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 wrote this in another thread, but I figure it could probably use a thread of its own. The issue I'm mainly stating in the following is the most glaring problem with space marines being represented in lore:

You (being a veteran SM recruiter... which is an astronomically improbable feat - that you will come to find out later) are charged to go find a few dudes from a pool of a thousand, who need to sleep for a few decades in a very expensive medical thing (with expensive apothecary medicine/services over these years)..... to find out if expensive implants have taken or not. Then they must be trained (probably 'expensively' - cost of warp gas etc) as a scout, before they can wear very expensive armour, with very expensive weapons, expensive ammo, expensive wax for the expensive flame proof litany paper and .... expensive everything..... on an expensive spaceship with other ... yep.... expensive things. There are some things thrones can't buy, for anything else not heretical, there's Astartes Mastercard....

Now lets think about 40k tabletop and how the above is portrayed.... take a run of the mill lasgun or 40k pea shooter, that needs a 33% chance to wound, and the SM has a 66% chance to save against it...... one shot from this weapon has a ~ 20% some chance of killing a space marine.
So, this begs the most obvious question: why even bother fielding space marines in the imperium if there is that level of impractical replenishment. Propaganda? That's beyond that, and in the realm of mentally handicapped.

5 Peons that took 8 weeks to train (if that) have over a 100% chance to kill a space marine - if they hit. Assuming averages to hit (so I can be a bit unbiased here), it would take ~10 guard to have a pure 100% chance to pop a space marine in one turn. Then if they don't kill him in one turn, even him attacking back, then his subsequent rounds survival rate is still crap.

Oh sure, one could say, that realistically you would have a squad of marines, with support meh meh blah bleh blah. You're right. We are talking about ratios in the lore though..... where Mr. point value should probably hang out too.

BL SM lore is at least consistent. GW on the other hand has had lore consistency issues with SMs since rogue trader.

Tabletop and fluff are both different universes as far as I'm concerned.

Of course, the tabletop mechanic cannot be trusted for lore question. The lore isn't made to be very well represented on the tabletop and even then I would not say it's 5 or six peons with lasgun. The rules and models of guardsmen are made to represent Cadians (or a similar regiment) which are basically soldiers who have been trained extensively in a militaristic culture from the age of 14 to adulthood. Your «average» guardsmen, thus, represent a men or women with more then 10 years of intensive training and exprience of war. In comparision, training for elite modern earth soldiers takes about two to four years. So your average «peon» is still twice more trained than our best troops.

Why bother training Space Marine (or Sororitas which aren't really easier to train and equip)? Because when you fight giant aliens, monstruous orks, millenia old space elves warriors, regenerating killer robots, extradimentionnal beeings of raw rage and destruction and other things like that, you can't be cheap and in a hurry all the time. You need something that can go toe to toe with them.

Game mechanics are not lore and never will be. Not to mention that taking a wound does not mean a casualty, it just means no longer being capable of continuing to fight.

While There are plenty things about chapter size and recruitment rates that I find ludicrous to begin with, your example doesn't work as game =\= fluff.

Deadnight wrote:
While There are plenty things about chapter size and recruitment rates that I find ludicrous to begin with, your example doesn't work as game =\= fluff.

Uh............. yes it does.

The amount of time spent alone to produce 1 marine is not effecient with current stats. Then you have the issue of cost to magnify the ineffeciency (thrones, not pts)
That's it in a nutshell. If you think there is something worse than the whole few decades to train a scout thing and money thing, then I would love to hear it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

jareddm wrote:
Game mechanics are not lore and never will be. Not to mention that taking a wound does not mean a casualty, it just means no longer being capable of continuing to fight.

Indeed. I I've thought of this too. It makes it feel a bit more consistent, but still falls very short in matters of combat effectiveness.

That wasn't really my point. My point was things like attack rolls, armor saves, etc are not in any way related to actual lore. They're abstractions for the sake of a game and adjusted in such a way so a single squad of marines isn't the equal of dozens or even hundreds of models worth of another unit, which is what they would be if their mechanics were supposed to represent to lore in any way. Using probabilities of a die roll as evidence is worthless.

If you're going to use game mechanics as fluff, use these instead.

jareddm wrote:Game mechanics are not lore and never will be. Not to mention that taking a wound does not mean a casualty, it just means no longer being capable of continuing to fight.

You just defined casualty. casualty means no longer being able to fight, not dead.

casualties, loss in numerical strength through any cause, as death, wounds, sickness, capture, or desertion.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/casualty

kveldulf wrote:

Deadnight wrote:
While There are plenty things about chapter size and recruitment rates that I find ludicrous to begin with, your example doesn't work as game =\= fluff.

Uh............. yes it does.

The amount of time spent alone to produce 1 marine is not effecient with current stats. Then you have the issue of cost to magnify the ineffeciency (thrones, not pts)
That's it in a nutshell. If you think there is something worse than the whole few decades to train a scout thing and money thing, then I would love to hear it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

jareddm wrote:
Game mechanics are not lore and never will be. Not to mention that taking a wound does not mean a casualty, it just means no longer being capable of continuing to fight.

Indeed. I I've thought of this too. It makes it feel a bit more consistent, but still falls very short in matters of combat effectiveness.

If the tabletop reflected the lore, then Space Marines would be Toughness 5, Wounds 2, Strength 5, Initiative 6, BS 5, WS 5. You CAN. NOT. USE TABLETOP. AS. LORE.
In the fluff, a single squad of Space Marines could take on ten squads of Imperial Guard and only take minimal casualties. On the tabletop, a single squad of Space Marines can barely even handle two squads of Guard.

epronovost wrote:
Of course, the tabletop mechanic cannot be trusted for lore question. The lore isn't made to be very well represented on the tabletop and even then I would not say it's 5 or six peons with lasgun. The rules and models of guardsmen are made to represent Cadians (or a similar regiment) which are basically soldiers who have been trained extensively in a militaristic culture from the age of 14 to adulthood. Your «average» guardsmen, thus, represent a men or women with more then 10 years of intensive training and exprience of war. In comparision, training for elite modern earth soldiers takes about two to four years. So your average «peon» is still twice more trained than our best troops.

Why bother training Space Marine (or Sororitas which aren't really easier to train and equip)? Because when you fight giant aliens, monstruous orks, millenia old space elves warriors, regenerating killer robots, extradimentionnal beeings of raw rage and destruction and other things like that, you can't be cheap and in a hurry all the time. You need something that can go toe to toe with them.

It's of my understanding the imperium, particularly the guard, are not generally trained very long. Making the assumption that the imperial guard archetype or baseline is from cadians including 10 year training times, is simply incorrect, at least from my impression of the universe - generally.

Do I really need to explain the matter of conscripts to make a point? Yea, they walk in with lower BS an and WS but I think that goes away after they get bloodied the first time ( they erase the white stripe).

And regarding your counter that you need nice things that can go toe to toe with big alien meanies....seriously? there are so many questions s to your statement, that I'll assume the best, first, you are right in the sense that you need tools to accomplish things. Sometimes you need a hydraulic powerlift than a slave team to move a brick. Sometimes the slave team is so cheap that the power lift becomes a luxury and in danger of becoming a novelty for the slaves. Sometimes quantity and cheapness are the way to go, and sometimes they are not. As far as the issue with SM stats go, they currently are not effecient for the imperium, though, they may still have some utility

Yet another personal who is disappointed by how useless space marines are on the table top.

The Imperial Guard are meant to represent Cadians, not actual Imperial Guard. They're ordinary humans, and thus not worthy of ten years of expensive training - which is, imo, completely unnecessary; after three years they would already be Special Forces, after six badass assassins, after ten, they'd have the skills of a Space Marine. Cadians, on the other hand, start training at 14, and then see combat the first chance they get - they get 10 years of training because they start so young. Logically, the Imperium simply does not have the resources to be training 600 million Guardsmen for ten years when they could get the same quality of training in 3.

jareddm wrote:
That wasn't really my point. My point was things like attack rolls, armor saves, etc are not in any way related to actual lore. They're abstractions for the sake of a game and adjusted in such a way so a single squad of marines isn't the equal of dozens or even hundreds of models worth of another unit, which is what they would be if their mechanics were supposed to represent to lore in any way. Using probabilities of a die roll as evidence is worthless.

What you have just said is that lore doesnt really matter in game design. If you really feel that die rolls are worthless, then why are you active on dakka, why play wargames? Granted there is an abstract layer, but if you make a game too absent of portraying the universe consistently, it will lose the entertainment value.

Wargame rules exist to gauge relative values and consider the matters of fortune by a die roll. If someone has a different perspective of the relative values, they can't both be right; either one is more consistent and the other is not, generally. If uou disagree with that, then I guess that's just where we agree to disagree.

Im not asking for 100% correctness either, but I am saying there are some things off enough.

I don't think it is beyond the realm of warhammer to balance out a better SM statline, abilities and scale points and make it feel more like the lore Without breaking things (except model count sales)

I personally look more at the Rogue Trader RPG when it comes with binding fluff and game. The WH40k. TTG is too rough to be used for good effect there.

@kveldulf

You are right to say that the normal guardsmen is far from having 10 years or so of military training. Only Cadians or other regiment of similar culture or reputation do and they represent a tiny fraction of all those that compose the Astra Militarum. But if you want to use game stats like some sort of barometer, those stats are made to represent models of cadian soldiers because its those that are sold, developped and marketed by GW.

There is mention in the fluff of dozens of crappy canon fother guard regiments, but it's not those that you play on the tabletop with your friends. You play the badass ones, those that kill khorn berzerkers in close combat and can fight Space Marines and aliens toe to toe. In the same vein, when you play ork you don't play the idiotic rabble of greenskins depicted in most Space Marine Novels. You play the best warriors of a powerful and clever warboss and his retenue. The kind that can pull a men arms off and crush the head of a Space Marine with a single blow.

40K is a science fiction setting inspired and produced by Comic books fans. Most GW authors are former comic book writers themselves like Dan Abnett who made himself a name writting X-men stories. Games-Workshop before beeing what it is today was a publisher of comic books and collection figurines for DnD and other pen and paper games. Think of all you see about 40K under the light of the comic book genre.

Who wins in a fight between Superman and Batman or Hulk against Captain America. Superman and hulk are obviously far more powerful, but Batman sometimes win those duels so does Captain America. Do comic books make sense? Even the most hardcore fan will tell you no and we don't give a gak if they don't. It's the same thing with 40K it's not realistic, doesn't try to be and doesn't even want to be. Thats the big reason in my opinion why GW stuff isn't consistent about anything from the skills of individual soldiers, powers of alien races and technologies and why a defenite concesus is almost impossible to meet on any given subject. It's just like comic book characters. The powers and skills of a single hero varies tremendously from one author to the other and from one event to the next. In that genre, the qualities and weaknesses of a hero are a tool for story telling. The important part of 40K novels (in the eyes of their authors) is not how much dudes a Space Marine (or other) kills, but the kind of challenges he meets, his relationship to his friends and allies, his vision of the world, his coolness factor, etc.

Has for my argument about the need for super-soldiers in the 40K setting, I do understand your point even if your exemple is extremly poor and I do agree that quantity can be a quality. That it's sometimes much more efficient to have a thousand grunts than an elite soldiers, but the Imperium do have it's grunts in massive quantity. We call them Planetary Defence Forces, Frateris Millitia, Marshalls, Conscript, Press Gangs and Private Guards. These are the rabble and the grunts that outnumbers millions to one any other armies in the Imperium or outside. Than you have the heavily trained we call the Imperial Guard or Astra Millitarum if you prefer. Than you have the elite of the elite we call The Sisters of Battle and Stormtroopers (Tempetus Scions if you prefer). Than you have the ridiculously elite we call Space Marines. Than you have the completly insane we call the Custodes and Imperial Assassins. Than you got purely incomprehensible we call Primarchs. The Imperium has the swiss knife of military. No matter the problem, they got ten different tools to solve it in ten different ways. When you consider that humanity is fighting against all odds for it's survival, to hell with the expenses! your going to do it even if it sounds ridiculous if it gives you just a little bit more chance of surviving.

 dusara217 wrote:

jareddm wrote:Game mechanics are not lore and never will be. Not to mention that taking a wound does not mean a casualty, it just means no longer being capable of continuing to fight.

You just defined casualty. casualty means no longer being able to fight, not dead.

casualties, loss in numerical strength through any cause, as death, wounds, sickness, capture, or desertion.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/casualty

I really don't care.
"Not to mention that taking a wound does not mean a DEATH, it just means no longer being capable of continuing to fight."
Happy?

kveldulf wrote:
What you have just said is that lore doesnt really matter in game design. If you really feel that die rolls are worthless, then why are you active on dakka, why play wargames? Granted there is an abstract layer, but if you make a game too absent of portraying the universe consistently, it will lose the entertainment value.

Actually, I don't. I'm involved in everything 40k except the TT game itself. Check my post locations and you'll see. And it's not about abstractness, it's about granularity. You'll simply never get the kind of granularity needed to even be in the same ballpark as the lore. A D6 simply isn't capable of providing the nuance you're looking for.

 Beaviz81 wrote:
I personally look more at the Rogue Trader RPG when it comes with binding fluff and game. The WH40k. TTG is too rough to be used for good effect there.

Indeed. The 40kRPGs as a whole offer far more flexibility and nuance, but unlike in a wargame, the stats are not set in stone and context and extenuating circumstances will have a greater impact.

 Ashiraya wrote:
If you're going to use game mechanics as fluff, use these instead.

Spoiler:

Yeah. We've got several sources of this fluff, and they do not agree with one another. The video game is still official fluff, as are the wargame mechanics.


I think that game mechanics are a source of fluff, just like every other source of fluff. The fluff says that a marine is better than a human, and the game mechanics tell us just how much better. And it isn't enough to justify spending many years training them.


Let's take the good old conscripts statline as our basis for someone who was trained over the past two months, and is expected to die in 14 hours. He hits his mark 1/3 of the time, wounds a marine 1/3 of the time, and breaks his armor 1/3 of the time.

So, it takes about 18 conscripts shooting to take down one space marine. They took collectively 3 years to train, and their equipment has been made by the lowest bidder. The marine took decades of training. and has somewhat irreplaceable wargear handed down through generations.

Economics matter a lot in all out war, and someone in the imperium should be doing this math.


Although, this does go to show that the Movie Marines probably do match "Marines according to the fluff."

 odinsgrandson wrote:


Yeah. We've got several sources of this fluff, and they do not agree with one another. The video game is still official fluff, as are the wargame mechanics.

I think that game mechanics are a source of fluff, just like every other source of fluff. The fluff says that a marine is better than a human, and the game mechanics tell us just how much better. And it isn't enough to justify spending many years training them.

Since I got called out on it, I gotta do the same to someone else. By definition game mechanics are not fluff. They're crunch. That's kind of how the whole fluff/crunch nomenclature works.

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
If you're going to use game mechanics as fluff, use these instead.

Spoiler:

Yeah. We've got several sources of this fluff, and they do not agree with one another. The video game is still official fluff, as are the wargame mechanics.


I think that game mechanics are a source of fluff, just like every other source of fluff. The fluff says that a marine is better than a human, and the game mechanics tell us just how much better. And it isn't enough to justify spending many years training them.


Let's take the good old conscripts statline as our basis for someone who was trained over the past two months, and is expected to die in 14 hours. He hits his mark 1/3 of the time, wounds a marine 1/3 of the time, and breaks his armor 1/3 of the time.

So, it takes about 18 conscripts shooting to take down one space marine. They took collectively 3 years to train, and their equipment has been made by the lowest bidder. The marine took decades of training. and has somewhat irreplaceable wargear handed down through generations.

Economics matter a lot in all out war, and someone in the imperium should be doing this math.


Although, this does go to show that the Movie Marines probably do match "Marines according to the fluff."

But the game mechanics don't tell us how much better a marine is than a human. The game stats tell us that a guardsman possesses 75% of the physical strength of an Astartes, and that clearly isn't true based on how the Astartes are portrayed in the fluff.

jareddm wrote:

 Beaviz81 wrote:
I personally look more at the Rogue Trader RPG when it comes with binding fluff and game. The WH40k. TTG is too rough to be used for good effect there.

Indeed. The 40kRPGs as a whole offer far more flexibility and nuance, but unlike in a wargame, the stats are not set in stone and context and extenuating circumstances will have a greater impact.

Yeah, stats are guidelines. Same with the game. It shows how in general a person of a faction is. Not how everyone are, and exceptions do exist.

I mean the game made the Imperial Fists e.g. into very melancholic fellows, and that's a well-established trait. You can go for choleric (like that Deathwatch Dreadnaught) or even phlegmatic if you want. But as a limitation I would be wary of seeing a sanguine Imperial Fist unless it is heavily toned down.

the tabletop probably isn't a great representation of how space marines would fight.

Casting aside obvious imbalances between the army books, 2 armies of equal points values should be more or less an even match.

How space marines would probably fight is not to seek out an even fight, but to stack odds so far in their favour that victory is a forgone conclusion.

the greatest strength of the Marines isn't necessarily the fact that they are super men, with awesome weapons and tough armour, but the fact that they are trained, and equipped, to fight wherever, and whenever they want. with aircraft capable of surviving punishing firepower, they can deploy to where they will do the most damage.

A standard marine deployment (in 40k terms) wouldn't be 2000 points of marines versus 2000 points of whatever, it would be more akin to 2000 points versus 200, or less.

30 guardsmen, or orks, or other xeno scum aren't going to be able to stop 40-50 marnies. they may wound a few, they may even get lucky and kill a few, but those 30 men are going to all be dead in short order, and before a counter attack can be mustered, the marines are gone, attacking somewhere else.

in 40k, just about the only time marines are accurately represented, in terms of fluff and on the tabletop, is when they fight Traitor Marines, or have a 'training session' against other loyalists.

Other battles fall prey to the destroyer of fluff known as 'game balance'

Exalted for truth ^^^^

Madtankbloke- I agree that you're describing how a good army would fight. However, the fiction is filled with stories of marines fighting against hugely superior forces. I can't think of an instance where they deployed marines against clearly inferior forces.

Nids, on the other hand, often get deployed against numerically inferior forces that have no chance of defending themselves.

 Orblivion wrote:

But the game mechanics don't tell us how much better a marine is than a human. The game stats tell us that a guardsman possesses 75% of the physical strength of an Astartes, and that clearly isn't true based on how the Astartes are portrayed in the fluff.

What I mean to say is that it is ALL fluff. The game mechanics tell us a story about this universe, and so does the fiction, the artwork and the miniatures. They don't all align, but all of them are telling us a story.

Space Marines are deployed more like the 300 Spartans, only instead of 60k to one, it's 10 to one

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
If you're going to use game mechanics as fluff, use these instead.

Spoiler:

Yeah. We've got several sources of this fluff, and they do not agree with one another. The video game is still official fluff, as are the wargame mechanics.


I think that game mechanics are a source of fluff, just like every other source of fluff. The fluff says that a marine is better than a human, and the game mechanics tell us just how much better. And it isn't enough to justify spending many years training them.


Let's take the good old conscripts statline as our basis for someone who was trained over the past two months, and is expected to die in 14 hours. He hits his mark 1/3 of the time, wounds a marine 1/3 of the time, and breaks his armor 1/3 of the time.

So, it takes about 18 conscripts shooting to take down one space marine. They took collectively 3 years to train, and their equipment has been made by the lowest bidder. The marine took decades of training. and has somewhat irreplaceable wargear handed down through generations.

Economics matter a lot in all out war, and someone in the imperium should be doing this math.


Although, this does go to show that the Movie Marines probably do match "Marines according to the fluff."

The game mechanics are garbage and completely nonsensical. People not even wearing armor can even get an armor save against things like heavy stubbers, which are .50 HMG's. Even if you were wearing flak armor like a Cadian, the kinetic energy of the round alone would kill you with armor. Without it, like Catachans, you'd either die from shock on the spot or bleed out in seconds. But using game mechanics for anything is a terrible idea, as they are arbitrary and restrained. Unlike a book, you cannot simply create something however you wish it as an author can, the game must be balanced and semi-playable or else nobody will even bother to play it.

And how the hell do game mechanics tell a story? There is no narrative in them, they're mechanics, a scaffolding for a game. They don't have a narrative, they don't tell a story. Game mechanics have no characters, they have no plot, they're a set of rules.

But I repeat, shirtless dudes in 40K TT can survive being shot with a .50 HMG. This alone should prove that the TT is arbitrary, nonsensical, and badly in need of being completely overhauled.

How many Dark Angels died on Vraks, on that single assault on that space port.

Edit: Found it, 500 marines sent, 200 died.

 Bobthehero wrote:
How many Dark Angels died on Vraks, on that single assault on that space port.

Edit: Found it, 500 marines sent, 200 died.

Yes, although you should note that only 15 of these died before the Chaos Space Marines made their counter-attack...

In fact, it specifically says it was the Chaos Space Marines who inflicted the 200 casualties.

I don't think anyone is going to contest that battles between Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines are going to be brutal affairs.

No, it just says that after a day of fighting, the DA lost 15 members. That day was the third one, there are no mentions of dead marines before nor after, save for the 200 figure which is the end result.

And whoever killed the Marines is irrelevant, if they're going to lose 200 Marines in a minor engagement, just how many are going to die in an actual major war?

 Bobthehero wrote:
No, it just says that after a day of fighting, the DA lost 15 members. That day was the third one, there are no mentions of dead marines before nor after, save for the 200 figure which is the end result.

Siege of Vraks wrote:Their ambush had inflicted painful losses on the Dark Angels, with the loss of 200 Battle-Brothers, but the traitors could not win this battle alone.

'Their' refers to the Alpha Legion, who did the ambush.

 Bobthehero wrote:
And whoever killed the Marines is irrelevant

It's not. They gave as good as they got, and they are not going to fight Chaos Space Marines every time.

kveldulf wrote:

Uh............. yes it does.

The amount of time spent alone to produce 1 marine is not effecient with current stats. Then you have the issue of cost to magnify the ineffeciency (thrones, not pts)
That's it in a nutshell. If you think there is something worse than the whole few decades to train a scout thing and money thing, then I would love to hear it.
.

No, my issue was you using in game mechanics (ie lasguns having a 20% kill rate against marines) as proof for the unfeasability of marines. The lore has space marines being almost impervious to small arms. Using math from the game is pointless. Hence game =/= fluff.

Now if you were to talk a out the unfeasability of marines in terms of how a few dozen can capture a city, let alone conquer a world, or kill billions of orks etc., or other plain silly stuff, I'm with you. If you talk about the space marine recruitment silliness (you need to be the best of the best of the best of your world, and be, like, twelve years old at that! And then you might have a chance to have a go at their selection process, and you'll still probably fail. How they can recruit enough to maintain only a thousand marines is beyond me, let alone the knowledge that frankly, a thousand is pretty silly- For numbers that would actually be feasible, and would make sense you'd need far more. But marines being silly as they have a one in five chance of dying to a lasgun? Rubbish.

Then again, just my own opinion.