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 Vaktathi wrote:

cody.d. wrote:
Perhaps a better way of thinking about it is, when in the fluff have guardsmen had ideal conditions for themselves? Being baseline humans they will always have issues such as insufficient support, degrading morale, fatigue, environmental conditions, hunger and sickness, incompetent leadership and many more other potential downfalls of a human you would see in a trench in the WW2 period.

And yet we see normal human troops do absolutely incredible things in such situations in real life and in 40k fluff, not always, but professional troops are trained for exactly that sort of thing, and many of these things can often apply to marines as well (while they may be better at dealing with them, they are not totally immune to things themselves (e.g. if anything they'd need dramatically more support man for man than normal humans, a Marine would need a 20k calorie/day diet and an entire train of mechanical support staff for the armor).

the food issue is way less a one then you might think. One of the Space Marines implants allow them to digest and get nutrition from things that would be toxic or even indigestiable to a normal human. so foraging for food is a LOT easier for Marines then Guardsmen and I suspect deployed Marines take advantage of that. Food wise it's likely the guard has a more complex supply train that way. On a random world the guard may need to ship in all their food (unless of course it's a human world already and supply train issues aren't a factor for IoM units period) they likely don't have the luxery of finding out whats ediable or not. (seriously it'd be a nightmare) Space Marines however have faaaar less an issue. I'm sure there are some plants that would make even a space marine sick, but I bet those are far and few inbetween

BrianDavion wrote:
the food issue is way less a one then you might think. One of the Space Marines implants allow them to digest and get nutrition from things that would be toxic or even indigestiable to a normal human. so foraging for food is a LOT easier for Marines then Guardsmen and I suspect deployed Marines take advantage of that. Food wise it's likely the guard has a more complex supply train that way. On a random world the guard may need to ship in all their food (unless of course it's a human world already and supply train issues aren't a factor for IoM units period) they likely don't have the luxery of finding out whats ediable or not. (seriously it'd be a nightmare) Space Marines however have faaaar less an issue. I'm sure there are some plants that would make even a space marine sick, but I bet those are far and few inbetween

-
It's true that Marines can pretty much eat anything, but that doesn't mean it will meet their dietary requirements. An average 18-28 years old male soldier infantryman will require a diet 4000 to 5000 calories per day or their physical health will decline very quickly. They will require these calories to be part of a balanced diet rich in fibers, protein and a wide variety of vitamins or their health a fighting capacity will quickly drop. A Space Marine might be able to eat anything, but that anything might not be what he needs to remain fully operational. Space Marines are complex biological machines that require regular medical checkup to make sure they function correctly without going crazy on the combat drugs their system generates or due to hormonal unbalance. Bolters are also ammunition intensive. A las pack can be recharged by exposure to the sun and contains up to 200 shots while a Bolter clip contains 20 to 30 rounds. Power Armors are sophisticated system that require high level of skills to repair and maintain while Guards have armor so common and cheap, they can basically be scavanged from the battlefield (and frequently are). All in all, Space Marines aren't exactly all that autonomous or cheap to deploy, but they don't have to pass through a lot of red tape before they do.

 Peregrine wrote:
This. And imagine if, to be a proper comparison with space marines, there was only a single tank in the entire world and it cost the entire US military budget to build it. Yes, it might accomplish something somewhere if it is deployed in exactly the right situations, but it won't have any meaningful effect on winning a war because there's only one of it and there's no way you can possibly justify that investment of resources.

Part of a space marine's deal is how quickly it can deploy, deliver devastating precision attacks and then be withdrawn to redeploy on its next mission. I think an attack helicopter might be a better comparison, especially as tanks are vulnerable to infantry at close quarters, which space marines obviously are not.

nareik wrote:
Part of a space marine's deal is how quickly it can deploy, deliver devastating precision attacks and then be withdrawn to redeploy on its next mission. I think an attack helicopter might be a better comparison, especially as tanks are vulnerable to infantry at close quarters, which space marines obviously are not.

Agreed. And a single attack helicopter can definitely change the course of a war if deployed in the right spot, figuratively speaking. Also, I don't imagine marines take up that much more logistical resources comparatively to Imperial Guard. I think a good estimate for a space marine chapter is what... 5-10 times what an average Imperial Guard Regiment requires to maintain itself? That isn't bad for what you are getting. Basically the special forces of special forces.

Don't get me wrong, I do think it is kind of silly how few space marines there are. But I think a bigger problem about their portrayal is their casualty rate and how that meshes with what we are told about their average age/experience, and about how difficult the recruitment process is.

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
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.

Even if it's canon it's not. Riiiiight.

There are worlds building things for the entire galaxy and the things in question are a lost art.

If canon is sufficiently absurd, its nothing.

Martel732 wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
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.

Even if it's canon it's not. Riiiiight.

There are worlds building things for the entire galaxy and the things in question are a lost art.

If canon is sufficiently absurd, its nothing.

You can't say that the canon isn't the canon just because you find it absurd. I find Necrons origins silly but you don't see me claiming they aren't in the background.

To be honest one can't compare modern 1k marine chapters with the Legions of old.



It was more coherent to have legions like Iron Warriors made for Attrition and Trench Warfare when you had hundreds of thousands of them. And is not like they fought alone, they always had millions of normal humans behind. Thats why nobody wanted to fight alongside the iron warriors.

nareik wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
This. And imagine if, to be a proper comparison with space marines, there was only a single tank in the entire world and it cost the entire US military budget to build it. Yes, it might accomplish something somewhere if it is deployed in exactly the right situations, but it won't have any meaningful effect on winning a war because there's only one of it and there's no way you can possibly justify that investment of resources.

Part of a space marine's deal is how quickly it can deploy, deliver devastating precision attacks and then be withdrawn to redeploy on its next mission. I think an attack helicopter might be a better comparison, especially as tanks are vulnerable to infantry at close quarters, which space marines obviously are not.

The point stands though. An attack helicopter is a useful tool, but if there was only one attack helicopter in the entire world it would not be a relevant factor in winning a WWII-scale war, and it would be utter lunacy to spend the entire US military budget to build it.

This entire useless thread of marine hate and defense against it is useless.

Marines are awesome. Yes - they actually are awesome. That is why they matter.

 Xenomancers wrote:
This entire useless thread of marine hate and defense against it is useless.

Marines are awesome. Yes - they actually are awesome. That is why they matter.

Eh... Opinion is opinion.

I find that it's best to sit at one of the two extremes-either be so balls-to-the-wall badass and awesome that it's ludicrous (Imperial Knights, for example) or be mundane (Guardsmen going up against the horrors of the 41st millennium).

Marines occupy that middle ground where they're badass enough to not be commended on bravery or anything like that, but at the same time aren't so awesome because they're really just big mutants with nice armor and guns.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
This entire useless thread of marine hate and defense against it is useless.

Marines are awesome. Yes - they actually are awesome. That is why they matter.

Eh... Opinion is opinion.

I find that it's best to sit at one of the two extremes-either be so balls-to-the-wall badass and awesome that it's ludicrous (Imperial Knights, for example) or be mundane (Guardsmen going up against the horrors of the 41st millennium).

Marines occupy that middle ground where they're badass enough to not be commended on bravery or anything like that, but at the same time aren't so awesome because they're really just big mutants with nice armor and guns.

The middleground is only in your mind. Countless stories of marines destroying titans with wit an skill beit through sabotage or bringing their own super weapons to bear. It's not an opinion really. In this universe - marines are awesome. They usually win. Plus it's literally stated all over the lore than the imperium of man would fall apart without the space marines. That really should answer the question.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

cody.d. wrote:
Perhaps a better way of thinking about it is, when in the fluff have guardsmen had ideal conditions for themselves? Being baseline humans they will always have issues such as insufficient support, degrading morale, fatigue, environmental conditions, hunger and sickness, incompetent leadership and many more other potential downfalls of a human you would see in a trench in the WW2 period.

And yet we see normal human troops do absolutely incredible things in such situations in real life and in 40k fluff, not always, but professional troops are trained for exactly that sort of thing, and many of these things can often apply to marines as well (while they may be better at dealing with them, they are not totally immune to things themselves (e.g. if anything they'd need dramatically more support man for man than normal humans, a Marine would need a 20k calorie/day diet and an entire train of mechanical support staff for the armor).

the food issue is way less a one then you might think. One of the Space Marines implants allow them to digest and get nutrition from things that would be toxic or even indigestiable to a normal human. so foraging for food is a LOT easier for Marines then Guardsmen and I suspect deployed Marines take advantage of that. Food wise it's likely the guard has a more complex supply train that way. On a random world the guard may need to ship in all their food (unless of course it's a human world already and supply train issues aren't a factor for IoM units period) they likely don't have the luxery of finding out whats ediable or not. (seriously it'd be a nightmare) Space Marines however have faaaar less an issue. I'm sure there are some plants that would make even a space marine sick, but I bet those are far and few inbetween

To an extent sure and thats definitely a point in their favor sometimes, but if there's nothing but mud or airless rock or empty desert or bubbling acid lakes or deserted ghost tombs and whatnot, that's going to be a major supply issue moreso than it would be for normal humans.

Likewise they need more food and more time to actually eat all that than a normal human would, they'd need 20k cals just to not starve, 30 or 40 or more through combat. If they came across twenty packages of double stuff oreos thats enough for one Space Marine who'd have to spend time scarfing if all down himself, but that'd give enough calories for a platoon of normal humans, and scavenging that many calories from non-optimal food sources would be an issue.

 Vaktathi wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

cody.d. wrote:
Perhaps a better way of thinking about it is, when in the fluff have guardsmen had ideal conditions for themselves? Being baseline humans they will always have issues such as insufficient support, degrading morale, fatigue, environmental conditions, hunger and sickness, incompetent leadership and many more other potential downfalls of a human you would see in a trench in the WW2 period.

And yet we see normal human troops do absolutely incredible things in such situations in real life and in 40k fluff, not always, but professional troops are trained for exactly that sort of thing, and many of these things can often apply to marines as well (while they may be better at dealing with them, they are not totally immune to things themselves (e.g. if anything they'd need dramatically more support man for man than normal humans, a Marine would need a 20k calorie/day diet and an entire train of mechanical support staff for the armor).

the food issue is way less a one then you might think. One of the Space Marines implants allow them to digest and get nutrition from things that would be toxic or even indigestiable to a normal human. so foraging for food is a LOT easier for Marines then Guardsmen and I suspect deployed Marines take advantage of that. Food wise it's likely the guard has a more complex supply train that way. On a random world the guard may need to ship in all their food (unless of course it's a human world already and supply train issues aren't a factor for IoM units period) they likely don't have the luxery of finding out whats ediable or not. (seriously it'd be a nightmare) Space Marines however have faaaar less an issue. I'm sure there are some plants that would make even a space marine sick, but I bet those are far and few inbetween

To an extent sure and thats definitely a point in their favor sometimes, but if there's nothing but mud or airless rock or empty desert or bubbling acid lakes or deserted ghost tombs and whatnot, that's going to be a major supply issue moreso than it would be for normal humans.

Likewise they need more food and more time to actually eat all that than a normal human would, they'd need 20k cals just to not starve, 30 or 40 or more through combat. If they came across twenty packages of double stuff oreos thats enough for one Space Marine who'd have to spend time scarfing if all down himself, but that'd give enough calories for a platoon of normal humans, and scavenging that many calories from non-optimal food sources would be an issue.

Not really an issue. If they are killing foes they can always eat them.

They can eat Necrons?

Even after the body teleports out?

 Xenomancers wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
This entire useless thread of marine hate and defense against it is useless.

Marines are awesome. Yes - they actually are awesome. That is why they matter.

Eh... Opinion is opinion.

I find that it's best to sit at one of the two extremes-either be so balls-to-the-wall badass and awesome that it's ludicrous (Imperial Knights, for example) or be mundane (Guardsmen going up against the horrors of the 41st millennium).

Marines occupy that middle ground where they're badass enough to not be commended on bravery or anything like that, but at the same time aren't so awesome because they're really just big mutants with nice armor and guns.

The middleground is only in your mind. Countless stories of marines destroying titans with wit an skill beit through sabotage or bringing their own super weapons to bear. It's not an opinion really. In this universe - marines are awesome. They usually win. Plus it's literally stated all over the lore than the imperium of man would fall apart without the space marines. That really should answer the question.

Except it wouldn't.

Or rather, it wouldn't have lasted 10k years after the civil war for different reasons.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
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.

Even if it's canon it's not. Riiiiight.

There are worlds building things for the entire galaxy and the things in question are a lost art.

If canon is sufficiently absurd, its nothing.

You can't say that the canon isn't the canon just because you find it absurd. I find Necrons origins silly but you don't see me claiming they aren't in the background.

It's also retconned so many times as to be absurd.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
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.

Even if it's canon it's not. Riiiiight.

There are worlds building things for the entire galaxy and the things in question are a lost art.

If canon is sufficiently absurd, its nothing.

You can't say that the canon isn't the canon just because you find it absurd. I find Necrons origins silly but you don't see me claiming they aren't in the background.

It's also retconned so many times as to be absurd.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

cody.d. wrote:
Perhaps a better way of thinking about it is, when in the fluff have guardsmen had ideal conditions for themselves? Being baseline humans they will always have issues such as insufficient support, degrading morale, fatigue, environmental conditions, hunger and sickness, incompetent leadership and many more other potential downfalls of a human you would see in a trench in the WW2 period.

And yet we see normal human troops do absolutely incredible things in such situations in real life and in 40k fluff, not always, but professional troops are trained for exactly that sort of thing, and many of these things can often apply to marines as well (while they may be better at dealing with them, they are not totally immune to things themselves (e.g. if anything they'd need dramatically more support man for man than normal humans, a Marine would need a 20k calorie/day diet and an entire train of mechanical support staff for the armor).

the food issue is way less a one then you might think. One of the Space Marines implants allow them to digest and get nutrition from things that would be toxic or even indigestiable to a normal human. so foraging for food is a LOT easier for Marines then Guardsmen and I suspect deployed Marines take advantage of that. Food wise it's likely the guard has a more complex supply train that way. On a random world the guard may need to ship in all their food (unless of course it's a human world already and supply train issues aren't a factor for IoM units period) they likely don't have the luxery of finding out whats ediable or not. (seriously it'd be a nightmare) Space Marines however have faaaar less an issue. I'm sure there are some plants that would make even a space marine sick, but I bet those are far and few inbetween

To an extent sure and thats definitely a point in their favor sometimes, but if there's nothing but mud or airless rock or empty desert or bubbling acid lakes or deserted ghost tombs and whatnot, that's going to be a major supply issue moreso than it would be for normal humans.

Likewise they need more food and more time to actually eat all that than a normal human would, they'd need 20k cals just to not starve, 30 or 40 or more through combat. If they came across twenty packages of double stuff oreos thats enough for one Space Marine who'd have to spend time scarfing if all down himself, but that'd give enough calories for a platoon of normal humans, and scavenging that many calories from non-optimal food sources would be an issue.

Not really an issue. If they are killing foes they can always eat them.

I mean, in theory sure that's an option (though such has basically zero actual portrayal in any fluff that I'm aware of), but doesn't work against say Necrons, Daemons and chaos corrupted stuff, war machines, etc, Tyranids might be awkward, and there's all sorts of doctrinal/cultural issues with eating the flesh of filthy xenos and cannibalism of other humans.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Not really an issue. If they are killing foes they can always eat them.

I wouldn't eat Orks. It doesn't look safe. Space Marines might be very resistant to poison, but Orks are even more so. I wouldn't eat Tyranid either. That's the sort of thing to end up infected with some terrible thing and turn into a Tyranid. I wouldn't eat a Chaos worshiper. It sounds heretical anyway since Space Marines absorb a part of their mind when you eat them. Tau and Eldars are probably very fine, with the possible exception of wracks and haemonculi.

I'd like to think they don't. Canon lore is Canon lore of course, so not that my opinion means anything, but there's sort of a Cruelness I see in the idea that Space Marines are held up as the saviours of the Imperium, and that the Imperium puts so much effort and faith into these mutant Soldiers but at the end of the day... they don't hold up the Imperium. Man does. I also don't really enjoy Bolter Porn or Marine Porn in story telling, but YMMV on that front. Another reason I've been moving out of 40k, if stories were any more focused on Marines I'm not sure other factions would have room to exist.

Marines matter because, as multiple fluff sources relate, a company of Marines (plus some 1st/10th company support) is enough to tip the balance of a planetary-level conflict.

Why are 100 Marines enough to tip that balance? No idea, plot armor or "rule of cool" or whatever I guess?

 Kingsley wrote:
Why are 100 Marines enough to tip that balance?

Because GW has no concept of scale and arbitrarily declares marines to be the BESTEST COOLEST HERO EVAR.

Martel732 wrote:
-snip-

Why are you even here Martel? It's a background forum yet you just ignore it.

Because the marine fluff is particularly absurd and their lack of understanding of scale is boggling. Its hard to ignore ba not being wiped by a trilion bugs.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

cody.d. wrote:
Perhaps a better way of thinking about it is, when in the fluff have guardsmen had ideal conditions for themselves? Being baseline humans they will always have issues such as insufficient support, degrading morale, fatigue, environmental conditions, hunger and sickness, incompetent leadership and many more other potential downfalls of a human you would see in a trench in the WW2 period.

And yet we see normal human troops do absolutely incredible things in such situations in real life and in 40k fluff, not always, but professional troops are trained for exactly that sort of thing, and many of these things can often apply to marines as well (while they may be better at dealing with them, they are not totally immune to things themselves (e.g. if anything they'd need dramatically more support man for man than normal humans, a Marine would need a 20k calorie/day diet and an entire train of mechanical support staff for the armor).

the food issue is way less a one then you might think. One of the Space Marines implants allow them to digest and get nutrition from things that would be toxic or even indigestiable to a normal human. so foraging for food is a LOT easier for Marines then Guardsmen and I suspect deployed Marines take advantage of that. Food wise it's likely the guard has a more complex supply train that way. On a random world the guard may need to ship in all their food (unless of course it's a human world already and supply train issues aren't a factor for IoM units period) they likely don't have the luxery of finding out whats ediable or not. (seriously it'd be a nightmare) Space Marines however have faaaar less an issue. I'm sure there are some plants that would make even a space marine sick, but I bet those are far and few inbetween

To an extent sure and thats definitely a point in their favor sometimes, but if there's nothing but mud or airless rock or empty desert or bubbling acid lakes or deserted ghost tombs and whatnot, that's going to be a major supply issue moreso than it would be for normal humans.

Likewise they need more food and more time to actually eat all that than a normal human would, they'd need 20k cals just to not starve, 30 or 40 or more through combat. If they came across twenty packages of double stuff oreos thats enough for one Space Marine who'd have to spend time scarfing if all down himself, but that'd give enough calories for a platoon of normal humans, and scavenging that many calories from non-optimal food sources would be an issue.

Not really an issue. If they are killing foes they can always eat them.

I mean, in theory sure that's an option (though such has basically zero actual portrayal in any fluff that I'm aware of), but doesn't work against say Necrons, Daemons and chaos corrupted stuff, war machines, etc, Tyranids might be awkward, and there's all sorts of doctrinal/cultural issues with eating the flesh of filthy xenos and cannibalism of other humans.

Aside from the vast majority of armies being quite happy to take a vanquished enemy's supplies I'd question a good number of chapters having any issue with eating xenos or even humans.
I doubt Mortificators, Space Wolves or Blood Angels would see any issue with chowing down on traitors.
One further point look up the Omniphagea or Remembrancer organ.

I guess the real explanation for why Marines matter is that many 40k antagonists seem to have really notable central weak points that can be disrupted - powerful artifacts or rituals powering a much larger force, single commanders or hive ships or whatever whose forces will collapse into infighting or instinctive behavior if they are slain, and so on - so having a Really Really Really Even More Elite Precise Strike Force matters for getting in there and taking out the key target, after which conventional forces can mop up. (I believe this is basically the story of Black Reach.)

The two problems I have with that are:

a) it's not clear to me why Marines are really needed for that given the existence of Stormtroopers, Inquisitorial warbands, and so on

b) a lot of Marine units really don't match this role. Why do Marines have super-heavy tanks, or for that matter any frontline tanks at all? Why do they have their own artillery vehicles instead of just relying on orbital barrages? If all they're doing is surgical drop pod assaults and the like, a large amount of their armory doesn't make sense, but having Marines fight on the front line also doesn't really make sense given their limited numbers.

Martel732 wrote:
Because the marine fluff is particularly absurd and their lack of understanding of scale is boggling. Its hard to ignore ba not being wiped by a trilion bugs.

Did...did you read what happened?

I was asking a serious question by the way. Why do you come to this part of Dakka? You clearly don't like the fluff so why come to a place specifically to talk about the fluff?

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

Aside from the vast majority of armies being quite happy to take a vanquished enemy's supplies I'd question a good number of chapters having any issue with eating xenos or even humans.
I doubt Mortificators, Space Wolves or Blood Angels would see any issue with chowing down on traitors.

A handful of chapters sure, but even then, it's viewed as rather deviant, and significant Space Marine and larger Imperial fluff and dogma would frown...heavily on such things, and certainly not anything touched by Chaos. I can't imagine say, the Blood Angels doing something like eating Orks or Tyranids, maybe SW's but then they try to be literally everything and have some of the weirdest and most contradictory and absurd background out there (like firing artillery by smell ). We certainly don't have much in the way of fluff on such things.

One further point look up the Omniphagea or Remembrancer organ.

These are things that are described, but have almost no actual mention or examples used in fluff beyond the basic acknowledgement of the organs existence, and to be perfectly honest, eating a brain to gain its knowledge would (by fundamental definition) destroy that information before it could be read. It'd be like trying to read a hard drive by throwing it through an industrial shredder after unpowering it and zapping it with a giant magnet

Despite the existence of such organs, Marines still tend to conduct (terrifying) interrogations rather than just cracking open skulls and slurping down, that bit of fluff largely appears to have been forgotten/abandoned.

"Why have Navy SEALs when we could just use battleship artillery and army regulars?" is sorta the gist of this thread. Except space marines bring their own naval artillery and tanks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
There is not an unreasonable comparison to tanks. Tanks are big, powerful war machines. They can cross a field far faster than any human can hope to, and require expensive specialist weaponry to destroy, and can sometimes have an effect out of all proportion to their numbers. However, as history has shown through many conflicts, they are far from invulnerable and one doesn't need enough weapons to immediately blast them all into oblivion to blunt or turn back an armored thrust.

This. And imagine if, to be a proper comparison with space marines, there was only a single tank in the entire world and it cost the entire US military budget to build it. Yes, it might accomplish something somewhere if it is deployed in exactly the right situations, but it won't have any meaningful effect on winning a war because there's only one of it and there's no way you can possibly justify that investment of resources.

That's a terrible comparison, because the Imperium doesn't spend it's entire budget on Space Marines. The Imperium has the resources to spend generously on ALL THE THINGS.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
DA are far from the only chapter to kill other Marines for CYA purposes, or even just for questions of honor.

Regardless, a third of them died on Vraks, and those sorts of losses should cripple a chapter for years if not decades given how long it takes to replace a Marine, but stuff like that is rarely accounted for in 40k fluff, at least not in any meaningful or realistic way.

Well, 40K fluff is also strewn across centuries or millennia, too. So even if it takes a chapter a hundred years to get back to full strength, that doesn't really matter too much in terms of the timescales 40k operates under.

In some ways that's fair, but then we have the problem of rare marine chapters doing nothing for decades and being even rarer. With the Dark Angels however, we have fluff of them doing all sorts of things relatively soon after (the siege of vraks being late 800's M41), and without any mention of losing a third of the chapter, a mighty blow, in other fluff of theirs.

It's emblematic of the problem with 40k fluff in that it really doesn't make sense when looked at critically, and kinda just needs to be accepted as "because the author says so" in general as opposed to there being any rationality behind the relevance of Space Marines in the larger universe

Same way it makes no sense to have chapters or legions that do lots of attritional warfare/sieges/frontal assaults/etc. I play Iron Warriors and the idea of them being attritional siege specialists able to battle across entire systems with a Grand Company is ridiculous once you look at what that would entail, despite how cool it can look on paper

Well, the siege tactics are definitely more of a Legion thing than a Chapter thing. "Modern day" sieges are probably much faster affairs against smaller targets than the massive fortresses of the Heresy era. Marines obviously have siege equipment like Vindicators, but they also have Assault Squads, Pods and teleporting Terminators to help them end whatever they're doing as fast as possible so as not to be wasteful.

As for casualties, I just imagine a lot of bionics. Modern day battlefield medicine is pretty spectacular these days, the ratio of wounded to death has only improved. Then marines are capable of withstanding even worse injuries, and are expected to cycle back into active duty after limb-replacement etc. One of my favorite older models is that 2nd Ed. Chaplain whose head is half metal. Effin bionic skull.

 Kingsley wrote:
it's not clear to me why Marines are really needed for that given the existence of Stormtroopers, Inquisitorial warbands, and so on...

Why does the U.S military have delta force or navy SEALS if they also they have army rangers?

w1zard wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
it's not clear to me why Marines are really needed for that given the existence of Stormtroopers, Inquisitorial warbands, and so on...

Why does the U.S military have delta force or navy SEALS if they also they have army rangers?

Because highly skilled operatives with overwheming force being inserted into an area are worth ten times their number, they can move around more easily and have smaller numbers to hide, this is the concept of the space marines occupy in real life, small force of elite soldiers, the biggest difference in the scale, marines are near impervious to small arms fire, can run up to 40KPH for hours, can see further, hear further, react faster, are more resilient, can take more damage before being combat non effective, the list goes on.

If these things were real then any nation that had them would have such a tactical advantage over other nations it would be akin to bombs vs nukes, conventional warfare against such a force would simply be pointless as they can inflict unacceptable casualties much more rapidly that they would take them.

 Vaktathi wrote:

One further point look up the Omniphagea or Remembrancer organ.

These are things that are described, but have almost no actual mention or examples used in fluff beyond the basic acknowledgement of the organs existence, and to be perfectly honest, eating a brain to gain its knowledge would (by fundamental definition) destroy that information before it could be read. It'd be like trying to read a hard drive by throwing it through an industrial shredder after unpowering it and zapping it with a giant magnet

Despite the existence of such organs, Marines still tend to conduct (terrifying) interrogations rather than just cracking open skulls and slurping down, that bit of fluff largely appears to have been forgotten/abandoned.

Pretty sure it's actively used in the recent space sharks books, possibly one of the death watch books, and I know any of a number of the chaos books I've read recently.

It's not something people in good company do, but those people aren't interesting to read about anyway. It's certainly not abandoned, and just because it makes no sense does not rule it out of 40k.