Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

That scenario is pretty rare, actually. At any rate, I'm factoring out who is shooting, since I'm looking at the entire field.

Each heavy bolter HIT removes 4.3 pts of naked marines and 2.2 pts of naked guardsmen. It gets worse quickly as soon as you give the marine gear or a jump pack. The heavy bolter only wounding the guardsmen on a 3+ just kills its viability vs any T3 horde really.

So I'm not exaggerating at all, actually. Heavy bolters remove marines about twice as fast as guardsmen.

With Cover...

1 hit
2/3 wounds
2/9 MEQ Wounds or 4/9 GEQ Wounds
2.89 points of MEQ or 1.78 points of GEQ

So the ratio gets a bit better with cover, but still in the favor of a 4 Point GEQ as compared to a 13 Point MEQ.

.... why are your talking about rules again in the fluff forum..... why!!!!!

Eh. My math was off a little bit because I was being lazy on a phone, and not using a calculator.

My point was the difference isn't that great compared to the difference between plasma shots. And heavy bolters are still kinda bad.

 Formosa wrote:
.... why are your talking about rules again in the fluff forum..... why!!!!!

I just mentioned that a weapon that should fare relatively poorly vs marines does much better vs them than their intended targets. My intent was to contrast it with the alternate universe fluff. The rules are inseparable when discussing the gap in realities.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:
Eh. My math was off a little bit because I was being lazy on a phone, and not using a calculator.

My point was the difference isn't that great compared to the difference between plasma shots. And heavy bolters are still kinda bad.

Two-fold is enough.

Martel, you complained about people packing plasma everywhere-- and I was explaining why they pack plasma everywhere and not something like a heavy bolter.

When various flavors of power armor stop being the majority of the playerbase, you'll stop seeing so much plasma. That or if they nerf plasma to hell and back by doing something drastic like doubling its price. Which may not be uncalled for, I suppose (then again, why would I care? None of my armies use a lot of plasma to begin with!).

I specifically said thats no longer the case. Plasma completely falls apart vs minus to hit xenos. Plasma is not the problem, its just salt in the wound when it does show up.

The background for marines in most depictions of them is not lined up with the table top because GW wants to sell more than one tactical squad per marine player. If marines played like they did in fluff you would likely not have more than a dozen of them on the board and that's bad for the bottom line.

Spacemarine was a little over the top with Captain Titus but I think that is a solid base line for explaining how and why the IOM needs them. A company spread across a world can turn things around real quick They can deploy far faster than any guard unit, are deadly enough to turn the tide of any given worlds problem, inspire what ever loyalist forces are left to fight harder and are dam hard to kill.

Assuming you can't nuke the planet from orbit because it has something valuable they are the best option if your pressed for time.

I like to think of the tabletop games as those 1-in-a-million times when the Astartes (or whomever) are caught out taking that game of nearly 50/50 odds with the hope of turning a tide, or at that crucial moment. Like the games themselves, they represent those rare times when ships get close enough, or a skirmish escalates, or what-have-you.

HoundsofDemos wrote:


Assuming you can't nuke the planet from orbit .

Use mass drivers then.

Martel732 wrote:
Use mass drivers then.

same problem

No radiation. No problem.

Martel732 wrote:
Use mass drivers then.

Negative, Strategic Value: Absolute



seriously, back during the 1920s generals claimed they'd be able to win wars via stratgic bombardment alone, WW2 proved them wrong. you NEED boots on the ground. you can't win a war just by bombing gak.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
No radiation. No problem.

They STILL put a MASSIVE HOLE IN THE GROUND. Sometimes you want a FACTORY not a MASSIVE HOLE IN THE GROUND

BrianDavion wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Use mass drivers then.

Negative, Strategic Value: Absolute



seriously, back during the 1920s generals claimed they'd be able to win wars via stratgic bombardment alone, WW2 proved them wrong. you NEED boots on the ground. you can't win a war just by bombing gak.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
No radiation. No problem.

They STILL put a MASSIVE HOLE IN THE GROUND. Sometimes you want a FACTORY not a MASSIVE HOLE IN THE GROUND

You could've also quoted Korea, or Vietnam.
Also the anti space defenses of worlds seem quite heavy, leading to a WW1 esque situation that you can not extermunatus any Planet at your leasure.

BrianDavion wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Use mass drivers then.

Negative, Strategic Value: Absolute



seriously, back during the 1920s generals claimed they'd be able to win wars via stratgic bombardment alone, WW2 proved them wrong. you NEED boots on the ground. you can't win a war just by bombing gak.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
No radiation. No problem.

They STILL put a MASSIVE HOLE IN THE GROUND. Sometimes you want a FACTORY not a MASSIVE HOLE IN THE GROUND

Ad Mech will just swoop in and turn that hole in the ground into a foundry of some type at a later date.

Yea that doesn't work when you need something valuable on said planet like a priceless and nearly irreplaceable titan.

Everything is replaceable. That's a fallacy of 40K. But anything to justify the wankery of spess mahreens, I know.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BrianDavion wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Use mass drivers then.

Negative, Strategic Value: Absolute



seriously, back during the 1920s generals claimed they'd be able to win wars via stratgic bombardment alone, WW2 proved them wrong. you NEED boots on the ground. you can't win a war just by bombing gak.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
No radiation. No problem.

They STILL put a MASSIVE HOLE IN THE GROUND. Sometimes you want a FACTORY not a MASSIVE HOLE IN THE GROUND

So they throw away irreplaceable terminators and who knows what else "forgotten" tech marines have? Okay.

No war has ever been won purely on the back of mass artillery and bombings. Lets say a world rebels for xyz reasons against the IOM. This world has productive factories, cities and other resources that are useful to the IOM. Should they.....

A. Destroy the entire planet from orbit so it is no longer habitable. The IOM is now down a useful planet and loses resources

B. Allow the rebellion to fester for years or longer while you get the behemoth that is the IG and IN together and ordinate a response. Said organizations are not only separate but are intentionally designed to not be to close at coordinating to prevent another large scale defection and therefore moving quickly is not in their wheel house.

C. Send in a fast moving and almost uniquely free range group of elite warriors to quickly disrupt said rebellion. Said warriors have such a dreaded reputation that worlds are known to throw down their arms and give up once the ship shows up in system. Should it come to a fight in any given localized area they will likely win through a frighting combo of speed, skill and durability. The rebellion if not outright crushed is disrupted while other forces are mustered and the planet is taken largely in tact.

Final thought, Martel I don't get why you play 40k, you hate most of the setting, you play an army that you constantly rail against and largely do nothing but crap on everything.

The loss of 50 marines to recapture a world that will produce 20,000 tanks and 10 million lasguns annually if it can continue production without faltering due to an escalating conflict, is probably a perfectly reasonable expense from the Imperial point of view.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
This world has productive factories, cities and other resources that are useful to the IOM.

C. Send in a fast moving and almost uniquely free range group of elite warriors to quickly disrupt said rebellion. Said warriors have such a dreaded reputation that worlds are known to throw down their arms and give up once the ship shows up in system. Should it come to a fight in any given localized area they will likely win through a frighting combo of speed, skill and durability. The rebellion if not outright crushed is disrupted while other forces are mustered and the planet is taken largely in tact.

You can't have both of these be true at the same time. If a planet has sufficient population and industry that its fate is relevant to the Imperium then it is far too big for space marines to be relevant. A space marine chapter could deploy their full strength, kill an enemy with every single shot fired, and still barely make a dent in a planetary-scale army. And the hundreds of thousands of plasma guns, krak missiles, melta guns, artillery, etc, all capable of killing a space marine even if small arms fire can do literally nothing to them, will inflict catastrophic losses on the marines. Even with absurd marine-masturbation kill ratios straight out of the worst space marine fanfic the marines can't win that fight. The entire chapter dies, the rebellion takes minimal losses.

The only way the space marines can even hope to accomplish anything is if the rebellion has a single vulnerable target that is key to its entire existence. But in that case why do you need space marines? You're by definition talking about a situation where an orbital strike will only damage a negligible amount of real estate (since otherwise the war is too big for space marines to matter), so why send space marines when an Imperial Navy frigate can put a lance shot into the governor's palace and end the rebellion just as easily? A labor crew to rebuild a single building is much cheaper than a space marine strike force and even provides opportunities for the surviving former rebels to achieve a degree of redemption by being turned into construction servitors.

Which for me comes down to GW is very bad at numbers (most fictional settings are) and to never take table top stats into account when writing any kind of story. I agree that the over all number of marines should be much higher but over all I go with broad strokes.

A company cruiser showing up in orbit means things will go bad, since more is on the way and the threat of getting slammed from orbit from both drop pod and lance strikes is there. Likely many planets will need a full invasion but there are plenty examples in history of war falling apart after it's leaderships gets taken out.

A few quick drop pods hitting a rabbles leadership even if they put themselves in a fortified fortress or near a can't blow it from orbit area makes sense.

 Peregrine wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
This world has productive factories, cities and other resources that are useful to the IOM.

C. Send in a fast moving and almost uniquely free range group of elite warriors to quickly disrupt said rebellion. Said warriors have such a dreaded reputation that worlds are known to throw down their arms and give up once the ship shows up in system. Should it come to a fight in any given localized area they will likely win through a frighting combo of speed, skill and durability. The rebellion if not outright crushed is disrupted while other forces are mustered and the planet is taken largely in tact.

You can't have both of these be true at the same time. If a planet has sufficient population and industry that its fate is relevant to the Imperium then it is far too big for space marines to be relevant. A space marine chapter could deploy their full strength, kill an enemy with every single shot fired, and still barely make a dent in a planetary-scale army. And the hundreds of thousands of plasma guns, krak missiles, melta guns, artillery, etc, all capable of killing a space marine even if small arms fire can do literally nothing to them, will inflict catastrophic losses on the marines. Even with absurd marine-masturbation kill ratios straight out of the worst space marine fanfic the marines can't win that fight. The entire chapter dies, the rebellion takes minimal losses.

The only way the space marines can even hope to accomplish anything is if the rebellion has a single vulnerable target that is key to its entire existence. But in that case why do you need space marines? You're by definition talking about a situation where an orbital strike will only damage a negligible amount of real estate (since otherwise the war is too big for space marines to matter), so why send space marines when an Imperial Navy frigate can put a lance shot into the governor's palace and end the rebellion just as easily? A labor crew to rebuild a single building is much cheaper than a space marine strike force and even provides opportunities for the surviving former rebels to achieve a degree of redemption by being turned into construction servitors.

yet again, space marines can move fast and disrupt a target with shock.

The intro video to Space Marine actually does a pretty good job at addressing this.

Let's go through it a moment, the entire bit seems to be some sort of stratigium planning thingy, it's questionable if it's supposed to be the admech or the greater Imperium, I suspect it's the Imperium as a whole however. They detect the Ork invasion in advance, identify the target as Graia, a forge world that produces a number of vital military supplies, The most important of which is the Warlord class Titan, which classes the planet as being of the highest straegic value.
with this lcassification then then run through a checklist of actions. the very FIRST thing is exterminatus. That's basicly the first question they ask. Presumably if they spot an Orc force invading an absolutely worthless world that contains NOTHING of value they'll happily exterminatus the WAAGH
this is dimissed because "strategic value absolute"
after that,m they ask about deploying capital weaponry "neigitve loss of manafacturing cpacitiy unacceptable" as they decide that capital scale weaponry would simply damage too much to be worth it.

Only after WMDs are dimissed to they discuss assmbling an Imperial Guard counter offense to liberate the planet. But after they decide that they realize it will take too long to assmble the force, given the absolute strategic value of the world. The Orks will pilfer too much (they wanted to salvage the warlords that where nearly fully built there) and they couldn't be allowed time to dig in.

they then ask "Escalate Arena Denial" to which the response is "affermative" followed by "execute request order, Adeptus Astartes Ultra"

so basicly the Ultramarines are thrown in specificly to pin the Orks in place and prevent the wholesale looting of the target well the imperial guard martials it's force. It's a fairly solid ideas as to how Marines would be used. a fast strike force.

Now obviously there needs to be some suspension of disbelif here, that's normal for any sci-fi partiuclarly for any wargame. screraming that Marines don't work. and refusing to accept the logical explinationms of how they work in the setting is silly. it's like going to a battletech forum and screaming that Mechs don't work. It doesn't make you apper clever, it just makes you look like a killjoy at best.


edit: Linking the space marine intro video in case someone reading this has never seen it. the Game has some issues but the intro's good fun

In my opinion, the only plausible use of Space Marines in the numbers they are presented with their organisation is for gunboat diplomacy. Space Marines have their own fleet. A small planet like Taros with a population that counts less then 50 million inhabitants with no orbital defense to speak off will be made compliant by a single ship and a 100 Space Marines. They have no force to fight them off. Their PDF is probably ridiculously tiny and spread over a large territory and poorly equipped with very little armored assets. Space Marines, in such a setting, are basically bullies. Very powerful warriors with very powerful weapons designed to fight ridiculously poor and ill trained opponents until they submit or simply bomb them from orbit until they are either all dead or compliant. The Imperium just needs its tithe, the rest is accessory. I guess this sort of role was better suited to the reformed, brain washed criminals and psycho that Space Marines used to be more then to the noble space knights and heroes of legend they have become. Flanderisation has rendered the fluff of 40K less and less coherant. This is especially true for Space Marines.

 Peregrine wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
This world has productive factories, cities and other resources that are useful to the IOM.

C. Send in a fast moving and almost uniquely free range group of elite warriors to quickly disrupt said rebellion. Said warriors have such a dreaded reputation that worlds are known to throw down their arms and give up once the ship shows up in system. Should it come to a fight in any given localized area they will likely win through a frighting combo of speed, skill and durability. The rebellion if not outright crushed is disrupted while other forces are mustered and the planet is taken largely in tact.

You can't have both of these be true at the same time. If a planet has sufficient population and industry that its fate is relevant to the Imperium then it is far too big for space marines to be relevant. A space marine chapter could deploy their full strength, kill an enemy with every single shot fired, and still barely make a dent in a planetary-scale army.

You're imagining Space Marines show up and just bolter down a planet. That's not how the Space Marines operate. Marines take over the orbital defenses or other key installations, and then say "Bring your world within conformity of the Imperial fold, or be annihilated." (or something to that effect.) And the PDF that was thinking of escalating the violence sees that the Space Marines are pointing anti-starship weaponry at all their ground bases, and surrenders their leadership to be "processed and replaced", and then promises to not resist any longer. Job done.

And if the wavering PDF decides that they're going to fight, the Space Marines have orbital supremacy, and therefore aerial supremacy, and therefore can dictate the terms of any conventional battle outside of dense terrain. And if the PDF want to fight in dense terrain, then the Space Marines track communications traffic, find out where any command centers might be, and Drop/teleport into it, annihilating it. And they just keep doing that until the local PDF surrenders, or splinters into complete non-cohesion. Then the Marines deploy into those dense environments where they excel, and get to work.

And if the Space Marines can't be victorious using those tactics, then they pull apart the cohesion of the PDF as much as they can while securing/sabotaging defense weapons, and wait for the Guard to show up. And the Guard will slow-roll the world into submission.

But much of the time probably what happens is the first option. Space Marines show up and take control of major strategic assets, and most of the local PDF probably realize the seriousness of the situation, and give themselves/their commanders/their planetary governors up.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Marines take over the orbital defenses or other key installations.

That's the problem with your theory. To be plausible this step is absolutely critical. Any world that represent a major strategical asset that capturing it mostly intact is an absolute priority will have several key installation each of them defended well beyind the capacity of a 100 Space Marine to take even via a drop pod assault as these assault can only be conducted after dedicated anti-air defenses have been crippled. Beside some backwater colony or decaying world a planet will not be submit to a small group of Space Marines.

Dude lets get real too. That video gives you the freaking feelz man.

epronovost wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Marines take over the orbital defenses or other key installations.

That's the problem with your theory. To be plausible this step is absolutely critical. Any world that represent a major strategical asset that capturing it mostly intact is an absolute priority will have several key installation each of them defended well beyind the capacity of a 100 Space Marine to take even via a drop pod assault as these assault can only be conducted after dedicated anti-air defenses have been crippled. Beside some backwater colony or decaying world a planet will not be submit to a small group of Space Marines.

Marines have the equipment to bypass those defenses with Drop Pods or Boarding Torpedoes. But you don't have to take my word for it:


It's what they do.

 Insectum7 wrote:

epronovost wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Marines take over the orbital defenses or other key installations.

That's the problem with your theory. To be plausible this step is absolutely critical. Any world that represent a major strategical asset that capturing it mostly intact is an absolute priority will have several key installation each of them defended well beyind the capacity of a 100 Space Marine to take even via a drop pod assault as these assault can only be conducted after dedicated anti-air defenses have been crippled. Beside some backwater colony or decaying world a planet will not be submit to a small group of Space Marines.

Marines have the equipment to bypass those defenses with Drop Pods or Boarding Torpedoes. But you don't have to take my word for it:

Spoiler:

It's what they do.

And sometime they can't as shown in the story about the Flesh Tearer being incapable of neutralising an anti-air defense network and needing Scions help to crack it open. Preventing drop pod assaults is one of the things that anti-air defense are built for. As your own piece of fluff mentions, Space Marines can risk drop pod assaults only when the anti-air defense of a planet are either friendly or weak.

Boarding action to get intel rather then destroy ship, recovering STC and such data or tech where an exterminates would destroy said data.

IG do the heavy lifting in terms of planetary defence etc. Spesh mahreens are like the elite special forces for key/clutch manouvers.

makes sense. If I needed intel on an enemy fleet to protect my black hips to ensure the big E keeps on rowing the boat would I send normal humans or super human power armoured jump pack assult unit in on a raid to get the intel? Fleets needs supplies. fleets need intel. You cant get those through planetary bombardment and dakka.

The only reason spesh marines exists is that the alternative: men of iron, turned against us. We'd just send AI superbots to get things done previously no?

Not fanboying up to IOM in any way but I can see the validity of spesh mahreensh.