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.

Does the Imperium use custom units of measurement replacing the meter/kilometer/liter, etc ?

As varied and numerous as the planets that make up the Imperium of Man. Though I'm pretty sure Metric is the Imperial Standard unit of measurement.

I would however assume that there would be a standard way of measuring. For interplanetary trade a single set of units would be vital. No point in one place building a (say) battery using a local measurement and it not fitting in las guns from the forge world they are sent to, or those from a third forge world where the local guard regiment is being re-supplied from. People learn measurements from things they use, and the dominant ones would be the ones used in trade and industry.

Logically they would use some form of SI units, as they are all based on universal constants. No point in having a system like Imperial or pre SI Metric, where measurements are based on arbitrary things like the length of a bit of platinum-iridium metal in a lab in Paris that can be damaged or just change through errors, but on absolutes like the distance light travels in a set time. They may not be the same absolutes, but given how fundamental measurement is to so much they may well be, possibly with different names.

However this relies on logic, which can be in short supply in the IoM, but then equally the Ad-Mech probably consider measurements to be holy numbers, absolutes given to them by the Omnisire and hidden within the universe.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
As varied and numerous as the planets that make up the Imperium of Man. Though I'm pretty sure Metric is the Imperial Standard unit of measurement.

Why, when metric is based on flawed assumptions (the meter was based on a flawed circumference of the earth, and the existing 'meter' bar is no longer a meter)? A similar, base 10 system would seem likely, but metric seems unlikely.

I thought Metric was their thing...It's already used in the Forgeworld book tank descriptions.

The "Imperium" clearly uses "Imperial" units of measurements.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
As varied and numerous as the planets that make up the Imperium of Man. Though I'm pretty sure Metric is the Imperial Standard unit of measurement.

Why, when metric is based on flawed assumptions (the meter was based on a flawed circumference of the earth, and the existing 'meter' bar is no longer a meter)? A similar, base 10 system would seem likely, but metric seems unlikely.

Because the technical specifications for Imperial warships and armored vehicles are all listed in Metric?

 Arcsquad12 wrote:

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
As varied and numerous as the planets that make up the Imperium of Man. Though I'm pretty sure Metric is the Imperial Standard unit of measurement.

Why, when metric is based on flawed assumptions (the meter was based on a flawed circumference of the earth, and the existing 'meter' bar is no longer a meter)? A similar, base 10 system would seem likely, but metric seems unlikely.

Because the technical specifications for Imperial warships and armored vehicles are all listed in Metric?

Isn't it just to give the reader an easier time ?

 Arcsquad12 wrote:

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
As varied and numerous as the planets that make up the Imperium of Man. Though I'm pretty sure Metric is the Imperial Standard unit of measurement.

Why, when metric is based on flawed assumptions (the meter was based on a flawed circumference of the earth, and the existing 'meter' bar is no longer a meter)? A similar, base 10 system would seem likely, but metric seems unlikely.

Because the technical specifications for Imperial warships and armored vehicles are all listed in Metric?

Er, that is because that is what we use. It has nothing to due with what the Imperium does or does not use. After all, why are codexs/works in English/German/whatever? The Imperials don't speak those languages.

The cubit, rod, talent, pound, inch, and others are all perfectly acceptable units of measure and made total sense for their time era. If anything, I would bet it isn't metric for the simple fact the Imperium is a system that is the way it is because that is the way it was done not because it is 'logical'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_units_of_measurement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_and_Talmudic_units_of_measurement
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/measures.htm

Metric is simply what most of the current world uses, and is thus what is most familiar to folks reading any of the fluff or rules. Shoot, if you want to say because rule book, than they don't use metric, they use imperial, because we measure in inches and a 25mm base is 25mm because it is ~1" and they just converted to metric because the rest of the world uses it (the UK still uses miles for distance and most of the guys in my office could tell you their height in inches but had no concept of an inch as a unit of measure, of course they still often talk about weight in stone so there you go).

If only the rest of the world would adopt the true imperial pint and not this half litre/American pint nonsense....

They almost certainly use a base 10 measuring system of some kind. What specifically is unknown as the books are "translated", and converted to Metric for our reference.

The cubit, rod, talent, pound, inch, and others are all perfectly acceptable units of measure and made total sense for their time era. If anything, I would bet it isn't metric for the simple fact the Imperium is a system that is the way it is because that is the way it was done not because it is 'logical'.

Wrong. The Imperium is actually very logical. They have very very good reasons for doing things the way they do them. They might seem illogical to us, but we aren't in their shoes.

Mankind has abandoned the use of AI, and has a huge mistrust of technology in general, because we were almost exterminated by our own AI. Modern humans are afraid of the dark because big nasty animals coming to eat us in our sleep is ingrained in our psyche, the same with 40k humans being afraid of technology. Its very logical to mistrust and be very careful with technology and science if it once almost caused your extinction.

Anyway, its entirely probable they use Metric or something very similar because its "always been done that way". Something which has been around for a hair over 38,000 years is straight up their ally.

The Imperium isn't some messed up place that would be fixed if only someone with a lick of sense came along. The Imperium is how it is because the situation is mindbogglingly horrible and the only sensible courses of action are equally horrible and atrocious. The Imperium is full of logical and intelligent people, this is literally the best the situation could possibly be. Its why the Imperium has lasted for 10,000 years.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

If only the rest of the world would adopt the true imperial pint and not this half litre/American pint nonsense....

You think thats bad? In the UK, we seem to use real pints for pints, but American pints for halfs! So a half of cider is actually only about 200mls, while a full pint is nearly 600.

 Grey Templar wrote:
They almost certainly use a base 10 measuring system of some kind. What specifically is unknown as the books are "translated", and converted to Metric for our reference.

The cubit, rod, talent, pound, inch, and others are all perfectly acceptable units of measure and made total sense for their time era. If anything, I would bet it isn't metric for the simple fact the Imperium is a system that is the way it is because that is the way it was done not because it is 'logical'.

Wrong. The Imperium is actually very logical. They have very very good reasons for doing things the way they do them. They might seem illogical to us, but we aren't in their shoes.

Mankind has abandoned the use of AI, and has a huge mistrust of technology in general, because we were almost exterminated by our own AI. Modern humans are afraid of the dark because big nasty animals coming to eat us in our sleep is ingrained in our psyche, the same with 40k humans being afraid of technology. Its very logical to mistrust and be very careful with technology and science if it once almost caused your extinction.

Anyway, its entirely probable they use Metric or something very similar because its "always been done that way". Something which has been around for a hair over 38,000 years is straight up their ally.

The Imperium isn't some messed up place that would be fixed if only someone with a lick of sense came along. The Imperium is how it is because the situation is mindbogglingly horrible and the only sensible courses of action are equally horrible and atrocious. The Imperium is full of logical and intelligent people, this is literally the best the situation could possibly be. Its why the Imperium has lasted for 10,000 years.

You haven't ever been to England have you? Retaining things because it is logical is not why things are retained. The historical significance and routine of it gets retained for that reason. Why can't they turn left on a red ( right on a red in the US)? Why do you pay for gas by the liter but get miles per gallon? Stones as a common unit of weight for sporting celebrities?

The Imperium isn't 'logical' outside of it's own concept of logic. 40k is full of slogans and imagery that supports that. That should not be shocking coming from a British gaming company. Base 10 is probable as it is easy. However something as ludicrous as the old British coinage system of farthings and so forth is equally plausible. After all, the rod that is no longer a meter but which determines what counts as a meter is probably long gone. 38k into the future, with multiple apocalypes in between gives me reason to doubt they would still use metric. They do not speak English any more, and that is the global business langauge. We don't use the Roman mile, and that was only 1500 years ago or less.

Then again, I like the UK precisely for its funny little ideosycracies.

Hi there, I work in metrology currently and here in the states we have this magical thing called a "tenth" it's not a tenth, as in a tenth of an inch, being 0.1 in the imperial system, but a tenth of a Thou, a Thou being a thousandth of an inch which is 0.001 of an inch, and a tenth isn't 0.1 but 0.0001... The stems on things aren't in millimeters either, so the closest thing of 2.5 mm is 448 in inches... So if you talk to the unicorn at the yellow brick road he'll make sense of all of this for you.

There is very little standardization in the Imperium of any sort.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

Er, that is because that is what we use. It has nothing to due with what the Imperium does or does not use. After all, why are codexs/works in English/German/whatever? The Imperials don't speak those languages.

I thought Low Gothic was English, and High Gothic was Latin. Praise the Emperor for bringing back dead languages, I guess.

Low Gothic is the equivalent of English and High Gothic is the equivalent of Latin, but they're whole different languages. It's just for the reader.

Anyway I think the Admech/Adeptus Astartes must have standardized measurement units.

 Psienesis wrote:
There is very little standardization in the Imperium of any sort.

Standard Template Construct begs to differ

 Mantorok wrote:

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

Er, that is because that is what we use. It has nothing to due with what the Imperium does or does not use. After all, why are codexs/works in English/German/whatever? The Imperials don't speak those languages.

I thought Low Gothic was English, and High Gothic was Latin. Praise the Emperor for bringing back dead languages, I guess.

No. Thats what its translated into so we can read it.

Per the fluff High Gothic has more in common with Chinese as they were one of the largest people groups to settle beyond Earth, and also one of the larger countries on Earth at the time. But it is a mixture of many languages, so its probably some mixture of Chinese, Spanish, and English as those are the most prolific languages in the world.

Low Gothic refers to the thousands and thousands of local dialects in the Imperium which all have "Gothic" as a root language, but at this point they wouldn't resemble the original language nor have much in common with each other.

High Gothic is the administrative language of the Imperium, its standardized across the galaxy. Most likely very few people speak this language in their every day lives so it has characteristics of a dead language much like Latin, allowing it to be used without it changing over time. Its also the language you learn so you can communicate no matter where you are.

 Flinty wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
There is very little standardization in the Imperium of any sort.

Standard Template Construct begs to differ

There are no fully-recovered STCs in existence. These are mythical, legendary devices. The AdMech continues a ten-thousand-plus years quest to discover one.

In the interim, every planet pretty much does its own thing.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Flinty wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
There is very little standardization in the Imperium of any sort.

Standard Template Construct begs to differ

There are no fully-recovered STCs in existence. These are mythical, legendary devices. The AdMech continues a ten-thousand-plus years quest to discover one.

In the interim, every planet pretty much does its own thing.

Standard Template Construct (or STC for short) have become shorthand for an STC Blueprint. Literally inumerable STC blueprints have been recovered, and the only fully intact STC was given to the Dark Mechanicus by Horus (I think, it might have been destroyed) iirc.

Those are fragments, bits and pieces of a complete STC, as a single, whole STC was used in the DAOT to provide a human colony with the ability to create absolutely anything they could possibly need at basically the push of a button.

The fact that so many examples of supposed STC-tech are becoming harder and harder for the Imperium to reproduce indicates that, no, they don't have complete STC blueprints, diagrams, manufactors, or anything of the sort. They have bits and pieces of recovered datasets, obviously suffering under significant data corruption (given the faults with certain lines) and are required to basically construct those things (like Rhinos or Land Raiders) "by hand", rather than using the auto-factories that the pre-Imperium colonies used.

All the black library books has Imperial characters referring to meters and kilometers and kilograms.

The reason is because GW is a brit company, the head canon reason can be because STC's use metrics.

Or the books are simply translated to our modern units of measurements.

 Psienesis wrote:
Those are fragments, bits and pieces of a complete STC, as a single, whole STC was used in the DAOT to provide a human colony with the ability to create absolutely anything they could possibly need at basically the push of a button.

The fact that so many examples of supposed STC-tech are becoming harder and harder for the Imperium to reproduce indicates that, no, they don't have complete STC blueprints, diagrams, manufactors, or anything of the sort. They have bits and pieces of recovered datasets, obviously suffering under significant data corruption (given the faults with certain lines) and are required to basically construct those things (like Rhinos or Land Raiders) "by hand", rather than using the auto-factories that the pre-Imperium colonies used.

No, it indicates that the irreplaceable STC infrastructure that was built 15k+ years ago is slowly being destroyed by continuous invasions. For instance, when the Dark Mechanicum destroyed Mars, the ability to mass produce Power Armour was lost due to the loss of the machinery and data that could do so. We still have examples of Forge Worlds with intact STC Blueprints; these blueprints are just that: blueprints. Constructing something "by hand" indicates nothing but a lack of infrastructure. The means of manufacture bears no reflection upon the item in question.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Then again, I like the UK precisely for its funny little ideosycracies.

Being a Brit I like those 'idiosyncrasies' - some of them even make sense. My dad always worked in Imperial, So I can tell you how big an area of land is in acres, but not in hectares. I can tell you how many miles it is to a place, but not in kilometres, same with speed - I have no idea how fast 250kph is, but I know 160mph is knocking on a bit. Yes, we are a metric country, but all our road speed limits are in miles per hour, and all our vehicles list their fuel consumption in miles per gallon, but we buy fuel by the litre (I think that's done on purpose because if it was in gallons we'd really see just how much we pay for it).

I think I may be of the last generation to depend so much on imperial measurements (I'm 45) - my teenage lads always seem a little confused when I talk of yards, feet and inches.

Nah- I'm 27 and I still use Imperial for most everything except buying cloth, which is sold by the metre, and cooking, and that's only because I keep pulling recipes from all over (and by the gods, America, what is with the fricken cup measures?!)

Uh, well... see, before the majority of Americans considered a "medium" soda to be 32 ounces or more in size, we actually had reasonably-sized dishes. So a "cup" was a measurement of 16 tablespoons in size.... still is, even though only someone who is very, very, very young would actually consider something that size to be a logical amount of something to drink.

A cup measure is 16 tablespoons?

That may be the most useful thing I've ever read on this forum.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
A cup measure is 16 tablespoons?

That may be the most useful thing I've ever read on this forum.

Yes?

http://www.tablespoon.com/posts/tablespoon-conversions-tablespoons-in-cups/bdf92edc-7542-4af5-8d55-6bd11ef77101

 Furyou Miko wrote:
(and by the gods, America, what is with the fricken cup measures?!)

Its a little more conveniently sized measurement than grams and mililiters.