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 Vaktathi wrote:
You mean the dudes that tore it asunder in the first place over daddy issues?

The troops that are so rare that most of the Imperium's wars are won without ever seeing a single one?

The guys that aren't trusted to lead and command the vast fighting armies of the Imperium anymore without special dispensation?

The same retaking that was accomplished primarily by normal human troops because there were more worlds than marines?

Guardsmen rebel or otherwise show disloyalty at far greater frequency even when taking into account the disparity in numbers between the two organizations, you just don't hear about it because guardsmen are too stupid and incompetent relative to the Astartes to accomplish anything when they do so.

If ten regiments of the Imperial Guard go rogue who cares? Just kill them when it is convenient and be done with it. A chapter of Space Marines goes traitor? Well, now there's an actual problem.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

Pure fanboying from space marine players, you mean.

Stay mad my friend.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

And yet if no space marines at all had existed there would have been no traitors and no Heresy.

Wow, these Space Marine guys sound like they really matter.

epronovost wrote:

w1zard wrote:

Again, google "average age of a space marine"... if you have contradictory lore that backs up your assertion that the average marine is in his 30s I would be glad to hear it.

Actually, the answer on google comes from a post made on a forum that doesn't link to any lore beside the mention of Dante's age and Blood Angel's logevity. It's a bald assertion and not authoritative at all. Illustrations of Space Marines are illustration of noteworthy, veteran and heroic Space Marines so can hardly be used to draw an average unless you want the average of the exceptional.



This Space Marine is a Captain. According to the color of his service stud, he is around 50 years old (maybe, maybe he's around 170 at most, I find it to grey to be silver, but I might be wrong). Since he is quite literaly in the top 1% of his Chapter in terms of experience and excellence, it's probable he is also in the top 1% in terms of age and experience. Pretty much all the Space Marines in this Chapter should thus be younger then him.

service studs are so randomly treated I'd not be inclined to accept those at face value, especially as numerous pictures of space Marine veterns have them with no service studs are waaay too few (Calgar for example is rarely illustrated with them and when he is it's rarely eneugh to represent his estimated 300+ years of service)

BrianDavion wrote:
you're assuming an aweful lot, service studs denate differant things in differant chapters, and in some chapters they don't mean anything beyond "I like studs in my head" thus it's possiable those studs mean he's serves for 30 years, possiable he's served for 150 years, possiable he's served for 300 years. or maybe he's served only 5 years but he really thinks studs are a great fashion statement.

We are all assuming a whole lot about the average age of Space Marines. It's all assumption because the exact age of any single Marine is rarelly mentionned. I read the first omnibus of the Ultramarine and I have no clue as to how old is Uriel Ventris or anybody else in the book. I have read Hellsreach, but can't tell you the age of Grimaldus. Hell, the only Space Marines I know the age of off are basically Cassius, Logan, Dante and Lyzander. None of these is are even close to normal Space Marines. It would make sense they seldom live centuries (unless they are gifted or very lucky) since they fight in wars and wars are deadly things.

epronovost wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
you're assuming an aweful lot, service studs denate differant things in differant chapters, and in some chapters they don't mean anything beyond "I like studs in my head" thus it's possiable those studs mean he's serves for 30 years, possiable he's served for 150 years, possiable he's served for 300 years. or maybe he's served only 5 years but he really thinks studs are a great fashion statement.

We are all assuming a whole lot about the average age of Space Marines. It's all assumption because the exact age of any single Marine is rarelly mentionned. I read the first omnibus of the Ultramarine and I have no clue as to how old is Uriel Ventris or anybody else in the book. I have read Hellsreach, but can't tell you the age of Grimaldus. Hell, the only Space Marines I know the age of off are basically Cassius, Logan, Dante and Lyzander. None of these is are even close to normal Space Marines. It would make sense they seldom live centuries (unless they are gifted or very lucky) since they fight in wars and wars are deadly things.

we don't really know the ages of a lot of those ones eaither, Logan IIRC all we know is roughly when he became the great wolf, but for all we know he'd been leading a great company for a few hundred years before that.

I do seem to recall reading somewhere that Ragnar at the fall of Cadia was only something like 70 years of age. but that's clearly not the norm. Although it IS a good source for us to caution about assuming Captains all have the longest service record, Captains are appointed on Merit, and not seniority clearly

w1zard wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
In terms of the number of campaigns a year- it seems pretty typical for a Marine force to have one or two major campaigns a year, so 6% deaths are reasonably tolerable at two campaigns a year- at least for the efficient recruiters.

I didn't mean 6% deaths per campaign, I meant 6% deaths per battle... of which there are many battles in a campaign. Space marines are regularly shown in the lore losing upwards of a quarter to a half of their numbers in routine battles/skirmishes, I was only giving them 6% to be generous.

But let's go your way and say a space marine chapter only loses 6% of their number over a campaign and they have two campaigns a year. That means they need to replace over 115 marines every single year, which is ~20% more than what even the Imperial Fists' benchmark of a company per year. The numbers still don't match up.

On top of that, I fail to see how space marines reach 100 years of age regularly when even the low rate of 6% deaths per campaign is considered the norm. Running the numbers, and (using your assumption that marines fight two campaigns per year with a death rate of 6% per campaign) the average marine has only a .0004% chance of being alive after 100 years of fighting (plug (940/1000)^200 into wolfram alpha) which means that those 100 year service studs are pretty freaking pointless. The numbers get even worse if we consider more realistic death rates.

And where are you getting this "6% die per battle" stat again? Because that's not at all what I put down.

My post was saying that over the course of the entire Ultramarines CAMPAIGN on Black Reach, they lost 7 Astartes, which was about 6% of their entire force. In this campaign, they undertook at least 3 large scale engagements with a sizeable foe, and at least 3 other smaller engagements.

This is a fatality rate of ~1%, and even IF this is universal for every individual battle, we've clearly seen how Space Marines can, and do, recover from these kinds of losses, and this doesn't cripple them.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
The entire Chapter is rarely deployed all at once on active duty for this reason.

So, the majority of space marines sit around on their asses for years at a time doing nothing? From my understanding, they are all almost always fighting... maybe broken up and spread out over countless light years, but fighting all the same.

Not the majority. Most likely, the line companies are all deployed, and then reinforced as per their losses by reserves. That's over 50% of the Chapter on active duty.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Even with their fatality rates of most likely fewer than 1% per engagement, they can replace losses where necessary through the reserve companies, and then from the Scouts. At a 1% casualty rate per mission (depending on how the Chapter fights and what kind of fights they end up in), the Chapter only needs to replenish 100 soldiers - an entire Scout Company, conveniently enough. And of course, should the Chapter suffer inordinarily, the Chapter simply doesn't fight as much, or fights more conservatively.

Ok, I'm tired of people moving the goalposts... so let's do this.

I moved no goalposts. First there was an assumption of 20% (from seemingly nowhere, might I add), then a misunderstanding of 6% being per BATTLE, not per campaign. I'm just correcting your honest oversight here, no goalpost moving intended.

Say collectively, a chapter (that may be spread out over a large number of planets) suffers only 3% deaths per YEAR due to fighting, for 100 years straight. This means no heavy losses, no getting mauled, no losing a battle, just losing a single marine here or there collectively. I think we all agree that this is an absolutely tiny number and in no way indicative of how space marine losses are usually portrayed in the lore but let's go down this path for arguments sake. At this rate, the average space marine would only have a 4% chance of being alive after 100 years of fighting...mAgain this should show you how utterly unrealistic and impossible these numbers are. Especially when we have lore stating that the average age of a space marine is 300-350 years, and many battles being portrayed with high marine casualties.

Even if your maths were spot on, we both know that averages don't always align to reality, even in OUR world. It's not hard to think that, while the "average" Marine is unlikely to survive that long, the Chapters are full of "special" Marines, ones who defy all odds and go on to do great things. It makes the Veterans look all so much better if they truly are in that 4% bracket to reach that kind of age.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
You mean the dudes that tore it asunder in the first place over daddy issues?

The troops that are so rare that most of the Imperium's wars are won without ever seeing a single one?

The guys that aren't trusted to lead and command the vast fighting armies of the Imperium anymore without special dispensation?

The same retaking that was accomplished primarily by normal human troops because there were more worlds than marines?

Guardsmen rebel or otherwise show disloyalty at far greater frequency even when taking into account the disparity in numbers between the two organizations, you just don't hear about it because guardsmen are too stupid and incompetent relative to the Astartes to accomplish anything when they do so.

Citation Needed.

As is, at least 50 full post-heresy chapters have turned traitor, with innumerable squads, companies, and individuals following that path according to several iterations of Chaos Space Marine codex, in addition to *half* the original batch. Add in those Marines created/produced by the renegades and traitor legions and it's as likely as not that any given Space Marine one happens to come across is a heretic.

It's worth noting as well that assault on Black Reach was a "notable engagement" eneugh to feature as a starter set and novella. chances are that means it's not exactly typical of a normal space marine battle but is more "one of the exciting spaecial engagements"

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
I moved no goalposts. First there was an assumption of 20% (from seemingly nowhere, might I add), then a misunderstanding of 6% being per BATTLE, not per campaign. I'm just correcting your honest oversight here, no goalpost moving intended.

No, I came up with those numbers, because it was my honest anecdotal opinion. Space marines in the lore are regularly depicted as taking horrific casualties (read: deaths) as the norm. See Vraks, see Behemoth's siege of Macragge, see many other battles. My opinion was formed from reading countless guard and space marine novels. I do realize that it is entirely my opinion, but so far the rebuttal of "Nuh-Uh! those battles are exceptional and the average space marine death rate is much lower" is ALSO entirely a fething opinion, because none of those minor skirmishes are depicted in the lore either.

6% deaths per battle was my attempt to be GENEROUS, because I would be willing to bet if we took the death rate for every battle depicted in space marine lore and averaged them together it would be a whole lot worse than 6%.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Even if your maths were spot on, we both know that averages don't always align to reality, even in OUR world. It's not hard to think that, while the "average" Marine is unlikely to survive that long, the Chapters are full of "special" Marines, ones who defy all odds and go on to do great things. It makes the Veterans look all so much better if they truly are in that 4% bracket to reach that kind of age.

So basically you are saying that numbers or statistics don't matter to you because of the rule of cool, got it. Because frankly, a survival rate of 4% to vetrancy is much lower than what is depicted in the lore.

The only statement that I was making was that "Hm, space marines taking all of these casualties all of the time would be pretty unrealistic purely from a sustainability perspective." To argue "Nuh-Uh! Totally realistic" and then completely handwave the statistics behind survival rates because "The space marines we see are special and those don't matter" is pretty disingenuous.

Stop defending poor writing.

w1zard wrote:
So basically you are saying that numbers or statistics don't matter to you because of the rule of cool, got it.

Let's be fair, that's basically what GW thinks.

w1zard wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
I moved no goalposts. First there was an assumption of 20% (from seemingly nowhere, might I add), then a misunderstanding of 6% being per BATTLE, not per campaign. I'm just correcting your honest oversight here, no goalpost moving intended.

No, I came up with those numbers, because it was my honest anecdotal opinion. Space marines in the lore are regularly depicted as taking horrific casualties (read: deaths) as the norm. See Vraks, see Behemoth's siege of Macragge, see many other battles. My opinion was formed from reading countless guard and space marine novels. I do realize that it is entirely my opinion, but so far the rebuttal of "Nuh-Uh! those battles are exceptional and the average space marine death rate is much lower" is ALSO entirely a fething opinion, because none of those minor skirmishes are depicted in the lore either.

6% deaths per battle was my attempt to be GENEROUS, because I would be willing to bet if we took the death rate for every battle depicted in space marine lore and averaged them together it would be a whole lot worse than 6%.

I mean, we have canonical fluff on Space Marine strike cruisers stating that the mere presence of a strike cruiser appearing in orbit is often enough to cause many rebels to surrender without a shot being fired at all. This suggests that at least a notable number of Space Marine appearances in warfare don't result in any Marine combat at all, let alone casualties. However, such a deployment will take up time in transit- probably measured in weeks- which is time those Marines are not participating in combat elsewhere. We have hints at all these lesser actions fought by Marines in the background of Marneus Calgar:

5th Edition Space Marine codex, pg. 84 wrote:These entries have entire pages dedicated to them in the library sanctum, separated by far shorter passages that describe the fall of countless demagogues, pirates and traitors.

So Marines spend a lot of time wiping out lesser foes that pose little challenge, like pirates.


In terms of medium-scale conflicts- the Black Reach campaign has already been given (6% deaths over the entire war), but we can also take some further, similar examples from the Sentinels of Terra book. In the campaign to repel the Orks form Kalin (a force of sufficient magnitude to reduce an Astra Militarum battlegroup of 100,000 down to 3,000 survivors), the Imperial Fists force of 1 full Company, 3 Scout squads, and 2 Terminator squads suffered total combat deaths of 9 Marines. Whilst the length of this campaign is unknown, other than being less than a year, the war was characterised by constant, high-intensity shock raids by the Marine forces, coupled with a contingent bolstering the defences of the surviving Imperial city. The number of sorties is suggested to be very high- two of the factory complexes were designated Kalin Epsilon and Kalin Zeta, with the last factory named Kalin Kappa. If the complexes were named systematically (likely), that implies that 10 factory complexes were destroyed whilst the capital city was simultaneously defended. For 9 deaths. Similarly, half the Chapter fighting on Drashin that same year suffered ~30 permanent losses* fighting Tyranids and destroying a Norn Queen without support from other assets. These are clearly large battles with very limited Marine losses in the scheme of things.

I am sure that this is not the sum total of background that can be found to support this.

*At least one loss was a Marine too injured to continue frontline duties and reassigned to the Phalanx.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Even if your maths were spot on, we both know that averages don't always align to reality, even in OUR world. It's not hard to think that, while the "average" Marine is unlikely to survive that long, the Chapters are full of "special" Marines, ones who defy all odds and go on to do great things. It makes the Veterans look all so much better if they truly are in that 4% bracket to reach that kind of age.

So basically you are saying that numbers or statistics don't matter to you because of the rule of cool, got it. Because frankly, a survival rate of 4% to vetrancy is much lower than what is depicted in the lore.

The only statement that I was making was that "Hm, space marines taking all of these casualties all of the time would be pretty unrealistic purely from a sustainability perspective." To argue "Nuh-Uh! Totally realistic" and then completely handwave the statistics behind survival rates because "The space marines we see are special and those don't matter" is pretty disingenuous.

Stop defending poor writing.

Veteran Sergeant Tor Garadon is described as having 3 decades of service during the Crusade of Thunder, the series of events which sees him ascend to the rank of Captain. That suggests he is somewhere in the 40-50 year old age range, as a veteran who has passed through the Imperial Fists First Company. Clearly, the Imperial Fists do not have an average age in the hundreds if one of their veteran Sergeants/Captains is less than 50. Lysander is also described as being a full century older than anyone else in the Imperial Fists (bar Dreadnoughts) at the time of his return, discounting the 1,000 years spent in the Warp. Based on what is known about him, he is around 400 years old at most at the time he disappears, and is noted as being one of the Chapter's greatest ever heroes across 9 millenniums of history. Therefore, living into the hundreds clearly seems exceptional for the Imperial Fists, with veterans being several decades old. Cassius is noted as the oldest non-Dreadnought member of the Ultramarines, and is less than 400 at the close of the 41st Millennium- again he is noted as being exceptionally old within that Chapter.

Edit ------------------------------

Found an except in the 6th edition Space Marine codex relevant to the average age of Marines:

6th Edition Space Marine codex, pg. 83 wrote:Each Tactical Squad is led by a grizzled sergeant who has thrived through several decades, or even centuries, of hard and brutal campaigning.

Centuries is noted as being unusual for sergeants, let alone the bulk of the Space Marine forces. Ergo, most Space Marines are only a few decades old, and ~20% at most reach 100 or more (if all senior command staff, every 1st Company veteran and every Sergeant in other companies were over 100- exceedingly unlikely based on this snippet).

 Haighus wrote:

Edit ------------------------------

Found an except in the 6th edition Space Marine codex relevant to the average age of Marines:

6th Edition Space Marine codex, pg. 83 wrote:Each Tactical Squad is led by a grizzled sergeant who has thrived through several decades, or even centuries, of hard and brutal campaigning.

Centuries is noted as being unusual for sergeants, let alone the bulk of the Space Marine forces. Ergo, most Space Marines are only a few decades old, and ~20% at most reach 100 or more (if all senior command staff, every 1st Company veteran and every Sergeant in other companies were over 100- exceedingly unlikely based on this snippet).

Alright, let's go with that. In order for ~20% of space marines to reach 100 years of veterancy, the chapter as a whole would have to suffer no more than 1.6% deaths per YEAR on average. Applying this to a squad of space marines that constantly fought together, they would only be allowed to suffer 1 death every 6.25 YEARS of fighting on average. Does that sound like the average space marine engagement depicted in the lore to you?

Lowering that to a more reasonable 10% of marines reaching 100 years of veterancy means that the chapter is allowed to suffer a whopping 2.3% deaths per YEAR on average. Do you see the problem yet?

Right, having a squad wiped to half its strength is pretty common in the lore.

w1zard wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

Edit ------------------------------

Found an except in the 6th edition Space Marine codex relevant to the average age of Marines:

6th Edition Space Marine codex, pg. 83 wrote:Each Tactical Squad is led by a grizzled sergeant who has thrived through several decades, or even centuries, of hard and brutal campaigning.

Centuries is noted as being unusual for sergeants, let alone the bulk of the Space Marine forces. Ergo, most Space Marines are only a few decades old, and ~20% at most reach 100 or more (if all senior command staff, every 1st Company veteran and every Sergeant in other companies were over 100- exceedingly unlikely based on this snippet).

Alright, let's go with that. In order for ~20% of space marines to reach 100 years of veterancy, the chapter as a whole would have to suffer no more than 1.6% deaths per YEAR on average. Applying this to a squad of space marines that constantly fought together, they would only be allowed to suffer 1 death every 6.25 YEARS of fighting on average. Does that sound like the average space marine engagement depicted in the lore to you?

Lowering that to a more reasonable 10% of marines reaching 100 years of veterancy means that the chapter is allowed to suffer a whopping 2.3% deaths per YEAR on average. Do you see the problem yet?

Well, 20% is an extreme and unlikely upper limit, and even 10% is unlikely based on the figures above. Ironically, based on the age of veteran Sergeant Garadon and the fluff abour Sergeants in general, the amount of Marines in a Chapter is pribably closer to the 4% given earlier, which fitted with a 6% fatality rate in conflicts.

I've literally provided a fluff except in the half of the post you decided to omit mentioning large numbers of Marine engagements that gain little more than a footnote. It is quite clear that these engagements are too boring to routinely write tales about- who wants to hear about random pirate #5326744 being wasted by a passing strike cruiser without a hope of victory? I then listed an except mentioning low casualties from several high-intensity Imperial Fist operations, to go alongside the similar intensity operations during the Black Reach campaign.

Then we have the very high-loss battles, which definitely occur, but are clearly comparitively rare. Some Chapters are essentially wiped out by these events, or reduced to tiny forces that avoid major wars as much as practicable for awhile. Other Chapters have also shown they are able to recover exceptional losses of a hundred Marines (additionally to normal, ongoing attrition in other units) in a single year. So yes, such battles will influence the experience pool of the Chapter, but the strong suggestion is that most Marines are fairly young, and fairly replaceable as a result.

Even with all that taken into account- the more experienced Marines are those that are more likely to survive a battle. If you look at fighter aces in the World Wars, the best pilots would survive far past the odds because they were so good at it, whereas new pilots would often get shot down on their first sorties, at least until one side gained air superiority. The same few pilots kept surviving whilst their fodder would keep getting shot down.

basicly you have to remember if we read about a Battle it's because it's an intreasting one, narratively speaking. and that means the protagionists are challanged. no one wants to read about a fight where the marines aren'ty in any real danger of dying, but chances are that's the bulk of their fights.

 Haighus wrote:
Well, 20% is an extreme and unlikely upper limit, and even 10% is unlikely based on the figures above. Ironically, based on the age of veteran Sergeant Garadon and the fluff abour Sergeants in general, the amount of Marines in a Chapter is pribably closer to the 4% given earlier, which fitted with a 6% fatality rate in conflicts.

No, you must have misread. Only 4% of marines reaching a veterancy of 100 years corresponds to only a 3% casualty rate for the chapter per YEAR on average. No matter how low you bring that veterancy percentage down, it still corresponds to extremely low casualties on average because 100 years of constant war and constant fighting is a lot of time for someone to get themselves killed.

No matter how you try to justify it the numbers just don't make sense. Either marines actually rarely live past 100 (and by rarely I mean like 0.001%) and the lore is wrong about this being a somewhat common occurrence. Or the lore over-exaggerates marine casualties relative to what they are actually capable of sustaining. You can claim that the lore is somewhat biased in that it tends to focus only on the biggest baddest battles in which the marines may take casualties disproportionate to what they normally receive. But, equally I can point out many examples of marine units taking such casualties in pointless skirmishes or irrelevant battles that should normally be par for the course for them, such as the Dark Angels losing an entire third of their chapter at Vraks, which as another poster helpfully pointed out was kind of a sideshow on the galactic stage.

This is getting silly. Can't you just admit that maybe, just maybe, I might be right? That the writers just try to make things look cool with lots of gratuitous death and don't really understand or care about the statistics and logistics behind how that would affect the average age of the typical space marine or the recruitment rates required for marine units to stay operational?

Do you know how much biomass can be harvested from a single Space marine? Like, if a guardsman is a plate of spare ribs, a space marine is a 2kg marbled ribeye! It's amazing!

Space marines to matter. At least their matter does.

w1zard wrote:

This is getting silly. Can't you just admit that maybe, just maybe, I might be right? That the writers just try to make things look cool with lots of gratuitous death and don't really understand or care about the statistics and logistics behind how that would affect the average age of the typical space marine or the recruitment rates required for marine units to stay operational?

Trying to bring logic to a universe where it does not exist is always frustrating to everyone involved.

Actual answer as to why there's vets centuries old but high attrition rates is probably closer to "wibly-warpy, timey-wimey".

I'd think that either the massive campaigns with high casualty rates are rare, or, given the size of the Legions in the Horus Heresy, the recruitment pool for Astartes is typically rather large, but codex (up until the new fluff) restricts the size of the chapters, thus recovery is relatively quick.

...or the Chapters all draw straws to see who goes to the big deadly campaign. Lamenters usually get the short straw.

Dramatic fiction is nothing to base statistics off of.

95% of the time space marines show up, they break the back of the enemy and then assist in cleaning up the things the rest of imperial forces can't break. A space marine doing things right is not facing an equal force, they're striking at piece meal forces with overwhelming force and rapid movement and bailing before the enemy can respond. Even when doing siege work, they mostly function as an overwhelming assault force while attention is divided.

It's when they go off and do something stupid that they die in mass, because that's interesting. Space marines wipe floor with xenos doesn't make for interesting reading, big overwrought drama does. So the stupid marines show up to secure the artifact of stupid from the chaos tainted xenos race of the planet stupidites with all of three marines and suffer two casualties that are very dramatic because of brotherhood while brother stupidiest the first secures the artifact and returns to tell the tale of his brothers. Stinger, one of the brothers has turned to the dark powers of stupid!

If you can't tell, not a huge fan of space marine fiction, but even I can tell you it's nothing to base stats off of.

I think it's because of the fact that the Imperium loves to play up the victories of the Adeptus Astartes to boost morale and demonstrate their power. I like to think that the vast majority of conflict in Warhammer 40,000 is Imperial Guard/PDF regiments putting down Ork incursions, rebellions and, increasingly, Chaos uprisings without any Astartes presence whatsoever. However, there is no propaganda value in recording and playing up the victory of the Generian XVIth Light Rifles over an armed band of irate workers in some backwater industrial world.

They are a special forces outfit and while on a grander scale their influence in the greater Imperial warmachine is likely negligible their intervention has won countless important battles.

I don’t know that they do play up the Astartes all that much.

Most Imperial Citizens are likely to regard them as myths. Literal avenging angels.

The bulk of the laurels, quite rightly, go to the Astra Militarum. Each and everyone a holy martyr looking to happen. They’re you, they’re me, they’re the Every Man. A plucky Imperial Citizen, Armed with their trusty Lasgun. Putting their life on the line against a galaxy of horrors.

To purely promote the Astartes in the way you suggest (and I’m not seeking to call you out or anything) massively undermines that. It makes the average Imperial Citizen feel useless, and impotent.

From a propaganda point of view, that’s absolutely no good. You need The Plebs to feel that with a blessed las weapon in their hands, they’re a hard counter to the very worst the galaxy can throw at them. Anything less is to invite despair, and from despair, comes outright defeat.

Again, not attacking you personally. Always like to make such things clear, because tone of voice doesn’t work online


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In terms of what a single Astartes can do? I’ll refer you to the following scene from the frankly excellent Kingsman movie.

Warning. It is NOT safe for work. It’s very violent, and fairly graphic. This is an example of what a highly trained human can achieve. You add the post human status, and power armour on top? The kill ratio really makes sense!

w1zard wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Well, 20% is an extreme and unlikely upper limit, and even 10% is unlikely based on the figures above. Ironically, based on the age of veteran Sergeant Garadon and the fluff abour Sergeants in general, the amount of Marines in a Chapter is pribably closer to the 4% given earlier, which fitted with a 6% fatality rate in conflicts.

No, you must have misread. Only 4% of marines reaching a veterancy of 100 years corresponds to only a 3% casualty rate for the chapter per YEAR on average. No matter how low you bring that veterancy percentage down, it still corresponds to extremely low casualties on average because 100 years of constant war and constant fighting is a lot of time for someone to get themselves killed.

No matter how you try to justify it the numbers just don't make sense. Either marines actually rarely live past 100 (and by rarely I mean like 0.001%) and the lore is wrong about this being a somewhat common occurrence. Or the lore over-exaggerates marine casualties relative to what they are actually capable of sustaining. You can claim that the lore is somewhat biased in that it tends to focus only on the biggest baddest battles in which the marines may take casualties disproportionate to what they normally receive. But, equally I can point out many examples of marine units taking such casualties in pointless skirmishes or irrelevant battles that should normally be par for the course for them, such as the Dark Angels losing an entire third of their chapter at Vraks, which as another poster helpfully pointed out was kind of a sideshow on the galactic stage.

This is getting silly. Can't you just admit that maybe, just maybe, I might be right? That the writers just try to make things look cool with lots of gratuitous death and don't really understand or care about the statistics and logistics behind how that would affect the average age of the typical space marine or the recruitment rates required for marine units to stay operational?

That is fair enough, I did misread. So it means the numbers of centenarians for a Chapter active in frequent major wars should be fairly low. I still think you are assuming that death rate is uniformly distributed across all Marines fighting in a conflict, and not concentrated in the newest, least experienced Marines. I agree that the writers like to show big battles, but a Chapter typically only has one of these every couple of decades at most looking at most Chapter timelines. The most active Chapters (re: GW favourites) at times approach 1 major war a year, but then they are also frequently the Chapters with noted high recruitment rates (like Dark Angels, Imperial Fists, and Ultramarines).

Vraks might have been relatively unimportant in terms of strategic impact, but it was huge in terms of the size of the conflict, and absolutely would count as a major battle for the Dark Angels- millions of Guardsmen were deployed to Vraks, and it dwarfs every other conflict mentioned so far. Although, as also noted, Vraks does seem to be a bit of a canon-conflict in that it is basically ignored by all the other Dark Angels fluff. Vraks was definitely not a sideshow skirmish, even if it was a relatively pointless battle.

There is literal background information stating that often Marine strike cruisers enter a system, and the rebellion surrenders without any combat at all. Often. That is the sort of sideshow skirmish I am referring to- no Marine combat at all, yet still having to travel to a system.

Battlefleet Gothic Armada: Imperial Ships wrote:Often the arrival of a Space Marine strike cruiser is enough to quell a rebellious system. The Space Marines are quick to act if their enemies’ surrender is not immediately forthcoming.

Millions of Guardsmen is nothing, though. That could be solely from one small planet.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I
In terms of what a single Astartes can do? I’ll refer you to the following scene from the frankly excellent Kingsman movie.

Warning. It is NOT safe for work. It’s very violent, and fairly graphic. This is an example of what a highly trained human can achieve. You add the post human status, and power armour on top? The kill ratio really makes sense!

Spoiler:

Hrm, to be fair, this is a choreographed scene, where the dude is fighting basically one person at a time, many of the people he engages aren't attempting to fight him or are even aware of his presence, etc ad nauseum. The dude has a chair broken in his face and doesn't even have a scratch to show for it and hops up immediately to engage another person without pause (despite having suffered a major blunt force impact to the head) and the guy who hit him with a chair doesn't bother to follow up despite having knocked him on his belly (that would be game over in any real fight). There's very little about that scene which would transfer to any sort of actual combat. Weight of numbers usually tells rather quickly, if for no other reason than only one good blow needs to get through and only so many angles of attack can be covered or tracked, or in the case of hand to hand combat, grappling comes into play and limbs get held and bodies pressed and it gets very ugly very quickly. One doesn't need to land an immediately lethal blow to end or decide a fight, if an elbow or kneecap gets shattered, a concussive head blow inflicted, a hand crushed, etc, then the fight is going to be over.

There's a reason we don't see instances like this in real life, and why stories of great warriors who have slay many opponents typically do so in sequence (e.g. Achilles fights and slays Hector, Penthesilea, and Memnon at different times), not all at once. Where we see exceptions are usually instances where one side is caught unawares, are physically unable to hurt something, or are channeled such that the numbers cannot bring their weight to bear.

In my own experience with combatives, particularly HEMA, fighting multiple opponents is a bad time, even if there's a massive skill and physical prowess difference involved if the attackers are not deterred or overwhelmingly intimidated. If we bring firearms into play, volume of fire is the single largest determinant of casualties in infantry engagements and artillery the greatest generator of casualties in warfare in general (you pin the enemy in place and then obliterate the real estate they occupy with explosives).

And yes, power armor and genetically enhanced bodies are impressive, but so are tanks and warships and aircraft, and they can be brought down by stupidly simple/primitive/numerous things as well if presented with the opportunity.

I'm a bit late to this thread, and will make the same point as most everyone else, but...

In the second world war, 16 million Americans served in the arms forces. Of them, 2 million served in the European theater, alongside vast volumes of allied armies. These forces won the war.

But, when they make Captain America, the movie it's about Captain America. We watch him beating up Hydra agents, who seem to be a wing of the German military, with his tiny team of highly trained specialists, doing incredible deeds and having adventures no real soldier could possibly match. Along the way, we see their actions turn the tide of the war, stopping villains who would have won the war for the German side if they hadn't been stopped. But, they don't stop the movie too often to be like "But, Captain America doesn't really matter, because he's just one guy, and there's millions of people fighting here."

This is how Space Marines are; they're fighting the super critical battles, and they're serving as the colorful superheroes of the setting. They're having larger than life adventures and doing important deeds, facing the most dire threats that only they can face. But, just like Captain America, they can't go fight the entire enemy army. Superpowers and toughness can't compensate for lack of numbers. That falls to the common men and women of the Astra Militarum.

Hard to swallow pills: there aren't enough marines to fight the super critical battles. This concept of "smashing command" is insane. There are more enemy commanders than there are marine chapters to do the smashing. The scale is so off.

Martel732 wrote:
Hard to swallow pills: there aren't enough marines to fight the super critical battles. This concept of "smashing command" is insane. There are more enemy commanders than there are marine chapters to do the smashing. The scale is so off.

The scale is pretty bad, but if you kill the best commanders and only the more mediocre ones are left, it will be easier for the guard to crush the enemy army.

 Apple Peel wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Hard to swallow pills: there aren't enough marines to fight the super critical battles. This concept of "smashing command" is insane. There are more enemy commanders than there are marine chapters to do the smashing. The scale is so off.

The scale is pretty bad, but if you kill the best commanders and only the more mediocre ones are left, it will be easier for the guard to crush the enemy army.

And what happens when the commander is a Necron Overlord, surrounded by Lychguard? That's not a quick mission.

Or a Chaos Lord, his attendant Sorcerer and Dark Apostle, and a bunch of Chosen?

 Apple Peel wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Hard to swallow pills: there aren't enough marines to fight the super critical battles. This concept of "smashing command" is insane. There are more enemy commanders than there are marine chapters to do the smashing. The scale is so off.

The scale is pretty bad, but if you kill the best commanders and only the more mediocre ones are left, it will be easier for the guard to crush the enemy army.

That's not the way it works. You are just as likely to end up promoting a colonel better than the general you just killed. All it takes is a few bodyguards with plasma and you just came out on the wrong end of the deal. God forbid they shoot down some of your stormravens on the approach. Or smoke some drop pods en route. Marines just aren't worth the work that goes into making them. Higher end energy weapons are everywhere and smoke them easily. They are knights in a world of crossbows. Maybe that's the point, but it sure doesn't seem like it. It seems like GW is playing it straight now, which is mind boggling considering their on-board representation.

How does the Imperium even know where the "best" commanders would be anyway? Imperium can't find its ass with both hands.

Martel732 wrote:

 Apple Peel wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Hard to swallow pills: there aren't enough marines to fight the super critical battles. This concept of "smashing command" is insane. There are more enemy commanders than there are marine chapters to do the smashing. The scale is so off.

The scale is pretty bad, but if you kill the best commanders and only the more mediocre ones are left, it will be easier for the guard to crush the enemy army.

That's not the way it works. You are just as likely to end up promoting a colonel better than the general you just killed. All it takes is a few bodyguards with plasma and you just came out on the wrong end of the deal. God forbid they shoot down some of your stormravens on the approach. Or smoke some drop pods en route. Marines just aren't worth the work that goes into making them. Higher end energy weapons are everywhere and smoke them easily. They are knights in a world of crossbows. Maybe that's the point, but it sure doesn't seem like it. It seems like GW is playing it straight now, which is mind boggling considering their on-board representation.

How does the Imperium even know where the "best" commanders would be anyway? Imperium can't find its ass with both hands.

Except the bodyguards aren't going to have plasma seeing how rare it is and are dead anyway. And you can't just shoot down the drop pods.

Plasma is not rare at all. Even if they say it is, it isn't. There are entire worlds building gak. Nothing is rare. Even rare elements wouldn't be rare.