, you can't just implant the geneseed into any regular schmo, they require a certain level of genetic compatibility with the geneseed in the first place. So that narrows down you viable pool of "test subjects" considerably. And then they have to survive the implantation process. And then they have to survive the progenoids maturing. If they die during the extraction... well, that's guaranteed.

At any point of this process, however, the geneseed can prove non-viable. Something happens to it. It mutates, it fails to mature, it changes into weird colors, it makes the incubation subject a raving madman who eats his own face. Whatever the case, something goes wrong with the geneseed. Maybe it affects just one subject. Maybe it affects all of them and you have to start over.

The main thing to remember is, geneseed was created by the Emperor, not by the AdMech. He didn't tell anyone how he did what he did. They're working based on what they understand of genetic manipulation, scattered notes recovered from the Imperial Palace, and guesswork.

 Psienesis wrote:

But this is all after you get enough viable geneseed to implant into enough viable candidates. This is the hard part, because *no one* has stable geneseed. The UM simply have the *most* stable, which is why 60% of all Chapters currently existing in the Imperium are descended from their stock.

However, you can't just implant the geneseed into any regular schmo, they require a certain level of genetic compatibility with the geneseed in the first place. So that narrows down you viable pool of "test subjects" considerably. And then they have to survive the implantation process. And then they have to survive the progenoids maturing. If they die during the extraction... well, that's guaranteed.

At any point of this process, however, the geneseed can prove non-viable. Something happens to it. It mutates, it fails to mature, it changes into weird colors, it makes the incubation subject a raving madman who eats his own face. Whatever the case, something goes wrong with the geneseed. Maybe it affects just one subject. Maybe it affects all of them and you have to start over.

The main thing to remember is, geneseed was created by the Emperor, not by the AdMech. He didn't tell anyone how he did what he did. They're working based on what they understand of genetic manipulation, scattered notes recovered from the Imperial Palace, and guesswork.

First of all, Alpha Legion are mentioned as having the purest geneseed

An extra hundred Neophytes in ten Chapters was simply a suggestion, and I somehow doubt training new SMs is the bottleneck preventing new Astartes. In the fluff it's the genetic stability that's mentioned, but not how it's different from normal Astartes, which I'm asking. Barring massive mutation in current geneseed (Thousand Sons), there shouldn't be a problem. Now take the Space Wolves - why is it the case that any Successor Chapters get wildly mutated geneseed, when it's perfectly okay for them to implant it themselves. All of other Chapters seem to have the same problem to varying degrees. Essentially, why does the geneseed implanted by SMs have such a wildly higher rate of success than that done by the guys who specialise in it, the AdMech?

 ChazSexington wrote:


I get how mutation works (I'm a geneticist), my question is, in the fluff, why do mutations affect the Founding of a Chapter, but seemingly not the replenishment of the SMs (at least to the same degree)?

I feel like one of the reasons that the genetors start with a single set of organs to type against is that they can say that this gene seed is this prone to this mutation, and that the mutation or a precursor to the mutation happened early in production, so that you can shoot everyone in that chapter.

If it were possible to add veterans from the imperial fists when founding the executioners (I hope they are third or later, if not then a third founding chapter) because it would be hard to say that mutation existed only in the new chapters and that the imperium didn't have to shoot all the imperial fists.

The Imperium has no problem with manipulating Genetics of ordinary humans (they know how to do it with relative ease).

But space marines were created by the emperor and so messing with their geneseed is difficult, dangerous and heretical.

 Mythantor wrote:
The Imperium has no problem with manipulating Genetics of ordinary humans (they know how to do it with relative ease).

But space marines were created by the emperor and so messing with their geneseed is difficult, dangerous and heretical.

AdMech don't need to mess with it. Just drop Imperial Fist/UM/DA/BA etc geneseed into the criminals and make SM organ farms, then use the surplus from the exponential production to make new SM Chapters.

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.

This. It's quite an economic expenditure, and oftentimes it's simply not worth it compared to just throwing a few hundred regiments of Guardsmen at the problem-- which are cheaper and work just as well if you're not bothered by casualties (and they aren't).

 ChazSexington wrote:

I get how mutation works (I'm a geneticist), my question is, in the fluff, why do mutations affect the Founding of a Chapter, but seemingly not the replenishment of the SMs (at least to the same degree)?

Where does the fluff say that? The definitive article on the subject - Index Astartes: Rites of Initiation - makes no mention of mutation during the creation process, but makes quite a big deal out of a chapters geneseed mutating over subsequent millenia.

 ChazSexington wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Of course, you also have to understand that the "Chapter" structure has built in cross checking. Guilliman did all of that on purpose, so that under most circumstances, Chapters wouldn't rebel or go rogue. And it worked. Less than 1% of Chapters have turned traitor since the Horus Heresy. I usually use this example when offering feedback on peoples' custom chapter fluff.

There's around 1000 SM Chapters I think. There's more than ten that have gone Renegade, take the Abyssal Crusade where loads more went Traitor. Even if you discount the Abyssal Crusade as an anomaly, there's gonna be more than 10; off the top of my head the Crimson Slaughter, Blood Gorgons, Astral Claws, Bleak Brotherhood, the Purged, Adharon's Reavers, Angels of Ecstasy, Angels of Flame, Blood Disciples, Damned Company of Lord Caustos, Dragon Warriors, Soul Drinkers, Silver Guards, The Scourged and Skyrar's Dark Wolves.

But agree with all the other points.

Sorry, that was supposed to say 10%, not 1. There are 1,000 Chapters at any given time, though it's accepted that some have been destroyed and replaced in the intervening 10,000 years. But the closest thing to "hard numbers" we've been given in fluff over the suggest it's around fifty or so. The numbers of Chaos Marines always seem higher because obviously they're the centerpiece of the tabletop. But the reality is that Chaos Marines are even more rare than loyal ones.

Now take the Space Wolves - why is it the case that any Successor Chapters get wildly mutated geneseed, when it's perfectly okay for them to implant it themselves. All of other Chapters seem to have the same problem to varying degrees. Essentially, why does the geneseed implanted by SMs have such a wildly higher rate of success than that done by the guys who specialise in it, the AdMech?

Because anyone not from Fenris lacks the genetic marker that makes them compatible with the geneseed of Russ, and the SW accept applicants from nowhere else but Fenris.

And you are mistaken if you think SM can replenish their own numbers willy-nilly. Of a hundred candidates, something like 20% will simply prove incompatible with the geneseed, and another 20%? 30%? will not survive the implantation process.

 ChazSexington wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:

Of course, you also have to understand that the "Chapter" structure has built in cross checking. Guilliman did all of that on purpose, so that under most circumstances, Chapters wouldn't rebel or go rogue. And it worked. Less than 1% of Chapters have turned traitor since the Horus Heresy. I usually use this example when offering feedback on peoples' custom chapter fluff.

There's around 1000 SM Chapters I think. There's more than ten that have gone Renegade, take the Abyssal Crusade where loads more went Traitor. Even if you discount the Abyssal Crusade as an anomaly, there's gonna be more than 10; off the top of my head the Crimson Slaughter, Blood Gorgons, Astral Claws, Bleak Brotherhood, the Purged, Adharon's Reavers, Angels of Ecstasy, Angels of Flame, Blood Disciples, Damned Company of Lord Caustos, Dragon Warriors, Soul Drinkers, Silver Guards, The Scourged and Skyrar's Dark Wolves.

But agree with all the other points.

it is possible you are both right

That today there are around 1000 chapters, but over the course of 10,000 years 5000 were created, 4000 were destroyed, turned traitor or reformed into other chapters.

Of course I think that the fluff about it is deliberately ambiguous and that GW cannot do math and thus you might be both right and just things do not add up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:

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 something you can do in few years.

This. It's quite an economic expenditure, and oftentimes it's simply not worth it compared to just throwing a few hundred regiments of Guardsmen at the problem-- which are cheaper and work just as well if you're not bothered by casualties (and they aren't).

also, when guardsmen go traitor(and they do, all the time) you dont have a long term problem. The guard regiments are much harder to supply once they go traitor and eventually they all grow old and simply die out. Sure they will cause some short term headaches, but how many will serisouly alter the course of the galaxy.

A traitor SM chapter is a REAL problem, and as evidenced by the HH, a traitor legion of SM is a 10k+ year problem.

 Psienesis wrote:
You get a solid core of veterans from the parent-Chapter...

Do you have a source for this?

Don't forget that when the growth is exponential, it means the losses are too.

Further, while the whole convicts as organ farms thing may be useful to get the chapter started, I'm pretty sure most of the fluff refers to existing chapters only using progenoid glands harvested from other space marines.

As for me, I always saw the difficulties with acquiring "pure" geneseed as not necessarily problems with the actual production, as much as it is a difficulty with getting it stamped as "pure" by the various offices and departments that over see this type of thing.

Considering how labyrinthine and complex the bureaucracies of the IOM are, it wouldn't surprise me that entire stocks of perfectly good geneseed are destroyed on a regular basis due to clerical errors, political sabotage, neglected procedures etc.

 Gogsnik wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
You get a solid core of veterans from the parent-Chapter...

Do you have a source for this?

I wanna say Codex: Space Marines, 6th ed? Maybe 5th ed? Or maybe it's from the BRB from 5th or 6th ed.

 Gashrog wrote:

Where does the fluff say that? The definitive article on the subject - Index Astartes: Rites of Initiation - makes no mention of mutation during the creation process, but makes quite a big deal out of a chapters geneseed mutating over subsequent millenia.

Since the First Founding, the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes have lost the ability to engineer new gene-seed or implant organs from scratch. They also do not often possess enough stable genetic material to directly culture all 19 implants available to their Chapter due to the loss or rampant mutation of the gene-seed for one or more organs. All Chapters are different, but the "purest" Chapters in this respect are the Grey Knights, the Ultramarines, and the Dark Angels, who have maintained a large enough supply of stable gene-seed to develop all 19 fully functioning Astartes organ implants.

The Adeptus Mechanicus plays an essential role in the process of a Founding, for its highest echelons are tasked with creating, testing and developing the gene-seed samples that will provide the genetic foundation of the new Chapters.

The Adeptus Mechanicus store the gene-seed of all the Adeptus Astartes Chapters which they receive in the form of a tithe. Using lobotomised human test-subjects (most of whom will later be converted into Servitors), the Mechanicus produces new Progenoid Glands. Zygotes of the necessary Astartes gene-seed organs are grown from the gene-seed stores on Mars and implanted into the test-subjects and the zygotes then develop into Progenoids and are surgically removed. A single test subject is used in this way to create two Progenoid Glands, which are then implanted into two more slaves, and so on. Ultimately, 1000 sets of the 19 necessary gene-seed organs to give birth to a new Astartes are created, taking over half a standard century of constant culturing.

From http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Gene-Seed and http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Founding

The point is it seems that's the limiting factor. It's simply a numbers game.

 Psienesis wrote:

Because anyone not from Fenris lacks the genetic marker that makes them compatible with the geneseed of Russ, and the SW accept applicants from nowhere else but Fenris.

And you are mistaken if you think SM can replenish their own numbers willy-nilly. Of a hundred candidates, something like 20% will simply prove incompatible with the geneseed, and another 20%? 30%? will not survive the implantation process.

I'm not saying they can replenish their own numbers willy-nilly. They could, mind. See aforementioned geneseed farm (think the Matrix).

Right, but then you just send a few ships of Fenrisians (how were original SWs made then? Wouldn't Terrans be incompatible too?) to populate X amount of planets. Or you use other Chapters' geneseed, like UM or IF. If you have an enormous population it's just a numbers game. A near unlimited supply of criminals for geneseed and recruits (barring SW, though even that isn't unsurmountable) to implant them. You grow geneseed in criminals until you have an insane amount, upon which you simply use the next geneseed for implantation.

Hunam0001 wrote:
Don't forget that when the growth is exponential, it means the losses are too.

Uh.... why?

 Melissia wrote:

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.

This. It's quite an economic expenditure, and oftentimes it's simply not worth it compared to just throwing a few hundred regiments of Guardsmen at the problem-- which are cheaper and work just as well if you're not bothered by casualties (and they aren't).

Yes, I've mentioned there are logistical problems (see OP). But what are the genetic problems

Right, but then you just send a few ships of Fenrisians (how were original SWs made then? Wouldn't Terrans be incompatible too?) to populate X amount of planets. Or you use other Chapters' geneseed, like UM or IF. If you have an enormous population it's just a numbers game. A near unlimited supply of criminals for geneseed and recruits (barring SW, though even that isn't unsurmountable) to implant them. You grow geneseed in criminals until you have an insane amount, upon which you simply use the next geneseed for implantation.

The Space Wolves don't permit people to do that to Fenris. Remember, a Space Marine Homeworld is their sovereign holding. They don't (generally speaking) tithe anything to the Imperium, other than recruits for the Chapter that owns the world.

Also, the native Fenrisians are tribal barbarians. They would not get on well on other worlds.

As far as the original SW are concerned... ask the Emperor (specifically, this is a contradiction that GW introduced and has never resolved, but all attempts to create SW successors has failed in mutations and horrific gene-seed issues).

I'm not saying they can replenish their own numbers willy-nilly. They could, mind. See aforementioned geneseed farm (think the Matrix).

You're missing the point that only a very small percentage of the human population is genetically compatible with the gene-seed. If the candidate isn't compatible (and I mean the farm-stock) the best you can hope for is that it kills them. If it doesn't? Then you end up with a corrupted crop of gene-seed. Sure hope you catch those flaws before you start making Marines out of it....

Not all losses on a exponential growth rates = decay rates. But more in the sense that it will take X time to replace 100% of surviving forces (so as long as no more than 50% of your chapter gets wiped out, you're in relatively good shape as far as the quantity of progenoid glands available is concerned). However, if you lose even 51% of your forces, it now take 2X time to get back up to full strength. Same thing at the 75% losses being 4X time etc.

Anyhow, I think the main limiting factor is this:
"It is only by an edict of the High Lords of Terra that such an undertaking as the creation of new Chapters can be instigated, for it requires the cooperation and mobilisation of countless divisions within the Imperium's monolithic and vast governmental organisations. Establishing new Astartes Chapters on an individual basis is nigh impossible--the mobilisation of such vast resources is beyond the ability of any single segment of the Imperium."

Mainly the "cooperation" part.

Keep in mind the rareness of matches for being a Space Marine.

Pick a feral or feudal world. This is only a small number of worlds within the Imperium. The Imperium does not typically recruit from worlds with any level of technology.

Take every person on the world who is within the age of 7-12 at the time you need more Space Marines. This gets rid of most of the population.

Get rid of the unhealthy ones, which is again a large number of them given the poor diet of feral worlders.

Further get rid of half of them. Even if they would otherwise genetically match (brother+sister are far more more genetically compatible than two male neighbors), the Imperium doesn't use women for Space Marines.

Now, put them in brutal gladiatorial fights and other deadly tests, and see which ones survive and are supposedly suited for Space Marines. This gets rid of another large quantity of them.

Of these, only those that are as genetically compatible as family members of the originally modified gene-seed are allowed to become Space Marines.

This is an extremely tiny number of people per planet, and furthermore, this number is taken from the population, never to breed, meaning that every one taken reduces the chances of having more later.

Really, even having a million Space Marines, with the level of attrition they face, is quite a feat given all of these requirements for who can become a Space Marine. There's just layer upon layer upon layer of often arbitrary and illogical "filters".

Hunam0001 wrote:
Don't forget that when the growth is exponential, it means the losses are too.

We've got a fair number of problems mathing in this thread.

The rate of growth is fixed. It's 2:1 in a closed system. One Marine in, two Marines out. While the system is obviously never closed, it will always be increasing at some kind of constant rate once an average is figured. Even if 50% of the surplus geneseed was lost, the rate of increase is still 1.5:1.

However, at no point is the death rate tied to the growth rate in a way that makes it exponential. Theoretically, barring sustained catastrophic and unrecoverable losses, an increased death toll actually speeds up the replacement rate, so long as the average Marine lives to be at least roughly 26-28 years old. Because in this case you're accelerating the harvesting time.

When I did my math to give a chapter like the Blood Angels (I used them as an example because of that silly novel where they were running out of dudes) thirteen thousand surplus sets of geneseed at a 1.5:1 replacement rate, that was using an average life span of a Marine at 400 years old. If the average lifespan of a Marine was only 50 years, suddenly after 10,000 years the Blood Angels have roughly 104,000 surplus sets of geneseed in storage since the Heresy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Psienesis wrote:
You're missing the point that only a very small percentage of the human population is genetically compatible with the gene-seed.

It's important not to overstate this.

The reality is that Space Marine growth is artificially limited, not naturally limited. A single hive world could supply every Space Marine recruit (both potential and failed) in the entire Imperium and probably not even notice the missing kids.

 ChazSexington wrote:

 Boss Stompa wrote:
I thought geneseed problems arose much the same way as genetic issues in real life human beings! Aging in humans is considered to happen because as cells reproduce they create a copy of themselves and that copy makes a copy. Take video footage as an example, you make a copy, you will not notice any differance from the original, however if you make a copy of a copy of a copy, and so on, imperfections start to show. and no matter what you do to try and restore the image you can never get it to look as good as the original recording
Also cancer is the human genetic structure going out of control and turning on the body.

If you apply this thinking to the SM geneseed, small flaws become exaggerated over thousands of replecations, over thousands of years! And if you start with flawed geneseed, such as the Blood Angels, you end up with an amplified flaw such as found in the Flesh Tearers, occuring much faster!

Also problems can arise from the genetics of the populace of a planet that the chapter recruites from, it may be that the people of the planet have no outward mutation, but when combined with SM geneseed it creates one!

I get how mutation works (I'm a geneticist), my question is, in the fluff, why do mutations affect the Founding of a Chapter, but seemingly not the replenishment of the SMs (at least to the same degree)?

Thats what Im getting at, in the original chapter 1 SM is made from 1 SM so mutation is slower, but when creating a new chapter the geneseed is essentialy, intensivly farmed creating many more marines from a smaller genepool increasing the chance of genetic abnormality, like inbreeding I suppose!

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.

The Astral Claws were a problem because they seceded from the Imperium and swallowed up other Chapters like the Tiger Claws. Considering the Black Templars and Space Wolves exist, the Imperium doesn't seem to have a real problem with excessively large Chapters. It's just when they start assimilating other Chapters or claiming independent Empires that the Adeptus Terra seems to have a problem.

 Melissia wrote:

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.

This. It's quite an economic expenditure, and oftentimes it's simply not worth it compared to just throwing a few hundred regiments of Guardsmen at the problem-- which are cheaper and work just as well if you're not bothered by casualties (and they aren't).

The problem is that because 40k has no sense of scale, it'd actually be more effective if the Imperium threw together a bunch of space marine chapters in a ginormous founding, which resource wise they're completely capable of. The Imperium has quadrillions of citizens and a stupidly huge industry behind that population that must exist in order for the population to exist in the first place. If 40k writers actually realized how big the Imperium is and just how insane its energy production is and the resources that go with it, there'd be something like a hundred million space marines, or billions. And it would not strain the Imperium resource wise in any way what-so-ever.

A guy on another website (spacebattles) came up with a good explanation on why there's so few foundings. I'll try to find it, but it boils down to Imperial Administration HATING space marines due to them being a largely independent organization that trods over the authority of everyone and is largely its own empire.

 Psienesis wrote:

I wanna say Codex: Space Marines, 6th ed? Maybe 5th ed? Or maybe it's from the BRB from 5th or 6th ed.

Don't think it's in the first three so maybe the 6th Edition Rulebook. Which I don't have...

 Psienesis wrote:
However, a Codex Adherent Chapter can't have more than a thousand Marines (not counting the command staff and the support staff).

That means that no Chapter is getting an extra thousand, or even hundred, Battle-brothers to train, who are then going to split off and into their own Chapters.

He never said that, even a little bit. He said, anyone said, that when there is a brand new chapter of, at best, reserve-quality marines, that they accompany more senior chapters that can provide vastly better role modeling and skills resources. Oddly enough this is what new national militaries do.

I think that if I were as smart as you are I would also be shouting all the time because I'm angry that nobody is smart enough that I can have a conversation.

I don't think that this can be controversial, since "new chapter trained by older chapter" doesn't actually make claims about how chapters are founded. All the model amounts to is "new chapter works with other autochthonous chapter" which is the same as "chapters work with other chapters," and that isn't disputable. It excludes only indirectly your assertion about veterans, because it does not actually address where those leaders come from. The innovation/fanon/bid'ah that "old chapters send their own marines to lead new chapters," just happens to be completely unnecessary, because the skills they are meant to transmit are much more effectively transmitted by the preexisting condition that chapters work with other chapters.

The source you are thinking of, and there is only one official source that gives any indication one way or another, is the Badab war imperial armor volumes. It says that a specific chapter was lead by veterans from a specific older chapter.

The stipulation that this is not a comprehensive statement about halter creation is less important than the date of publication, which is over a decade after fans began postulating this notion of chapters appointing the leaders of other chapters.

pelicaniforce wrote:
less important than the date of publication, which is over a decade after fans began postulating this notion of chapters appointing the leaders of other chapters.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to make that connection. I was a member of the Bolter and Chainsword long before I even knew Dakka Dakka existed and the theory of the 'officer cadre' was often used there as a possibility, long before Imperial Armour Nine and Ten (incidentally I bought these (and Deathwatch: Rites of Battle) just to read that background although, skimming over them just now, only the Sons of Medusa stand out as having anything remotely like this convention). The idea, when put forward as a fan theory, never seemed right to me.

So you posit that a new Chapter has some 19 year old kid as the Chapter Master?