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Melissia wrote: These are also the same people who toss human lives away like pies at a clown convention and don't really care whether or not said lives are male or female. You're way too obsessed with gender to be a good Inquisitor.
More females having babies = more soldiers to throw at the forces of the warp. If they have proven to be tainted or even have a small chance at daemonic possession we will slay them all - man and woman and space marine alike.
If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
- Fox Mulder
There are elderly and injured people equipped with baby bottles for that.
Yea but for good healthy babies, unless they have advanced hugely in formula, arent as good as breast milk. And even if elderly (of which there would be little given their full mobilization) took care of them that frees them up for another sorely needed baby.
Unless they have a wet nurse system, in which case replace elderly with wet nurse.
A population in total warfare needs to be growing constantly to replace the large amounts of dead and gaps in the workforce.
So what? None of that means that the soldier in question must do either one or both of those things.
Um yes it does... a soldier cant carry her baby in to battle... nor can that baby be useful if its draining resources on a one way trip campaign. Nobody can raise a baby in a battle efficiently and do their job as a soldier.
I know you want a cabbage patch baby world where all the men and women go hand in hand to battle while the population miraculously have babies grow on trees and magic factories but it simply doesnt work if you want to explain it as a working system.
The imperium isnt about soldiers, its a giant logistics machine. It needs babies to fuel it. It lives off babies. If we had farms for babies (like chicken eggs for example) we dont have a good mix of chickens and roosters. We have very few roosters and plenty of chickens, because they have what we want.... eggs (or babies). If there was a war and feathers proved to be vital for armour, the roosters would be the ones shipped off the become armoured feathers while the chickens would be kept at home making more roosters/chickens and only when roosters start becoming too scarce the chickens would be sent to become armour. Just like a human total war mobilization. It needs to be growing or it will run out quickly.
Every time a women dies on cadia thats babies lost. Every time a man dies thats 1 man lost. The man next to him can make plenty more in one month. That women lost is a loss in production of bodies and will take years to replace, when during those years she could have simply had more babies.
But as said earlier Cadia, like much of the fluff, is a stupid setting anyway which has little thought put into it, so if it helps you just say they all clones with space magic technology.
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Melissia wrote: These are also the same people who toss human lives away like pies at a clown convention and don't really care whether or not said lives are male or female. You're way too obsessed with gender to be a good Inquisitor.
We are concerned about children and long term survival. You are too concerned about gender.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/12/30 19:00:42
In a galaxy of pure pragmatism, having a society with no women is as equally bad as a society with no men. Cadia's recruitment rate is noted to be equal to its birth rate, but further explains that just over 70% of its population is "under arms". This indicates that the remaining 30% fulfills some non-combat role, which would be all of the civilian jobs, all of the administrative jobs, all of the agricultural jobs and the entire workforce of the foundries.
Given this, there is literally no room or place on Cadia to assign all female soldiers the job of prostitute. This gets further complicated by knowing that Cadia has a population of 850 million... with only 1 in 10 soldiers being assigned to the Interior Guard, and 70% of its population being a combat-arms soldier, having too few men is as big a problem as having too few women.
Then there also comes the issue of men and women who are, for whatever reason, incapable of having children. These are probably the people who are manning the foundries, working in the rear-echelon units, and doing all the vital roles that make a military function.
Given that a day does not pass on Cadia where some part of its Interior Guard is not fighting some rebellion, cult, or rebellious cult (not to mention potential daemons, Chaos Space Marines that walk out of a portal, Xeno raiders or any one of a thousand other threats), the chance for crippling injuries is quite high. These sorts, too, are going to be your field hands and factory workers.
All that aside... Cadia doesn't make any sense as an actual society, but the sense it does make, given the sources we have on it, the only way it possibly could function is as an egalitarian society.
As far as the spread of ethnic groups in the Imperium goes... not so much. Certain Hive Worlds, with an influx of traffic from other worlds, yes, perhaps. Otherwise? Well, this is Warhammer 40K, which falls into the Planet of Hats syndrome quite easily. A given planet's people are going to be of a single ethnic type, in most cases (the Tanith, for example, are Space-Celts). This is also explained in the spread of humanity across the stars previously in its history; people moved to planets/stations to be with "their own kind", whether that was based religion, ethnicity or areas of interest (so you would have Planet Trekkie, Planet Twilight, Planet Harry Potter, Planet Mormon, Planet Jehovah's Witnesses, Planet Irish-Americas, Planet Francophone, etc.)... and generations of intermarriage and breeding would basically homogenize ethnic traits across all members of a society.
So, basically, since the box of IG troops is intended to reflect not only Cadians but any generic IG infantry unit, then it should most definitely contain a few female models and a few non-White models. You could even go with 5 white males, 1 white female, 1 black male, 1 black female, 1 Asiatic male and 1 Asiatic female in the box and basically provide enough sculpts to cover all your bases with minimal effort.
This also opens up the chance for people doing tailored armies to buy multiple boxes of kits to build specialized IG units, or use the heads and torsos for other projects, which is more sales for GW.
It is best to be a pessimist. You are usually right and, when you're wrong, you're pleasantly surprised.
Xenomancers wrote: More females having babies = more soldiers to throw at the forces of the warp
The Imperium clearly does not think that this is a big enough issue to make it an official policy or even an encouraged unofficial policy. There are far, FAR more examples of female characters whom have never had a baby in 40k than those whom have had one.
In fact, actual mothers being depicted as acting characters in 40k lore are rarer than named gay couples being depicted in 40k lore. And the ones I can think of are adoptive, rather than biological.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/12/30 19:09:49
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
I think that should be the answer for everything to be honest.
But I think a better fix for the problem some have of race etc, is simply to have themes boxes. I like to model my soldiers after historic armies so unless I can make them all men then the female model would be an annoying waste. It would be better to have themed boxes simply so you can make guard how you want.
As a kid thats how I thought the guard was going to go, more variety to make the theme you want. Instead they went the opposite route.
Tallarn in the first white dwarf I read where black for example. They could have had heads etc to make your own guardsmen, with a tiny effort they could cover all their bases. But I think its too late for that now since so many 3rd party retailers have all the bases covered in themes and so on.
Not just for Cadians too.
But as you said it wont make sense fluff wise since from the very foundations the fluff is flawed.
The United States has an annual growth rate of 0.77%-- birth rate balanced against death rate. On a hive world of 1 trillion (a few hive worlds have been described as having several times more than this in the lore, I'm just using this as an easy math number) this rate of population growth means, if they just wanted to keep the population stable, they could send off 7,700,000,000 soldiers each year to the Imperial Guard whiel hovering at or near the one trillion population number.
GW's writers rarely depict battles as possessing troops in the millions, never mind hundreds of millions or even billions.
There really isn't as much of a problem with "throwing more troops at it" as you think there is. The Imperium actually doesn't make ENOUGH use of its human resources, as many of these planets have growing populations rather than stable ones.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/12/30 19:20:21
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
Xenomancers wrote: More females having babies = more soldiers to throw at the forces of the warp
The Imperium clearly does not think that this is a big enough issue to make it an official policy or even an encouraged unofficial policy. There are far, FAR more examples of female characters whom have never had a baby in 40k than those whom have had one.
In fact, actual mothers being depicted as acting characters in 40k lore are rarer than named gay couples being depicted in 40k lore. And the ones I can think of are adoptive, rather than biological.
Like I said - I think it's just common sense. You have a lore of a society that is under 100% military control. They are going to make all their decisions based on logistics. They don't care about anything but the bottom line. In the case of an infertile female I think she would be assigned to whatever task the military needed at that point - that could possibly mean being thrown into the lines - who knows. Maybe she could become a great hero and inspire her comrades on the battle field. More than likely she'll end up dead like most of the other soldiers in her platoon.
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Melissia wrote: The United States has an annual growth rate of 0.77%-- birth rate balanced against death rate. On a hive world of 1 trillion (a few hive worlds have been described as having several times more than this in the lore, I'm just using this as an easy math number) this rate of population growth means, if they just wanted to keep the population stable, they could send off 7,700,000,000 soldiers each year to the Imperial Guard whiel hovering at or near the one trillion population number.
GW's writers rarely depict battles as possessing troops in the millions, never mind hundreds of millions or even billions.
There really isn't as much of a problem with "throwing more troops at it" as you think there is. The Imperium actually doesn't make ENOUGH use of its human resources, as many of these planets have growing populations rather than stable ones.
A trillion pop is a number that can just be thrown out. It's an unrealistic and impossible number.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/12/30 19:23:57
If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
- Fox Mulder
Xenomancers wrote: A trillion pop is a number that can just be thrown out. It's an unrealistic and impossible number.
... so you're okay with psychic ninja space elves, but you're not okay with a densely populated world created around the concept of a human hive, which happens to have a population of some arbitrarily large number?
In a setting that has technobarbarian fungus-animal frat boys as one of the most populous and powerful factions in the galaxy, who can make technology work by thinking that it will work... you find a trillion humans on a single hive world unrealistic.
Riiiiiiiiiiiight....
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2014/12/30 19:38:54
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
Xenomancers wrote: More females having babies = more soldiers to throw at the forces of the warp
The Imperium clearly does not think that this is a big enough issue to make it an official policy or even an encouraged unofficial policy. There are far, FAR more examples of female characters whom have never had a baby in 40k than those whom have had one.
In fact, actual mothers being depicted as acting characters in 40k lore are rarer than named gay couples being depicted in 40k lore. And the ones I can think of are adoptive, rather than biological.
Like I said - I think it's just common sense. You have a lore of a society that is under 100% military control. They are going to make all their decisions based on logistics. They don't care about anything but the bottom line. In the case of an infertile female I think she would be assigned to whatever task the military needed at that point - that could possibly mean being thrown into the lines - who knows. Maybe she could become a great hero and inspire her comrades on the battle field. More than likely she'll end up dead like most of the other soldiers in her platoon.
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Melissia wrote: The United States has an annual growth rate of 0.77%-- birth rate balanced against death rate. On a hive world of 1 trillion (a few hive worlds have been described as having several times more than this in the lore, I'm just using this as an easy math number) this rate of population growth means, if they just wanted to keep the population stable, they could send off 7,700,000,000 soldiers each year to the Imperial Guard whiel hovering at or near the one trillion population number.
GW's writers rarely depict battles as possessing troops in the millions, never mind hundreds of millions or even billions.
There really isn't as much of a problem with "throwing more troops at it" as you think there is. The Imperium actually doesn't make ENOUGH use of its human resources, as many of these planets have growing populations rather than stable ones.
A trillion pop is a number that can just be thrown out. It's an unrealistic and impossible number.
Well the Salamanders are black.. There are also elite groups within the Imperial Guard that are black. One such unit was named in the HH book 'Legion'. Lucifer Blacks I think their names were.
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
As noted previously ITT, the Salamanders are "black" in the way my combat boots are "black". They're not "African-ethnicity Black", they're "mutation jet black, like Chaos Black black, with glowing red eyes black".
It is best to be a pessimist. You are usually right and, when you're wrong, you're pleasantly surprised.
At the danger of high jacking the thread on another subject I would still reply. Your common sense is absolutely wrong in a fact analysis. Then again, this is a common misconception and an easily understood one. «Common sense» is usually very wrong for it’s a synonymous for preconception on any particular subject. It was «common sense» that the sun orbited around the Earth though it never was the case. Same things for big and solid cars being safer than smaller and softer ones while it’s the complete opposite. Even the incredible death rate of the 40K universe wars is probably much smaller than the death rate of industrial accident, disease caused by malnutrition, poor hygiene, toxic environment, etc. Armies are smaller in the grim futures due to starships deployment and battles. Napoleon had a larger army than the US army right now in pure fighting men, but its army was far weaker and capable of less. I was also only talking about the Cadians in particular. In the setting most planet are culturally and technologically very different from one another.
These are the reasons why women are actually more apt to be soldiers and why they are not. Sorry, I don't have all the complete reference but you can find them by yourself rather easily. Remember that these are generalities and you will always find exceptions of the opposite.
1) Women have a better balance and flexibility than men.
This gives them a distinct advantages in close-combat much superior to strength and size due to the fact that strength and size only matter if you fight in close combat in tight formations were movement is restricted (which hasn't been the case since Napoleon). In a loose formation, your opponent has the ability to sidestep you or simply recoil to avoid your powerful attacks and long reach and gain an advantage. You will never see such moves in combat sports employed at their fullest either, for they are systematically illegal because of the high risks of injury they create (blows at the back of the head a considered very dangerous). Of course, you need to train women in a different variety of martial art to be effective fighters. These are called «soft martial arts» like tai-chi, winchung, crane and mantis kung-fu, aikijutsu for example, use positioning, precision, balance and flexibility to be efficient. These martial arts were also mostly developed by women for self-defence and war and are all very deadly, fast and efficient. Of course, they are also a bit harder and longer to teach than «hard martial art» like English and French boxing, Brazilian jujitsu, wrestling or karate. Though, the former are still as efficient against an armored target compare to the later who becomes much less efficient. I suggest some reading on Chinese martial theory to see how different schools of martial arts teach and produce different results.
Better balance and flexibility allow women to navigate rough terrain faster and more importantly much more silently. Stealth is a central doctrine in modern warfare and one of the most important set of skills. Stealth confers the element of surprise, which is central in most military operation of infantry level.
2) Women are smaller and thinner than men.
This is also one of the reason why they are less strong and powerful, but as it has been demonstrated earlier, strength isn't an important factor past a certain level (which fit women meet rather easily). A smaller person makes a harder target and need less cover to hide herself. This is a significant advantage for almost all combat is made at a range of a hundred meters (sometimes much more) with personal fire-arms and taking cover the first step in any engagement. If you are smaller and more flexible, its easier to find good cover.
3) Women have sharper senses than men.
Women are less likely to need glasses and have a higher proportion of perfect vision. There even is some women who can see a fraction of the UV specter of light (no men has been found with such an ability yet). Eye sight is important to spot ambush but also for accuracy with fire-arm. Women hearing and sense of smell is also sharper which can be used to detect ambushes (the greatest danger in combat). Women experience less the syndrome of tunnel of vision than men in stressful condition (like combat). Though in fairness, men have better forward vision in those situation. But in combat outside of formation, danger can come from all side.
4) Women are more resilient to pain both physical and mental.
Women are notorious for their superior physical endurance to pain (about 20% more resistance), but this is completely pointless in war. An injury will still incapacitated her as much as a men. Though, this also makes them more resistant to shock danger (a real killer when it comes to combat injuries). This capacity is not significantly affected by pregnancy or childbirth like some unfounded rumours stated it in the past, but due to the level feminine sexual hormones (which have more than one role much like masculine sexual hormones) in a female body and a higher level of fat. Women are also much harder to torture due to that resistance and have proven multiple times that they make poor torture subject. The Nazis studied the subject a lot so did the regime of Paul Pot and even some torturer from Iraq and US agreed with that strongly. Women also produce a much higher level of the hormone responsible for attachment which makes them much more resilient to mental illness. This also help them to recover faster of trauma.
5) Women have a higher capacity for sustained attention.
An average men can keep intense concentration for about 30 minutes without pause, a women for about 45. Concentration is vital in combat for it allow you to stay attentive in patrols, sentry duties and in preparation of ambush were a small period of distraction can kill you. Combine that with sharper sense and greater ability for stealth and close combat and you see where I am going. This also make for better officer with more capacity to do remember lots of data and complex briefings.
6) Women can multitask more easily.
This is some of the most famous ability of women compare to men. The ability to divide efficiently your attention on different tasks is also very useful for a soldier this way you can listen to your officer while maintaining guard duty for example without loss of efficiency in either one. Multitasking is not exclusive to women, but it’s displayed more commonly amongst them.
7) Women form bonds faster than men.
This, in some setting, can be a problem but in a good system of training is a powerful tool. Women create bonds (positive or negative) faster than men and can sustain more. This is due to the higher level of the hormones linked to attachment in their blood. It creates a stronger sense of friendship, love or team in positive cases and more disgust, fear and hatred in negative ones. Well exploited, you make them hate your enemies and love their comrades and it's a recipe for an incredible fighting force. But in the wrong cases, you have a complete mess of rivaling spiteful females (seen that once and boy is it ugly!). In most cases, it also allow women to follow social standard more easily. That’s one of the reason why the fashion industry have such a pull on women but rather little on men for example. In a training and military environnement it improves discipline and efforts to conform to standards.
All taken into account, both men and women can make excellent soldiers that generalities will never be able to encompass. It just seems that women possess, in my opinion, more useful skills and biological advantages than men to produce higher quality modern (and in that case 40K) soldiers. Than, how come most women in the army are of average skills and how come elite soldiers are still systematically men?
Modern armies have inherited of a long tradition from our past. All of them from the Chinese, Russian, Israeli or British armies are all based on the same principles developed in western and central Europe at the turn of the century which themselves inherited their doctrines from western and central Europe of the 17th century which used a modified version of the 16th century armies of Northern Europe (especially Sweden) and the list goes on up to the Roman and Greek armies of antiquity. The only gap in military culture was during Middle-Ages were armies and war were not made of or by professional soldiers. All these armies were very successful and all of them were composed exclusively of men. It was a time before birth control when women had five jobs open to them and were executed, marginalised or rejected otherwise (prostitute, housewife, nurse, school teacher for kids and nuns). You will have to wait for the industrial revolution to see women work outside those fields and then again for a smaller salary and worst conditions. It was a sign of crippling poverty not economical freedom like in the 1950 and after.
Thus, the army evolved not to produce the best soldiers for a particular style of warfare but the best male soldiers for a particular brand of warfare. All the technics, strategy and organisation is designed to produce with ease and speed good male soldiers, but those technics are not ideal to produce with ease and speed good female soldiers.
In fact, in many cases, these technics are counterproductive. For example all these armies teach «hard martial arts» which aren’t adapted to most women physic and doesn’t take into account their greatest asset, but these martial arts certainly develop men greatest fighting quality (size and strength). But, it goes deeper than that. Because of our cultural heritage and social norms, men and women are raised differently and become different psychologically speaking too. Thus, the technics employed to promote teamwork are adapted to men psychological references and culture which are very different for women. Bravery is thought in close association with strength, size, sexual domination (in the large sense of the term not only the pejorative one) and aggressivity. This works wonder with men, but provoke the exact opposite amongst most women who would perceive this in a menacing, ridiculous or childish way in most cases unless they make a lot of mental gymnastics. The roots of bravery is psychologically imprinted in a different way by our culture in women who perceive it in association with the following theme: protection of loved ones, vengeance (also in the more palatable term of justice), sternness and freedom (especially sexual freedom which clashes with the concept of sexual domination heavily). Most men would perceive an indoctrination based on those principle as meek, pacifist or simply boring. Elite soldiers are trained in the same way than normal ones they just have «more of the good stuff». Thus elite male soldiers are trained in a way even more alien to most women and turn out as worst soldier than a hypothetical elite female soldier who would have been trained in an ancient and successful institution like the army which was tailored for her needs. If modern Earth will probably never produce very good female soldiers in the foreseeable future it’s because our military and connected social institutions have no real experience, plan or technics to train them. We also don’t have the need to adapt it at short terms for our planet is more peaceful than ever and will probably become even more peaceful in the following century. In the 40K setting thought, Cadians and other fortress worlds, where all energy is dedicated toward the training soldiers, would certainly have considered this seriously and almost scientifically. In a strange turning of the table, you could see men handeling logistic and the nursing of children and women fighting.
The «best modern soldier» is not a 190 centimeters men with large shoulders, short and muscle legs, square jaw, shaved head and large powerful hands. It’s much more likely a 165 centimeters women with slim and very fit features with unnaturally good eyesight and whatever haircut she can fit in a helmet. Yet the very most important element to produce good soldiers is not its physical or psychological natural features or advantages. It’s by a landslide the quality of its training. The perfect soldier is the one that has been perfectly trained and he doesn’t care about sex, culture or ethnicity.
PS: if tall, strong and brave were the true measure of soldiers. The imperium would have used black men from south and central Africa who are stronger and taller than all other ethnic groups and you would see a lot more representation of black people in 40K. Games-Workshop authors aren’t military historian, philosopher or soldiers and they don’t need to be. They use «common sense» like everybody else on subject they never studied even if it makes them wrong a lot of time. They draw, write and picture what they know and what seems to make the more sense to them aand first and foremost what they like.
PPS: for all those talsking of the necessity of women to raise babies and infants. You need to learn of the wonder of modern technologies like maternised milk (just like mommy's milk but artificial and just has good if not better in many cases), baby carriers, baby bottle, tugging blankets (to simulate a lovely embrace), incubators, cribs and much much more!!!! It all needs to go!!! Call in the next five minutes and receive a milkshake!!!!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/12/30 21:22:07
Not to mention I wouldn't call a regiment that's called the 'Lucifer Blacks' good representation. What with being put with the actual devil that the authors believe in alongside a mention of the ethnicity.
3dog wrote: Not to mention I wouldn't call a regiment that's called the 'Lucifer Blacks' good representation. What with being put with the actual devil that the authors believe in alongside a mention of the ethnicity.
Funny. It didn't even occur to me that 'Lucifer' would be the offensive part. But calling a regiment composed of black people 'something blacks' doesn't seem like great idea to me.
Melissia wrote: These are also the same people who toss human lives away like pies at a clown convention and don't really care whether or not said lives are male or female. You're way too obsessed with gender to be a good Inquisitor.
Except the fluff has a notable absence of female Cadians on the front lines. I go off what already exists and draw conclusions from such observation. Either the female soldiers are primarily running the logistics of the Guard or they're being used to create more soldiers for the grimderp.
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Melissia wrote: The United States has an annual growth rate of 0.77%-- birth rate balanced against death rate. On a hive world of 1 trillion (a few hive worlds have been described as having several times more than this in the lore, I'm just using this as an easy math number) this rate of population growth means, if they just wanted to keep the population stable, they could send off 7,700,000,000 soldiers each year to the Imperial Guard whiel hovering at or near the one trillion population number.
GW's writers rarely depict battles as possessing troops in the millions, never mind hundreds of millions or even billions.
There really isn't as much of a problem with "throwing more troops at it" as you think there is. The Imperium actually doesn't make ENOUGH use of its human resources, as many of these planets have growing populations rather than stable ones.
Wat
The largest recorded Hive World population is 154,000,000,000. Not 1,000,000,000,000. A trillion is both fething absurd and unsupported.
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Psienesis wrote: In a galaxy of pure pragmatism, having a society with no women is as equally bad as a society with no men. Cadia's recruitment rate is noted to be equal to its birth rate, but further explains that just over 70% of its population is "under arms". This indicates that the remaining 30% fulfills some non-combat role, which would be all of the civilian jobs, all of the administrative jobs, all of the agricultural jobs and the entire workforce of the foundries.
Given this, there is literally no room or place on Cadia to assign all female soldiers the job of prostitute. This gets further complicated by knowing that Cadia has a population of 850 million... with only 1 in 10 soldiers being assigned to the Interior Guard, and 70% of its population being a combat-arms soldier, having too few men is as big a problem as having too few women.
Then there also comes the issue of men and women who are, for whatever reason, incapable of having children. These are probably the people who are manning the foundries, working in the rear-echelon units, and doing all the vital roles that make a military function.
Given that a day does not pass on Cadia where some part of its Interior Guard is not fighting some rebellion, cult, or rebellious cult (not to mention potential daemons, Chaos Space Marines that walk out of a portal, Xeno raiders or any one of a thousand other threats), the chance for crippling injuries is quite high. These sorts, too, are going to be your field hands and factory workers.
All that aside... Cadia doesn't make any sense as an actual society, but the sense it does make, given the sources we have on it, the only way it possibly could function is as an egalitarian society.
As far as the spread of ethnic groups in the Imperium goes... not so much. Certain Hive Worlds, with an influx of traffic from other worlds, yes, perhaps. Otherwise? Well, this is Warhammer 40K, which falls into the Planet of Hats syndrome quite easily. A given planet's people are going to be of a single ethnic type, in most cases (the Tanith, for example, are Space-Celts). This is also explained in the spread of humanity across the stars previously in its history; people moved to planets/stations to be with "their own kind", whether that was based religion, ethnicity or areas of interest (so you would have Planet Trekkie, Planet Twilight, Planet Harry Potter, Planet Mormon, Planet Jehovah's Witnesses, Planet Irish-Americas, Planet Francophone, etc.)... and generations of intermarriage and breeding would basically homogenize ethnic traits across all members of a society.
So, basically, since the box of IG troops is intended to reflect not only Cadians but any generic IG infantry unit, then it should most definitely contain a few female models and a few non-White models. You could even go with 5 white males, 1 white female, 1 black male, 1 black female, 1 Asiatic male and 1 Asiatic female in the box and basically provide enough sculpts to cover all your bases with minimal effort.
This also opens up the chance for people doing tailored armies to buy multiple boxes of kits to build specialized IG units, or use the heads and torsos for other projects, which is more sales for GW.
The "under arms bit" probably just means something like those with training. The number's too high to function, the proportion that manages the logistics has to be larger then the proportion that fights, otherwise your war machine comes apart at the seams and collapses.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/12/30 21:29:36
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
Funny. It didn't even occur to me that 'Lucifer' would be the offensive part. But calling a regiment composed of black people 'something blacks' doesn't seem like great idea to me.
You are not wrong on that front, either.
The "under arms bit" probably just means something like those with training. The number's too high to function, the proportion that manages the logistics has to be larger then the proportion that fights, otherwise your war machine comes apart at the seams and collapses.
Those are the numbers provided about Cadia. It has a population of 850 million, 71-point-something percent of which are "under arms", with a recruitment rate "equal to its birth rate". Its "Interior Guard" (the PDF) is selected from 1 in 10 of its IG tithe, regardless of training or specialty.
It is best to be a pessimist. You are usually right and, when you're wrong, you're pleasantly surprised.
Wyzilla wrote: Except the fluff has a notable absence of female Cadians on the front lines.
The fluff has it that every single Cadian on Cadia is considered on the front lines, as because of the nature of the armies of chaos and the horrors of the warp, every single Kasr can be invaded at any time. You're pushing your bizarre fantasies in to the lore and claiming you're pulling them out of the lore.
Pulling gak out of thin air is not "go[ing] off of what already exists".
Wyzilla wrote: The largest recorded Hive World population is 154,000,000,000.
Off the top of my head, Ichar IV blew that away at 500 billion. A quick check of Lexicanum has that sourced on Tyranids 3rd edition codex. It was not, IIRC, noted to be a particularly large hive world.
At 500 billion, an annual growth rate of 0.77%-- equivalent to the CIA Factbook's stats for America this year-- results in a recruitment rate of 3,850,000,000 per annum. So a recruitment rate of one billion every year would still allow a substantial amount of growth to happen in the hive world. Every YEAR, Assuming each regiment averages around a thousand soldiers (some go up to ten thousand, some are only a few hundred, this is a rough median), that's a million different regiments exported every single year.
Even Minea-- the world you cited with 154 billion population-- has an annual tithe of over a million guardsmen, and it's obviously not even the largest hive world out there. Using the same math, it could have a recruitment rate of 1,185,800,000 assuming a 0.77% growth rate and recruitment capped at growth rate. That's per annum. Every year, assuming stagnating first world level population growth, Minea could contribute over a billion soldiers and not have a loss in the number of people on it. But it doesn't. It barely tithes a fraction of what it could be tithing.
That 40k's writers don't pay attention to their own writing isn't really new, so I don't know why you're pretending they're doing it now. Nor do they have more than the most rudimentary understanding of math, for that matter.
This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2014/12/31 00:25:35
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
At the danger of high jacking the thread on another subject I would still reply. Your common sense is absolutely wrong in a fact analysis. Then again, this is a common misconception and an easily understood one. «Common sense» is usually very wrong for it’s a synonymous for preconception on any particular subject. It was «common sense» that the sun orbited around the Earth though it never was the case. Same things for big and solid cars being safer than smaller and softer ones while it’s the complete opposite. Even the incredible death rate of the 40K universe wars is probably much smaller than the death rate of industrial accident, disease caused by malnutrition, poor hygiene, toxic environment, etc. Armies are smaller in the grim futures due to starships deployment and battles. Napoleon had a larger army than the US army right now in pure fighting men, but its army was far weaker and capable of less. I was also only talking about the Cadians in particular. In the setting most planet are culturally and technologically very different from one another.
These are the reasons why women are actually more apt to be soldiers and why they are not. Sorry, I don't have all the complete reference but you can find them by yourself rather easily. Remember that these are generalities and you will always find exceptions of the opposite.
1) Women have a better balance and flexibility than men.
This gives them a distinct advantages in close-combat much superior to strength and size due to the fact that strength and size only matter if you fight in close combat in tight formations were movement is restricted (which hasn't been the case since Napoleon). In a loose formation, your opponent has the ability to sidestep you or simply recoil to avoid your powerful attacks and long reach and gain an advantage. You will never see such moves in combat sports employed at their fullest either, for they are systematically illegal because of the high risks of injury they create (blows at the back of the head a considered very dangerous). Of course, you need to train women in a different variety of martial art to be effective fighters. These are called «soft martial arts» like tai-chi, winchung, crane and mantis kung-fu, aikijutsu for example, use positioning, precision, balance and flexibility to be efficient. These martial arts were also mostly developed by women for self-defence and war and are all very deadly, fast and efficient. Of course, they are also a bit harder and longer to teach than «hard martial art» like English and French boxing, Brazilian jujitsu, wrestling or karate. Though, the former are still as efficient against an armored target compare to the later who becomes much less efficient. I suggest some reading on Chinese martial theory to see how different schools of martial arts teach and produce different results.
Better balance and flexibility allow women to navigate rough terrain faster and more importantly much more silently. Stealth is a central doctrine in modern warfare and one of the most important set of skills. Stealth confers the element of surprise, which is central in most military operation of infantry level.
2) Women are smaller and thinner than men.
This is also one of the reason why they are less strong and powerful, but as it has been demonstrated earlier, strength isn't an important factor past a certain level (which fit women meet rather easily). A smaller person makes a harder target and need less cover to hide herself. This is a significant advantage for almost all combat is made at a range of a hundred meters (sometimes much more) with personal fire-arms and taking cover the first step in any engagement. If you are smaller and more flexible, its easier to find good cover.
3) Women have sharper senses than men.
Women are less likely to need glasses and have a higher proportion of perfect vision. There even is some women who can see a fraction of the UV specter of light (no men has been found with such an ability yet). Eye sight is important to spot ambush but also for accuracy with fire-arm. Women hearing and sense of smell is also sharper which can be used to detect ambushes (the greatest danger in combat). Women experience less the syndrome of tunnel of vision than men in stressful condition (like combat). Though in fairness, men have better forward vision in those situation. But in combat outside of formation, danger can come from all side.
4) Women are more resilient to pain both physical and mental.
Women are notorious for their superior physical endurance to pain (about 20% more resistance), but this is completely pointless in war. An injury will still incapacitated her as much as a men. Though, this also makes them more resistant to shock danger (a real killer when it comes to combat injuries). This capacity is not significantly affected by pregnancy or childbirth like some unfounded rumours stated it in the past, but due to the level feminine sexual hormones (which have more than one role much like masculine sexual hormones) in a female body and a higher level of fat. Women are also much harder to torture due to that resistance and have proven multiple times that they make poor torture subject. The Nazis studied the subject a lot so did the regime of Paul Pot and even some torturer from Iraq and US agreed with that strongly. Women also produce a much higher level of the hormone responsible for attachment which makes them much more resilient to mental illness. This also help them to recover faster of trauma.
5) Women have a higher capacity for sustained attention.
An average men can keep intense concentration for about 30 minutes without pause, a women for about 45. Concentration is vital in combat for it allow you to stay attentive in patrols, sentry duties and in preparation of ambush were a small period of distraction can kill you. Combine that with sharper sense and greater ability for stealth and close combat and you see where I am going. This also make for better officer with more capacity to do remember lots of data and complex briefings.
6) Women can multitask more easily.
This is some of the most famous ability of women compare to men. The ability to divide efficiently your attention on different tasks is also very useful for a soldier this way you can listen to your officer while maintaining guard duty for example without loss of efficiency in either one. Multitasking is not exclusive to women, but it’s displayed more commonly amongst them.
7) Women form bonds faster than men.
This, in some setting, can be a problem but in a good system of training is a powerful tool. Women create bonds (positive or negative) faster than men and can sustain more. This is due to the higher level of the hormones linked to attachment in their blood. It creates a stronger sense of friendship, love or team in positive cases and more disgust, fear and hatred in negative ones. Well exploited, you make them hate your enemies and love their comrades and it's a recipe for an incredible fighting force. But in the wrong cases, you have a complete mess of rivaling spiteful females (seen that once and boy is it ugly!). In most cases, it also allow women to follow social standard more easily. That’s one of the reason why the fashion industry have such a pull on women but rather little on men for example. In a training and military environnement it improves discipline and efforts to conform to standards.
All taken into account, both men and women can make excellent soldiers that generalities will never be able to encompass. It just seems that women possess, in my opinion, more useful skills and biological advantages than men to produce higher quality modern (and in that case 40K) soldiers. Than, how come most women in the army are of average skills and how come elite soldiers are still systematically men?
Modern armies have inherited of a long tradition from our past. All of them from the Chinese, Russian, Israeli or British armies are all based on the same principles developed in western and central Europe at the turn of the century which themselves inherited their doctrines from western and central Europe of the 17th century which used a modified version of the 16th century armies of Northern Europe (especially Sweden) and the list goes on up to the Roman and Greek armies of antiquity. The only gap in military culture was during Middle-Ages were armies and war were not made of or by professional soldiers. All these armies were very successful and all of them were composed exclusively of men. It was a time before birth control when women had five jobs open to them and were executed, marginalised or rejected otherwise (prostitute, housewife, nurse, school teacher for kids and nuns). You will have to wait for the industrial revolution to see women work outside those fields and then again for a smaller salary and worst conditions. It was a sign of crippling poverty not economical freedom like in the 1950 and after.
Thus, the army evolved not to produce the best soldiers for a particular style of warfare but the best male soldiers for a particular brand of warfare. All the technics, strategy and organisation is designed to produce with ease and speed good male soldiers, but those technics are not ideal to produce with ease and speed good female soldiers.
In fact, in many cases, these technics are counterproductive. For example all these armies teach «hard martial arts» which aren’t adapted to most women physic and doesn’t take into account their greatest asset, but these martial arts certainly develop men greatest fighting quality (size and strength). But, it goes deeper than that. Because of our cultural heritage and social norms, men and women are raised differently and become different psychologically speaking too. Thus, the technics employed to promote teamwork are adapted to men psychological references and culture which are very different for women. Bravery is thought in close association with strength, size, sexual domination (in the large sense of the term not only the pejorative one) and aggressivity. This works wonder with men, but provoke the exact opposite amongst most women who would perceive this in a menacing, ridiculous or childish way in most cases unless they make a lot of mental gymnastics. The roots of bravery is psychologically imprinted in a different way by our culture in women who perceive it in association with the following theme: protection of loved ones, vengeance (also in the more palatable term of justice), sternness and freedom (especially sexual freedom which clashes with the concept of sexual domination heavily). Most men would perceive an indoctrination based on those principle as meek, pacifist or simply boring. Elite soldiers are trained in the same way than normal ones they just have «more of the good stuff». Thus elite male soldiers are trained in a way even more alien to most women and turn out as worst soldier than a hypothetical elite female soldier who would have been trained in an ancient and successful institution like the army which was tailored for her needs. If modern Earth will probably never produce very good female soldiers in the foreseeable future it’s because our military and connected social institutions have no real experience, plan or technics to train them. We also don’t have the need to adapt it at short terms for our planet is more peaceful than ever and will probably become even more peaceful in the following century. In the 40K setting thought, Cadians and other fortress worlds, where all energy is dedicated toward the training soldiers, would certainly have considered this seriously and almost scientifically. In a strange turning of the table, you could see men handeling logistic and the nursing of children and women fighting.
The «best modern soldier» is not a 190 centimeters men with large shoulders, short and muscle legs, square jaw, shaved head and large powerful hands. It’s much more likely a 165 centimeters women with slim and very fit features with unnaturally good eyesight and whatever haircut she can fit in a helmet. Yet the very most important element to produce good soldiers is not its physical or psychological natural features or advantages. It’s by a landslide the quality of its training. The perfect soldier is the one that has been perfectly trained and he doesn’t care about sex, culture or ethnicity.
PS: if tall, strong and brave were the true measure of soldiers. The imperium would have used black men from south and central Africa who are stronger and taller than all other ethnic groups and you would see a lot more representation of black people in 40K. Games-Workshop authors aren’t military historian, philosopher or soldiers and they don’t need to be. They use «common sense» like everybody else on subject they never studied even if it makes them wrong a lot of time. They draw, write and picture what they know and what seems to make the more sense to them aand first and foremost what they like.
PPS: for all those talsking of the necessity of women to raise babies and infants. You need to learn of the wonder of modern technologies like maternised milk (just like mommy's milk but artificial and just has good if not better in many cases), baby carriers, baby bottle, tugging blankets (to simulate a lovely embrace), incubators, cribs and much much more!!!! It all needs to go!!! Call in the next five minutes and receive a milkshake!!!
!
Wow. That's... quite a few assumptions you are making. I'm not going to address them one by one as you have made a ton of points but I will say this: People can be positively discriminated against too and groups can have baseless assumptions made in their favor as well.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/12/30 23:54:13
Thought for the day: Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.
30k Ultramarines: 2000 pts
Bolt Action Germans: ~1200 pts
AOS Stormcast: Just starting.
The Empire : ~60-70 models.
1500 pts
: My Salamanders painting blog 16 Infantry and 2 Vehicles done so far!
When it comes to diffrences in the TT and the fluff is that the models do not represent the fluff and novels very well. There are plenty mentions and references in the books and BL novels that there are in fact people of various skin tones and "racial ethnicity" in the books. For example in one or both of the SoB novels there is a SoB discribed has having Charcoal skin and short curly hair, and another as having olive skin ( most likely to discribe someone of Asian decent.)
Though probably when it comes to GW's officially painted models, Well why are they not represented in the models? my best answer for that is because the painters at GW have deadlines to get projects done it is easier just to use the same skin tones on all the models so you don't have to constantly switch paint colors as it would take more time to paint the different skin colors.
Most of the models present in the GW pictures are the private armies of the various designers, so could be painted to whatever the individual likes.
But that doesn't explain why the Cadian box doesn't have a couple women in it, or why there's not, say, a black Inquisitor model (Toth, for example) or a female Commissar.
It is best to be a pessimist. You are usually right and, when you're wrong, you're pleasantly surprised.
There have been female commissar models, but they wer all limited production and most of them sucked anyway.
I explain both of those using occam's razor-- the best explanation, IMO, is laziness. They don't really think about it so they never do anything about it, and any time they do, they use some excuse or other to get out of it because laziness.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/12/31 01:47:33
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
Indeed. I don't think GW is consciously sexist or misogynistic or racist or anything of the sort... but I do have to wonder how they fail to notice other companies producing models of all kinds of ethnic and gender types (that they themselves do not) and getting all kinds of mad sales out of it.
I would, at the least, expect GW's rather mercenary attitude to look at the situation and say "we want some of that pie, too".
It is best to be a pessimist. You are usually right and, when you're wrong, you're pleasantly surprised.
You are perfectly right. I just think the group who is positivly discriminated and have baseless claims of superior quality for modern soldiers are men. These are not only assumptions they actually are verifiable facts (except for point 6 about multitasking which has never been studied extansively to my knowledge its pure assomption on my part I must admit). When I talk about women eyesight, I also forgot to mention than despite having slightly lower vision, men can see further with clarity its mostly short range vision where you can observe a weakness. There is also only about a hundred women capable of seeing a part of the UV spectre of light in the world. For the rest of the women facts, they all have been studied and analysed quite a lot. We can talk about it some more if you want but I would sugest opening a new thread on the subject just to be more respectful.
Ashiraya wrote: And why does physical strength matter when your job is to march forward, shoot your lasgun and die for the Emperor?
Well you still have to be strong enough to be able to hold the lasgun and be able to reasonably move in the (while most likely comparatively light weight to today's armor) in the body armor you are issued. Not to mention be able to march in what ever would be considered a full kit by 40k standards.
At the danger of high jacking the thread on another subject I would still reply. Your common sense is absolutely wrong in a fact analysis. Then again, this is a common misconception and an easily understood one. «Common sense» is usually very wrong for it’s a synonymous for preconception on any particular subject. It was «common sense» that the sun orbited around the Earth though it never was the case. Same things for big and solid cars being safer than smaller and softer ones while it’s the complete opposite. Even the incredible death rate of the 40K universe wars is probably much smaller than the death rate of industrial accident, disease caused by malnutrition, poor hygiene, toxic environment, etc. Armies are smaller in the grim futures due to starships deployment and battles. Napoleon had a larger army than the US army right now in pure fighting men, but its army was far weaker and capable of less. I was also only talking about the Cadians in particular. In the setting most planet are culturally and technologically very different from one another.
These are the reasons why women are actually more apt to be soldiers and why they are not. Sorry, I don't have all the complete reference but you can find them by yourself rather easily. Remember that these are generalities and you will always find exceptions of the opposite.
1) Women have a better balance and flexibility than men.
This gives them a distinct advantages in close-combat much superior to strength and size due to the fact that strength and size only matter if you fight in close combat in tight formations were movement is restricted (which hasn't been the case since Napoleon). In a loose formation, your opponent has the ability to sidestep you or simply recoil to avoid your powerful attacks and long reach and gain an advantage. You will never see such moves in combat sports employed at their fullest either, for they are systematically illegal because of the high risks of injury they create (blows at the back of the head a considered very dangerous). Of course, you need to train women in a different variety of martial art to be effective fighters. These are called «soft martial arts» like tai-chi, winchung, crane and mantis kung-fu, aikijutsu for example, use positioning, precision, balance and flexibility to be efficient. These martial arts were also mostly developed by women for self-defence and war and are all very deadly, fast and efficient. Of course, they are also a bit harder and longer to teach than «hard martial art» like English and French boxing, Brazilian jujitsu, wrestling or karate. Though, the former are still as efficient against an armored target compare to the later who becomes much less efficient. I suggest some reading on Chinese martial theory to see how different schools of martial arts teach and produce different results.
Better balance and flexibility allow women to navigate rough terrain faster and more importantly much more silently. Stealth is a central doctrine in modern warfare and one of the most important set of skills. Stealth confers the element of surprise, which is central in most military operation of infantry level.
2) Women are smaller and thinner than men.
This is also one of the reason why they are less strong and powerful, but as it has been demonstrated earlier, strength isn't an important factor past a certain level (which fit women meet rather easily). A smaller person makes a harder target and need less cover to hide herself. This is a significant advantage for almost all combat is made at a range of a hundred meters (sometimes much more) with personal fire-arms and taking cover the first step in any engagement. If you are smaller and more flexible, its easier to find good cover.
3) Women have sharper senses than men.
Women are less likely to need glasses and have a higher proportion of perfect vision. There even is some women who can see a fraction of the UV specter of light (no men has been found with such an ability yet). Eye sight is important to spot ambush but also for accuracy with fire-arm. Women hearing and sense of smell is also sharper which can be used to detect ambushes (the greatest danger in combat). Women experience less the syndrome of tunnel of vision than men in stressful condition (like combat). Though in fairness, men have better forward vision in those situation. But in combat outside of formation, danger can come from all side.
4) Women are more resilient to pain both physical and mental.
Women are notorious for their superior physical endurance to pain (about 20% more resistance), but this is completely pointless in war. An injury will still incapacitated her as much as a men. Though, this also makes them more resistant to shock danger (a real killer when it comes to combat injuries). This capacity is not significantly affected by pregnancy or childbirth like some unfounded rumours stated it in the past, but due to the level feminine sexual hormones (which have more than one role much like masculine sexual hormones) in a female body and a higher level of fat. Women are also much harder to torture due to that resistance and have proven multiple times that they make poor torture subject. The Nazis studied the subject a lot so did the regime of Paul Pot and even some torturer from Iraq and US agreed with that strongly. Women also produce a much higher level of the hormone responsible for attachment which makes them much more resilient to mental illness. This also help them to recover faster of trauma.
5) Women have a higher capacity for sustained attention.
An average men can keep intense concentration for about 30 minutes without pause, a women for about 45. Concentration is vital in combat for it allow you to stay attentive in patrols, sentry duties and in preparation of ambush were a small period of distraction can kill you. Combine that with sharper sense and greater ability for stealth and close combat and you see where I am going. This also make for better officer with more capacity to do remember lots of data and complex briefings.
6) Women can multitask more easily.
This is some of the most famous ability of women compare to men. The ability to divide efficiently your attention on different tasks is also very useful for a soldier this way you can listen to your officer while maintaining guard duty for example without loss of efficiency in either one. Multitasking is not exclusive to women, but it’s displayed more commonly amongst them.
7) Women form bonds faster than men.
This, in some setting, can be a problem but in a good system of training is a powerful tool. Women create bonds (positive or negative) faster than men and can sustain more. This is due to the higher level of the hormones linked to attachment in their blood. It creates a stronger sense of friendship, love or team in positive cases and more disgust, fear and hatred in negative ones. Well exploited, you make them hate your enemies and love their comrades and it's a recipe for an incredible fighting force. But in the wrong cases, you have a complete mess of rivaling spiteful females (seen that once and boy is it ugly!). In most cases, it also allow women to follow social standard more easily. That’s one of the reason why the fashion industry have such a pull on women but rather little on men for example. In a training and military environnement it improves discipline and efforts to conform to standards.
All taken into account, both men and women can make excellent soldiers that generalities will never be able to encompass. It just seems that women possess, in my opinion, more useful skills and biological advantages than men to produce higher quality modern (and in that case 40K) soldiers. Than, how come most women in the army are of average skills and how come elite soldiers are still systematically men?
Modern armies have inherited of a long tradition from our past. All of them from the Chinese, Russian, Israeli or British armies are all based on the same principles developed in western and central Europe at the turn of the century which themselves inherited their doctrines from western and central Europe of the 17th century which used a modified version of the 16th century armies of Northern Europe (especially Sweden) and the list goes on up to the Roman and Greek armies of antiquity. The only gap in military culture was during Middle-Ages were armies and war were not made of or by professional soldiers. All these armies were very successful and all of them were composed exclusively of men. It was a time before birth control when women had five jobs open to them and were executed, marginalised or rejected otherwise (prostitute, housewife, nurse, school teacher for kids and nuns). You will have to wait for the industrial revolution to see women work outside those fields and then again for a smaller salary and worst conditions. It was a sign of crippling poverty not economical freedom like in the 1950 and after.
Thus, the army evolved not to produce the best soldiers for a particular style of warfare but the best male soldiers for a particular brand of warfare. All the technics, strategy and organisation is designed to produce with ease and speed good male soldiers, but those technics are not ideal to produce with ease and speed good female soldiers.
In fact, in many cases, these technics are counterproductive. For example all these armies teach «hard martial arts» which aren’t adapted to most women physic and doesn’t take into account their greatest asset, but these martial arts certainly develop men greatest fighting quality (size and strength). But, it goes deeper than that. Because of our cultural heritage and social norms, men and women are raised differently and become different psychologically speaking too. Thus, the technics employed to promote teamwork are adapted to men psychological references and culture which are very different for women. Bravery is thought in close association with strength, size, sexual domination (in the large sense of the term not only the pejorative one) and aggressivity. This works wonder with men, but provoke the exact opposite amongst most women who would perceive this in a menacing, ridiculous or childish way in most cases unless they make a lot of mental gymnastics. The roots of bravery is psychologically imprinted in a different way by our culture in women who perceive it in association with the following theme: protection of loved ones, vengeance (also in the more palatable term of justice), sternness and freedom (especially sexual freedom which clashes with the concept of sexual domination heavily). Most men would perceive an indoctrination based on those principle as meek, pacifist or simply boring. Elite soldiers are trained in the same way than normal ones they just have «more of the good stuff». Thus elite male soldiers are trained in a way even more alien to most women and turn out as worst soldier than a hypothetical elite female soldier who would have been trained in an ancient and successful institution like the army which was tailored for her needs. If modern Earth will probably never produce very good female soldiers in the foreseeable future it’s because our military and connected social institutions have no real experience, plan or technics to train them. We also don’t have the need to adapt it at short terms for our planet is more peaceful than ever and will probably become even more peaceful in the following century. In the 40K setting thought, Cadians and other fortress worlds, where all energy is dedicated toward the training soldiers, would certainly have considered this seriously and almost scientifically. In a strange turning of the table, you could see men handeling logistic and the nursing of children and women fighting.
The «best modern soldier» is not a 190 centimeters men with large shoulders, short and muscle legs, square jaw, shaved head and large powerful hands. It’s much more likely a 165 centimeters women with slim and very fit features with unnaturally good eyesight and whatever haircut she can fit in a helmet. Yet the very most important element to produce good soldiers is not its physical or psychological natural features or advantages. It’s by a landslide the quality of its training. The perfect soldier is the one that has been perfectly trained and he doesn’t care about sex, culture or ethnicity.
PS: if tall, strong and brave were the true measure of soldiers. The imperium would have used black men from south and central Africa who are stronger and taller than all other ethnic groups and you would see a lot more representation of black people in 40K. Games-Workshop authors aren’t military historian, philosopher or soldiers and they don’t need to be. They use «common sense» like everybody else on subject they never studied even if it makes them wrong a lot of time. They draw, write and picture what they know and what seems to make the more sense to them aand first and foremost what they like.
PPS: for all those talsking of the necessity of women to raise babies and infants. You need to learn of the wonder of modern technologies like maternised milk (just like mommy's milk but artificial and just has good if not better in many cases), baby carriers, baby bottle, tugging blankets (to simulate a lovely embrace), incubators, cribs and much much more!!!! It all needs to go!!! Call in the next five minutes and receive a milkshake!!!!
When it comes to 40k fluff and table top it would be nice if GW put out some more kits that properly represented the fluff a bit more such as a 50/50 or a 60/40 male to female guard kit similar to what Eldar and Dark Eldar have. Keep in mind (and it is probably going to sound sexist as frack) that the male and female bodies are built differently with one of the biggest influences was during the early caveman hunter/gatherer days of humanity and earlier on. Well basically one of the reasons why female soldiers are pretty rare in today's military is really well...the shear amount of gear that a solider carries on a daily basis when deployed and men are effected less from the amount of stress all that gear puts on the bodies muscles, joints and spine than women are. Can women hull the same amount of gear, yes they can, however a woman is going to suffer more from in the long run than a man is.
However in the far future of the 41st millennium the Lord Commissar don' give no fuks if you got an inny or an outie you got 3 seconds to grab a rifle and shoot the enemies of man kind or the Commissar will blow your head off with his bolt pistol.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2014/12/31 09:01:45
The Empire 
1500 pts
: 
