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The average lifespan of an imperial guardsman is one battle so why not just render them all in to gun servitors to eliminate any chance of desertion or insubordination and just let them keep firing until the gun goes click and then move up another line...plus they wouldn't die/be incapacitated as easily as squishy humans.

Because manpower is the one resource the Imperium is overabundant in and its actually far more costly to make servitor and equip him out with a weapon than it is to simply throw a guardsmen out with a lasgun and have him charge at the enemy. Also as far as actual military terms, planets have their own armies anyways that are tithed to create imperial guard regiments so it makes more sense to just use whatever is already available rather than go through an entire process of effectively "resetting" pre-made armies into a servitor based one. Servitors are also, by their nature, extremely limited mentally and require constant maintenance and babysitting on a level that even for the Imperial Guard would be too cumbersome to handle on a wide scale. Plus I doubt the techpriests would agree to do such a thing on such a wide scale either.

Imperial Guardsman don't require as much oversight by AdMech personnel and they are much cheaper to produce. Plus, Guardsmen have qualities that make them preferable to servitors. Specialized regiments can endure conditions that would kill a servitor outright wasting precious resources. A regiment of Catachan Jungle Fighters could last for years in a Death World jungle. A group of Servitors wouldn't make it a week.

asiapalo wrote:
The average lifespan of an imperial guardsman is one battle so why not just render them all in to gun servitors to eliminate any chance of desertion or insubordination and just let them keep firing until the gun goes click and then move up another line...plus they wouldn't die/be incapacitated as easily as squishy humans.

One battle? Don't mix 40k the game with 40k the background.

You could deploy a whole legions of gun-servitors, they may be more resilient, but they are still lobotomized dumbheads. A guardman may be a puny human with a lasgun, but his cognitive abilities are much better than servitor's... Guardsmen are able to learn and use out-of-the-box htinking to solve problems. Servitor can't.

If you meant skitari...

Even then more expensive than guard.
More time consuming to create and requires trained techpreists tk best work with.

Humans, simpler and easier.

Guardsmen are cheap on most worlds and don't revolt if you somehow happen to "upset" your local machine worshipping heretics dressed in red.

When your entire army is admech controlled then it isn't really your army anymore is it ?

Tactics, logical thinking, adaptiveness - these are only some of the things that servitors do not possess and Guardsmen do. Also the number of AdMech supervising such forces would be huge and probably would shift the balance of power to the side of Mars in a huge way.

It's a question of cost, practicality and logistics.

Servitors might be more capable at performing some limited task but they're finicky things that can get hung up if some variable doesn't match their orders. They'd need a legion of techpriests to look after them, techpriests that could instead be repairing IG Leman Russ tanks. The AdMech is big but not big enough to run the Imperial Guard if all men were servitors. And it's also expensive compared to just drafting a man and giving him a gun.

In short the IoM has endless supplies of men and lasguns. It makes no sense to not use those.

Gun Servitors would be good only as cannon-fodder, because they are willing to go into enemy fire.

Deploying lines of them would be legit tactic, but they would suffer 90 to 100% casualties and achive nothing against fortified enemy. Not counting all the lives and material and work-time wasted on such things.

tneva82 wrote:

asiapalo wrote:
The average lifespan of an imperial guardsman is one battle so why not just render them all in to gun servitors to eliminate any chance of desertion or insubordination and just let them keep firing until the gun goes click and then move up another line...plus they wouldn't die/be incapacitated as easily as squishy humans.

One battle? Don't mix 40k the game with 40k the background.

Not sure where the quote s, but IG are expected to last under 24 hours.

Also, the definition of battle can be rather hazy.

 Selym wrote:

Not sure where the quote s, but IG are expected to last under 24 hours.

As I recall that was from the novel Fifteen Hours about a single war\battle that the Guard regiment joined only due to miscommunication. It wasn't supposed to be standard. Even the Imperium would struggle with the logistics of it all if it were the case.

If we replaced guardsmen with servitors, how would we get all those super badass guardsman heroes? Because I've never heard of a servitor hero that slayed an Ork and then took his power klaw and then got a laser eye and can also wield a storm bolter with one hand.

I thing all that "average lifespan" thing isn't something to build around. Battlefield isn't constant, it changes every second then it's hard, or even impossible to calculaate an "average"...

 Xathrodox86 wrote:
lso the number of AdMech supervising such forces would be huge and probably would shift the balance of power to the side of Mars in a huge way.

This The cult of mars is not the IoM it is an allied empire that hasn't always proven to be that loyal in the past.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xathrodox86 wrote:
Tactics, logical thinking, adaptiveness - these are only some of the things that servitors do not possess and Guardsmen do..

lol you will get more logical thinning out of a detachment of admech controlled murder machine thralls not the other way around,
Soldiers fear stuff, or have other emotions and limited logical capabilities. While the armies of the red planet just march on whatever they are faced and are controlled by the best logical cogitators they can afford.
Are you doubting on whether or not you should be thousands to study the tactics of the enemy no problems admech will already have calculated the risk reward ratio without any notion of illogical distractions such as the value of an individual life.

It is humanity, and loyalty to the IoM why you want guards and human commanders. Or cheap bodies if you are not well stocked up on stuff.

 oldzoggy wrote:

 Xathrodox86 wrote:
lso the number of AdMech supervising such forces would be huge and probably would shift the balance of power to the side of Mars in a huge way.

This The cult of mars is not the IoM it is an allied empire that hasn't always proven to be that loyal in the past.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xathrodox86 wrote:
Tactics, logical thinking, adaptiveness - these are only some of the things that servitors do not possess and Guardsmen do..

lol you will get more logical thinning out of a detachment of admech controlled murder machine thralls not the other way around,
Soldiers fear stuff, or have other emotions and limited logical capabilities. While the armies of the red planet just march on whatever they are faced and are controlled by the best logical cogitators they can afford.
Are you doubting on whether or not you should be thousands to study the tactics of the enemy no problems admech will already have calculated the risk reward ratio without any notion of illogical distractions such as the value of an individual life.

It is humanity, and loyalty to the IoM why you want guards and human commanders. Or cheap bodies if you are not well stocked up on stuff.

Well, servitors aren't the same as Thralls and suchlike. Servitors are far more rudimental, and are very much the dumbest kind of Servitor. Sure, they'll be fearless, but Servitors lack a lot of the ability of the more advanced Tech-Thralls and other robots.
Humans can look after themselves. Servitors can't.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

 Selym wrote:

Not sure where the quote s, but IG are expected to last under 24 hours.

As I recall that was from the novel Fifteen Hours about a single war\battle that the Guard regiment joined only due to miscommunication. It wasn't supposed to be standard. Even the Imperium would struggle with the logistics of it all if it were the case.

The 5th ed IG codex placed the life expectancy at a month or two, as I recall.

 Ashiraya wrote:

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

 Selym wrote:

Not sure where the quote s, but IG are expected to last under 24 hours.

As I recall that was from the novel Fifteen Hours about a single war\battle that the Guard regiment joined only due to miscommunication. It wasn't supposed to be standard. Even the Imperium would struggle with the logistics of it all if it were the case.

The 5th ed IG codex placed the life expectancy at a month or two, as I recall.

Not as far as I can tell. Cite a page please.

And let's put a pin in this "IG are expected to last under 24 hours" nonsense once and for all.

"Fifteen Hours" the novel refers to an EXTREMELY specific circumstance. It's not "the average lifespan of a Guardsman" in general, nor even "the average lifespan of a Guardsman" in the warzone described.

It's "the average lifespan of any of the Guardsmen that were found as survivors after Orks shot down their transports".

Okay, well that sounds a little less weaksauce.

 Selym wrote:
Okay, well that sounds a little less weaksauce.

It's a very...interesting book, but it's led to some really crummy fluff perceptions.

The basic premise is that there's a warzone that has been going on for quite some time. The Orks effectively control this planet, but neither the Imperium or Orks have a way off of it. The Munitorum, whether by accident or design, sometimes sends Imperial Guard reinforcements into the warzone.

The Orks blow them out of the sky immediately. The surviving Guardsmen from the initial defense of the planet go out of their way to attempt to recover supplies and weapons from the crashed ships, but so do the Orks.
If the Guard get there first they tend to attempt to bring any survivors from the crashes back with them.
If the Orks get there first, they just take the scrap and weapons and leave no survivors.

My Reaction when reading the title of the thread.

Also if it was all gun servitors and the like it would be a Adeptus Mechanicus force and I doubt that Guard heirarchy and those with real power in the Imperium have any desire to give more power to that organisation?

In fairness, the life expectancy of a Korpsman arriving at the front line on Vraks probably wasn't that long either.

Ultimately, the biggest problem is how stupid a servitor is. A servitor is essentially a lobotomised human. Yes, it can't feel pain or fear, but it also can't react to any complex situation without someone telling it what to do. If you deploy a servitor squad on overwatch to engage any unit trying to break through the valley, they will literally stand there like lemons as they get torn apart if the enemy comes from the flank instead.

But if you give them 'free fire' authority, they don't have the common sense to distinguish friend from foe in any kind of confusion.

You need lots of sentient humans to provide oversight - at which point you might as well give the humans the guns and save the cost of servitorization. Plus, there are no shortage of tasks servitors can't do. Anything involving recon, stealth, or acting as a 'smart' reserve and moving in to respond to threats on their own initiative, for example.

Just for the fun of this discussion.

The rogue trader RPG books had some "upgrade" to replace your entire crew, including the boarding parties etc with servitors.

asiapalo wrote:
The average lifespan of an imperial guardsman is one battle so why not just render them all in to gun servitors to eliminate any chance of desertion or insubordination and just let them keep firing until the gun goes click and then move up another line...plus they wouldn't die/be incapacitated as easily as squishy humans.

A Guardsman who has been turned into a gun servitor is called a 'Skitarii'. The Imperial Guard still exists because the equipment to make Skitarii is insufficient for the volume of soldiers the Imperium needs, the rest of the government is reluctant to hand that much control to the Mechanicum, and the ideological human-supremacist purity-of-form position most of the Imperium is built on would be quite opposed to it.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

asiapalo wrote:
The average lifespan of an imperial guardsman is one battle so why not just render them all in to gun servitors to eliminate any chance of desertion or insubordination and just let them keep firing until the gun goes click and then move up another line...plus they wouldn't die/be incapacitated as easily as squishy humans.

A Guardsman who has been turned into a gun servitor is called a 'Skitarii'. The Imperial Guard still exists because the equipment to make Skitarii is insufficient for the volume of soldiers the Imperium needs, the rest of the government is reluctant to hand that much control to the Mechanicum, and the ideological human-supremacist purity-of-form position most of the Imperium is built on would be quite opposed to it.

Not to get latin on you, but it should be "Skitarius". "Skitarii" is a plural.

Much like the Roman Triarii, composed of more than one Triarius soldiers.

Even Praetorian-servitors need to be supervised, or they start to behave stupid.
Also: A guardsman is cheap. A Servitor of any kind not.
They are good at mono-tasks and fire-support, not so much at regular fighting.

Maybe the OP should, before asking why the Imperium doesn't field regiments of servitors, ask why even the Adeptus Mechanicus themselves do not deploy exclusively servitorised forces?
They have both the will and the capability to do so if they wanted but I suspect they simply know better….

 Selym wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

asiapalo wrote:
The average lifespan of an imperial guardsman is one battle so why not just render them all in to gun servitors to eliminate any chance of desertion or insubordination and just let them keep firing until the gun goes click and then move up another line...plus they wouldn't die/be incapacitated as easily as squishy humans.

A Guardsman who has been turned into a gun servitor is called a 'Skitarii'. The Imperial Guard still exists because the equipment to make Skitarii is insufficient for the volume of soldiers the Imperium needs, the rest of the government is reluctant to hand that much control to the Mechanicum, and the ideological human-supremacist purity-of-form position most of the Imperium is built on would be quite opposed to it.

Not to get latin on you, but it should be "Skitarius". "Skitarii" is a plural.

Much like the Roman Triarii, composed of more than one Triarius soldiers.

40k plays very fast and loose with Latin, but point taken.

(The Inquisition's motto has been rendered in canon as 'Innocentia Nihil Probat', which according to Google Translate is almost correct, but it should be 'Innocentiae Nihil Probat')

Because then it'd be Mechanicaus not Guard.