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 Ketara wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

With Mars nearly destroyed who would be doing the rebuilding?

The survivors? Humans tend to reproduce.

And these newly reproduced humans came with skillz and education?

With the lower tech level, factories that were built were less productive.
STCs recovered still have not been enough to bring the tech level back up to the 30k standard.

My query was about existing technology which is already mass produced, not the long lost tech of yesteryore.

The technology in a factory is always more advanced than what it produces. A machine tool that cuts a part to a .1mm tolerance must itself be built to a .001mm tolerance. Cars and computers today are massed produced in robotic factories. The robotic machine tools that make them are not.

Right now China makes virtually everything we consume in factories, but the machine tools they use to do so are made in the US, Japan, or Germany. Take away the high tech production and then ravage the factories in China and you set technology and production back a century.

Time and again I see the argument "Mars sided with Horus" in this thread. I don't think it's relevant to the questions at all and is an example of a certain type of tunnel vision argument that's common in 40k. Let me explain myself.

While it's true that Mars is the most important forge world in the Imperium it is also just that, a forge world. Even if it outproduces other forge worlds by twice the ammount it would not be able to compete with say, 3 forge worlds combined effort (which can be found in a single system). Hence as sheer production goes it's irrelevant.

Where the knowledge is concerned the production process of Space Marines is known to the Inquisition, as does every tech marine have knowledge of how to produce their gear. A few chapters, such as the Iron hands, have very close contact with the adeptus mechanicus and nearby forge worlds probably have knowledge in space marine gear production. If nothing else the occasional grand Magus certainly does so we can strike "knowledge" of the list. Anything that's known to every astartes chapters has got to be known to the mechanicus and, failing that, is certainly known to the Inquisition.

So with mars knowledge and production out of the way the next argument is the problems with rebuilding under Imperial scrutiny. Mars is completly rebuilt, and it probably didn't take that long to make it happens. Most likely only a few hundred years if it even took one century. In the time since that one event 10.000years ago several crises have occured, most notably for mars was probably the assasin civil war. Every time mars had rebuilt.

Pre great crusade mars came under threat during the dark age of technology and the men if steels rebellion, something that most likely spawned the cult in the first place. Since then mars became a seat of knowledge but one rebellion will not have such impact as to renders it impossible for it to produce a more 1.000.000 warriors. A forge worlds general population is 15.000.000.000 inhabitants according to 3ed rulebook page 115. Since the knowledge and materials clearly are not a problem I doubt manpower is either. Also not only Mars but several forge worlds could do it.

In short Mars siding with Horus is irrelevant to the possibility of producing new legions of existing gene seeds.

For my thoughts on the subject as a whole see my earlier post on this thread.

Because the Great Crusade is the age of heroes where everything was great and gods walked among us.

Now is just the time of men, we are lesser, smaller minded. Sinned against the emperor and are paying for it now.

Why do you need to apply super logic and explain everything about it.

The imperium is just gak at doing everything now, and the legends of the past tell of a time when it wasn't gak.

Question the way things are now citizen and you'll be burned a heretic.

Now get bac to screwing bolts together to create engine designs for a tank we dnt even produce anymore because the administration on terra lost the order that was supposed to cancel production three thousand years ago

I think that the thing holding the imperium back is probably the adeptus mechanicus and the lack of Emprah.

The adeptus mechanicus members all hunt for information but the spread of the information itself is the limiting factor - by the time we get to M41 it's fairly common for rediscovered STC info to get hoarded and concealed by any tech-preist with designs on advancing themselves or their adgenda (40k dark angel plasma weaponry).

Even in 30k, Forgeworld Ryza do not spread the tech for creating the hellex plasma mortar and this adds to the lurking hostilities between them and Forgeworld Estaban. (from the thanatar unit entry in the mechanicum red book)
The fluff behind the creation of the Ursarax mentions an explorator-magos 'Enabrin Falkan' who stole the designs for thallax from the Ordo Reductor to create them and alludes to the spread of the design of Ursarax after his disappearance to the spread of his former accolytes. (from the Ursarax unit entry in the mechanicum red book)


The Omnissiah being around seemed to hold the focus of the mechanicum and having a final arbiter on anything regarding the advance of technology kept the adepts busy and productive.
i've gone over the timeline of some technological innovation during the great crusade while i was trying to work out whether the onager dunecrawler existed during the great crusade and what weapons it might have had (the neutron laser was complicated and still doesn't have a solid creation/implementation point as far as i'm aware, due i think to the short period of time it took to go from test-run to being rolled out across the imperium) and the feeling i'm getting is that any highly dubious tech wasn't necessarily avoided in M31, but rather kept from rash use in (spoiler alert!) Or sometimes given to the Ordo Reductor for limited use.



I'm not sure where the notion that one planet would be given over to production of a single component came from, but it's an incredibly wasteful concept (moving all that material in and out of orbit after each extra process? nope. definitely not.) and probably stems from the chinese model on production, irrationally scaled up.
You have entire planets of space and resources, and yes, certain worlds would suit different production biases (circuitry made in a system with large amounts of silica for example) and they would inevitably end up producing a large amount of raw materials (metal ingots, liquid oxygen, sulfates, nitrates, refined ores, liquid promethium) as well as a portion of completed products because why wait for a load of land crawlers to get sent across the galaxy to you, when you could build a land crawler factory and get sent resources which stack neater and more densely as well as being available for multiple uses.
A single planet producing a certain product in a certain way is logical, (existing example on earth is the frankfurter wurstl/weiner/virsli/vienna sausage) and is backed up in the DKoK fluff as well as certain imperium vehicles' fluff but i think these are cases of notable dominance of a single product due to demand conflicting with the mechanicum/adeptus mechanises covetousness of technological information; which would only get worse without the Omnissiah slapping people into action.

Afaik forgeworlds don't move position which suggests that the regular flow of resources is more important to a forgeworld than having a localised source. This makes sense from a production/manufacturing perspective of a fully developed world because the supply chain would be fully developed - a certain type of screw which is used heavily in making say, a land speeder would have a known use rate for the speeders created, and the sector which produces the screw would be set up to meet the planets demand exactly.
There is probably instances of worlds given over to production of a single resource (prometheium maybe?) who wouldn't have screw manufacturing facilities on planet and would need a forgeworld connection for resupply as well as links to Agri-worlds for food, but i think that would be far from the norm because most planets have a wide variety of stuff on them, the only real differentiative factors being linked to 'phase' - is it a solid world, a liquid world, something in between or is it a gas giant?

I get the sense Ketara doesn't understand the HH fluff properly. 1 million space marines with their expedition fleets, were enough to bring the Imperium to it's knees and deal irreversible damage. And you ask why the Imperium isn't keen to pump out space marines and give them big fleets and armies of normal humans to help.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I get the sense Ketara doesn't understand the HH fluff properly. 1 million space marines with their expedition fleets, were enough to bring the Imperium to it's knees and deal irreversible damage. And you ask why the Imperium isn't keen to pump out space marines and give them big fleets and armies of normal humans to help.

I would appear to understand the fluff far better than you seem to have understood the question actually framed in the OP.....

Onwards and upwards!

nareik wrote:

The way knowledge was kept and transferred meant the losses of the Horus Heresy hugely regressed technologically advanced worlds; tech savants didn't write dummies guides, instead jealously guarding their own knowlege. When these died or defected their knowledge was lost or worse.

The weapons used in the Horus Heresy permanently corrupted data and machinery, that would now try to kill you.

These two factors meant things simply could not be repaired or rebuilt.

But none of that advanced tech is the subject of the question. Perhaps I should restate in a different way whilst summarising the theories provided thus far.

Power armour is still manufactured, bolter shells are still assembled, etcetc. Whilst it is accepted that rare tech like say, Javelin landspeeders may no longer be viable for production, Terminator armour, bolters, and so on remain comprehended and reasonably mass produced munitions. We know this because a million marines are still in action, who all require suppplies, and new foundings do occur to replace those chapters lost.

The question therefore must logically be why the facilities that produce these items have not been scaled up in the ensuing ten thousand years. The knowledge is possessed and the Imperium's manpower and raw materials effectively infinite for the purposes of this discussion. Even if we assume that the means of production is fragmented and inefficient, ten thousand years is a long time, and easily long enough that each techpriest could educate ten other techpriests in his role in production, who could in turn instruct ten others, and so on over ten thousand years. The mass production of precision munitions is not an impossibility, it has happened frequently in the real world. In the 40K verse as an example of it, the Emperor succeeded in scaling up the production of far more complex munitions in a far shorter time frame to launch the Great Crusade. And he had less resources accessible than the Imperium does currently (he started with nothing but Earth and Mars).

So given that Space Marines are the superior soldiers, why does the Imperium not increase their production vastly to meet the new threat? It cannot be fears of being overthrown ala Horus Heresy, because there are already a million marines in existence who united could overthrow the Imperium. The High Lords of Terra must thus already trust that the limitations of chapter force organisation and dispersal are sufficient to prevent another Heresy. The reasons Dakka has come up with are:-

-The Imperium finds Space Marine production resource inefficient for combat gains. So the resources it takes to make and supply a Marine might take the same level of effort as it would take to make and supply two Regiments of Guard, but the Imperium thinks those two Regiments of Guard achieve more on the battlefield and in other roles. As such, all those resources are actually deliberately focused on Imperial Guard production.

-The wars the Imperium is now fighting are of an order of a magnitude greater than the Great Crusade, with those wars chewing up resources at a far greater rate. This in turn ensures that greater production cannot be put in place due to continual resource drain.

-Ten thousand years of warfare have reduced the munitions and biological facilities necessary to make/supply Marines, whilst no new plant is created due to a cultural stagnation and unwillingness to replace it.

All good answers, and it could be all of them or none. Such is 40K fluff.

The million marines couldn't even hope to overthrow the Imperium. They don't have the ships or dedicated armies of the HH. So they (The high lords) probably do still hold fears of space marine uprisings, given the move from legions to chapters, the denial of large fleets and support for chapters, and the lack of increased space marines.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
The million marines couldn't even hope to overthrow the Imperium. They don't have the ships or dedicated armies of the HH.

I'm honestly not seeing what you're arguing with here.

That it should be considered that there are only a million marines organized in chapters because the high lords are scared of them, rather than dismissing that option.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
That it should be considered that there are only a million marines organized in chapters because the high lords are scared of them, rather than dismissing that option.

Irt should be dismissed. A million marines in their current force organisation could easily take Terra, they have sufficient ships and munitions. That would in turn topple the Imperium. And any force which could unify two or three or five million marines could easily unify one million. Ergo, that fear cannot be a factor to the High lords of the Imperium, or there would be far less Space Marines about today. They clearly feel the current restrictions on force organisation are sufficient to impede any force unifying that million marines. As such, it wouldn't be a factor in whether or not to ramp up production.

If you wish to entertain the notion in the face of that logic however, you are more than welcome to do so. I'm afraid I find it unconvincing though, so barring new evidence, I'll leave further discussion of it there.

But that logic is flawed, because it doesn't take into account the fact that space marines are entirely separate to the imperial navy and the imperial guard. They can't take terra or topple the imperium because they haven't got the fleets to do it. I haven't got anything to hand, but take horus rising, and the description of all the forces the 63rd expedition fleet had (just one fleet amongst hundreds). The current marine chapters have nothing like those forces under their command. Why aren't they allowed such control of a wide array of forces (crucially a large fleet) and control is decentralized? Because the high lords are still scared of the space marines. They don't produce far more marines or allow them to exist beyond 1000 a chapter (ignoring the exceptional crusader chapters like the Black Templars) or give them control of large fleets because they are scared of space marines who can wreak havoc when they are numerous and have fleets (and less importantly guardsmen). Look at the Badab wars. Four whole chapters rebelled, and they had a whole guard army and a whole battlefleet assisting them. It was a catastrophe for the Imperium. Of course the high lords are sacred. Logically the high lords should be scared of having too many space marines knocking around.

In any right thinking fiction setting 10,000 years would have all but erased the effects of the horus heresy. Blaming the Horus heresy for the current state of the imperium would be like blaming a mesopotamian civil war for the rise of Erdogan.

To swing back to the OPs question, plot induced stupidity on both accounts. To give a slightly more generous answer, it's the forbiddance on machine minds. The dark ages of technology made extensive use of machine minds in their manufacturing processes, and without them the Ad Mech is kind of spitballing at old technologies with no feasible way to actually replicate them without an STC. The ad mech of the HH days had a much more complete set of STCs compared to the 40k days. They used them to create a variety of forge worlds with lesser STCs (eg: the STC to create a munitions factory is very different from the STC that makes the munitions). When the ad mech war broke out a lot of STCs were lost, and then their descendant STCs were also lost. They can't be recreated because that would require machine minds to develop, or an ancestor STC. This is why ad mech is so fervent about finding STCs, and the holy grail for the admech is finding the universal STC which contains patterns for all other STC.

Space marine gear is different though, while some of it is STC (land raiders for instance), most of it is hand made by the Ad Mech. This means it can be improved and changed (which we see through the different iterations of space marine armor, and advancements like storm bolters and hurricane bolters). This puts a limit on how much materials can be generated, and given a fairly constant casualty rate limits how much the imperium of man can grow it's space marine forces. The geneseed isn't really the bottleneck, you could take one marines geneseed, and through a process of incubating in slaves get a legion sized space marine force in a few centuries (this is how ad mech makes new chapters BTW). So getting the geneseed isn't a huge problem, the issues are that the psychoconditioning (we'd call it brainwashing) and training require a massive investment, as does the equipment. I don't think I've seen any proper numbers on how many space marines there are in 40k compared to HH, but given that nobody is quite sure how many chapters there are in the 40k timeline (several foundings had their details redacted) I'd say it could go either way. The chaos forces are certainly bigger, as they have been doing a lot of poaching from the IoM, as well as their own recruitment.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
But that logic is flawed, because it doesn't take into account the fact that space marines are entirely separate to the imperial navy and the imperial guard. They can't take terra or topple the imperium because they haven't got the fleets to do it.

Now, I don't disagree with you that they couldn't do it, but it's not due to the fleets. If the Space Marines united they could pool their chapter fleets into a considerable armada that would be able to break Terra's defenses.

The reason they couldn't do it is because, by the time they have actually assembled this armada, the Imperium has rushed to the defense of Terra and sent countless reinforcements there from every other subfaction of the Imperium, with more streaming in constantly as the fight continues. Space Marines are extremely powerful, as are their ships, but they have limits.

A lot why knowledge was lost is written in the HH book mechanicum.

Also, no the space marines would loose, the most space marine ships a planetary assault ships, while the imperium could use nova cannons and a constant barrage of ordnance to slowly destroy the space marine fleet.
Also Space marines chapters are not as homogeneous as they were during the Horus Heresy, without their primarchs to lead them. many chapters have changed from their original chapters.

Some chapters are highly independent, or highly pro empire or work together with the inquisition, So you could never get 100% of marines gathered.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
A lot why knowledge was lost is written in the HH book mechanicum.

Also, no the space marines would loose, the most space marine ships a planetary assault ships, while the imperium could use nova cannons and a constant barrage of ordnance to slowly destroy the space marine fleet.
Also Space marines chapters are not as homogeneous as they were during the Horus Heresy, without their primarchs to lead them. many chapters have changed from their original chapters.

Some chapters are highly independent, or highly pro empire or work together with the inquisition, So you could never get 100% of marines gathered.

Which just goes to show the high lords efforts in stopping a repeat of the HH because they are scared of homogeneous SM forces.

 Grimgold wrote:
In any right thinking fiction setting 10,000 years would have all but erased the effects of the horus heresy. Blaming the Horus heresy for the current state of the imperium would be like blaming a mesopotamian civil war for the rise of Erdogan.

The Horus Heresy is more like a forest fire that's been burning for ten thousand years. Try as they might, humanity just can't put it out. It's mostly burnt out now, but bush fires keep sparking up now and then. Worse still there's all sorts of other problems to deal with too. Tyranids, Orks, Eldar, Tau. Your own people rebelling. Then the forest fire starts burning again as Abbadon starts another black crusade.

If you think the effects of the Horus Heresy should have been erased by now, then you've not been paying attention to the setting. On the front of the first Warhammer 40'000 starter set I bought, it said in big yellow writing.

"In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war"

It's constant, never ceasing, attritional warfare. It's not just the effects of the Horus Heresy that their trying to shake off, but countless other emternicine conflincts that have worn them down again and again over the course of several millennia.

You don't seem to grasp how long 10,000 years is. 10,000 years ago humanity was in the neolithic era, which is case you are not keeping score is the last era of the stone age. Humans have been having wars for the entire duration of that 10,000 years, and out of the 400 generations since then not one saw peace. You might have noticed that we don't live in caves or throw sharpened rocks at our food anymore despite the constant warfare. The history of 40k is absurd, any attempt to defend it with logic is doomed to failure. Thus my answer, plot induced stupidity is what happened after horus heresy