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Are people really arguing against the simple fact that having at least 3 times more volume and being at least 5 times the weight than the regular human trooper the Space Marines are going to be in a clear tactical disadvantage when fighting in a human constructed settlement (not to mention a hivecity or spaceship)???

40k is fantasy in space, its satirical and nonsencical... Please dont try to give a cientific explanation to what is simply absurd if you think about it for 10 seconds.

I mean Imperial architecture is supposed to be grandiose and colossal. An Astartes might not fit in a hab suite but a mission in the Underhive or in the corridors of a ship wouldn't be a problem.
And just for the record, it's mentioned all the time from Astartes POV that regular human vehicles/ships/dwellings are often cramped.

The Galaxy is very diverse, not everthing or even most of it has to be build so that Astartes can traverse it with ease. Certainly the Astartes enemies wont do that.

I dont know why secundary and mainteinance corridors in a hive city or a spacecraft would allow an Astartes to trasverse it... This is basic engineering.

To be clear, a facility must be built on porpouse so that Astartes can use it... And in doing so it would probably make things much larger and cost much more in time an resources.

Astartes are useless as infantry because they have the weight and manouvrebility of a vehicle/car... They are not of human scale, and thats a huge problem when figthing other non astartes humans.

If instead of Astartes we were talking about the stealth capabilities of Ogryns things would be clear... An a Primaris volume and weight is much nearer to an Ogryn than to an standard human.

So due to their stupid size and weight the SM are really handicapped for the sort of close quarters boarding action the lore says they excell in.

If things make any sense in 40K, the SM squad in the astartes fan made film would be stuck in the first room they arrive inside the ship.

So some good points about have been made, some bad points have been brought up. However I think peopel are missing the most fundamental reason, and this because Magic is for wizards, not knights. Lets not be mistaken about what space marines are, they are space knights mixed in with various historical or pop culture icons.

Blood angels = space knights + vampires
Thousand Sons = space knights + mummies
Space wolves = space knights + vikings


Knights swing swords and wear armor, maybe have a holy relic because of thier devotion to king, country, and god. But their bread and butter is sword and armor, not force fields which is totally sci-fi wizardry at its finest. So giving all space marines force fields would break thier trope. As for why all the 2nd lueys having refractor fields.... I'm going to go with game design not meeting the realities of game play as my two cents.

Templars had no problem with performing magical ritual. Oddly enough their marine version don't have psykers.

Vatsetis wrote:
Are people really arguing against the simple fact that having at least 3 times more volume and being at least 5 times the weight than the regular human trooper the Space Marines are going to be in a clear tactical disadvantage when fighting in a human constructed settlement (not to mention a hivecity or spaceship)???

40k is fantasy in space, its satirical and nonsencical... Please dont try to give a cientific explanation to what is simply absurd if you think about it for 10 seconds.

I agree that the "embiggening" of Marines is dumb, but also despite being large, a horse can move around inside a building. I'm pretty sure I've seen a movie with that exact thing happening.

Plus Marines have Scouts. If they need to clear tighter spaces they can send in the Nubs. They're also bringing a Strike Cruiser, so they can just level the thing from orbit too.

So marines make as much sense as a SWAT team that try to take by storm horse mounted a two height suburban house and therefore the only one in the group that is able to actually enter the objective room is the newbie that still havent earned his cavalry honors yet.

Yeap, perfectly reasonable.

Well I doubt hive worlds have the gigantic houses that exist in the US as an avarge size of place to move and live. Try moving a Persheron in an asian city and you won't be able to move him. Even where I live a ton places from the old times are made for the smaller communist era people, and I can tell you that getting out to the roof is hard for me and I am not 7 feet tall plus mr olympia build dude in a suit of armour.

Vatsetis wrote:
Are people really arguing against the simple fact that having at least 3 times more volume and being at least 5 times the weight than the regular human trooper the Space Marines are going to be in a clear tactical disadvantage when fighting in a human constructed settlement (not to mention a hivecity or spaceship)???

40k is fantasy in space, its satirical and nonsencical... Please dont try to give a cientific explanation to what is simply absurd if you think about it for 10 seconds.

Which enemy of the space marines has human sized soldier running around in their ships?

Orks? Nope...
Eldar? Nope...
CSM? Nope...
Tyranids? Nope...
Necrons? Nope...

I am struggling to think of any enemy of the imperium that has exclusively human size soldiers...The only enemy would be other humans...Guess what you don't need to fight other humans? Astartes. Which are essentially the imperium's best troops reserved for their toughest enemies and situations. Not to mention...a space marine can easily break through a narrow doorway...It is true the game is fantasy - you don't seem to be enjoying the fantasy though...

The answer to the OP though. Marines have power armor - they don't need a refractor field. Though...what do you think an Ironhalo is? Essentially it is a better version of one. Giving every marine an ironhalo would be to resource intensive.

Remember the MST3K mantra.

Eldar are human size... Taus are smaller than humans... A variety of xenos races probably dont build their ships and installations oversized with the sole porpouse of allowing SM assaults.

In fluff SM are constantly fighting Genestealer cults and chaos cults that life concealed among the regular IOM population...

Yes the SM can easily break a narrow doorway, but if it has to slowly crawl along a regular corridor in some of the most tipical fluff battlefields (hive cities, forge worlds and space ships) all his superhuman abilities are rendered useless.

The ones that dont seem to enjoy the fantasy are those hellbent in overthinking all this nonsense and trying to find a justification for Marines oversize and overweight... It dosent exist, its very silly for marines to be so huge... Its over the top and impractical... I have no problem with that because I understand marines are just avatars for a power fantasy and with no regard to their obvious military drawbacks

Vatsetis wrote:
So marines make as much sense as a SWAT team that try to take by storm horse mounted a two height suburban house and therefore the only one in the group that is able to actually enter the objective room is the newbie that still havent earned his cavalry honors yet.

Yeap, perfectly reasonable.

Well that's a not very thoughtful response.

Bigger things than people can fit through doorways. Stronger things than people can go through walls. Some Marines don't wear such bulky armor. Not every building needs to be stormed, and Marines can always opt to just level the thing because they might not give a fuuuu.

But yes, if you built a hardened structure that was made of tight tunnels, Marines would have a problem. But again, you can use Scouts, Marines without armor, or make the tunnels bigger. Or just teleport inside like a boss.


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Vatsetis wrote:
Eldar are human size... Taus are smaller than humans...

MArines are smaller than Tau battlesuits and Wraithguard. . . well, at least they were until Heavy Intercessor and related nonsense. . .

Vatsetis wrote:
Eldar are human size... Taus are smaller than humans... A variety of xenos races probably dont build their ships and installations oversized with the sole porpouse of allowing SM assaults.

In fluff SM are constantly fighting Genestealer cults and chaos cults that life concealed among the regular IOM population...

Yes the SM can easily break a narrow doorway, but if it has to slowly crawl along a regular corridor in some of the most tipical fluff battlefields (hive cities, forge worlds and space ships) all his superhuman abilities are rendered useless.

The ones that dont seem to enjoy the fantasy are those hellbent in overthinking all this nonsense and trying to find a justification for Marines oversize and overweight... It dosent exist, its very silly for marines to be so huge... Its over the top and impractical... I have no problem with that because I understand marines are just avatars for a power fantasy and with no regard to their obvious military drawbacks

Eldar are as tall as a marine...nor would they inconvenience themselves with tiny doorways at the chance brutish Mon keigh entered their ship.
GSK are not only exceptionally rare - they also don't have ships - the ships steal also...don't have tiny doorways because the imperium doesn't do that - specifically so large things can be moved about the ship.

Sure the melee aspect of combat when units have ranged weaponry is unrealistic. The marine being large though is all part of the formula for making a super soldier. Want it to be Harder/ better/ faster / stronger? It must be bigger. It makes a lot of sense.

 IanMalcolmAbs wrote:
. . .The marine being large though is all part of the formula for making a super soldier. Want it to be Harder/ better/ faster / stronger? It must be bigger. It makes a lot of sense.

I'll push back on that and say that better-faster-stronger isn't necessarily correlated to size. Chimps have wild power to weight ratios, and gorillas are CRAZY strong. It's hard to find a scientific measurement but I see online claims anywhere from 4 - 27x times as strong as a human. Even assuming the upper 3/4ths of those estimations are nonsense, a gorilla packs power that is way off the human scale for its size.

"According to the Guinness Book of Records, a silverback gorilla can lift up to 815 kg (1800 lbs) of dead weight."

" In 1924, a rare experiment was conducted to compare ape and human strength. A 165 lb male chimpanzee named ‘Boma’ was able to pull a force of 847 lb on a dynamometer, whereas a human of the same weight could only pull 210 lb"

 Insectum7 wrote:

 IanMalcolmAbs wrote:
. . .The marine being large though is all part of the formula for making a super soldier. Want it to be Harder/ better/ faster / stronger? It must be bigger. It makes a lot of sense.

I'll push back on that and say that better-faster-stronger isn't necessarily correlated to size. Chimps have wild power to weight ratios, and gorillas are CRAZY strong. It's hard to find a scientific measurement but I see online claims anywhere from 4 - 27x times as strong as a human. Even assuming the upper 2/3ds of those estimations are nonsense, a gorilla packs power that is way off the human scale for its size.

Of note is that the human body is capable of more strength then it is allowed. The human brain itself limits muscle output because that would be damaging at the high end and it is difficult to manipulate tools at that level when using more strength. A major thing to notice is while Chimps are much more capable of using their muscle, they don't have the same motor control as us or the ability to adjust their strength as needed to a task to the same degree that we can.

A huge issue is that the Marine not only is bigger, but might well have more access to his own muscle mass, particularly if the fibers of the muscle, the tendons and ligaments are themselves reinforced to withstand the extra strain.

^well at least chimps can hold a banana without crushing it, lol. I wonder at the motor control thing, really, considering grooming behavior and ability to cradle baby chimps. I mean they may not be able to build a Space Marine model but they seem to get by alright.

Gorillas and chimps and other primates are stronger than humans because they have much more muscle fiber density.

If you have both better fiber density and bigger muscles than thats even better than just being a normal sized human with better density in your muscles.

Modern day guerrillas find ways to get advantage everytime over Western armies that are heavily dependant on their vehicules due to the restricted mobility this means for the high tech faction in tight enviroments. The 40k guerrillas would surely do the same.

In Spite all the handwaving and adhoc justifications many battlefields in the 40k galaxy are probably more tight and packed that the most dense areas of nowadays Hing Kong or Manila... Good luck organising a cavalry charge in those streets.

Eldar aspect warriors have a similar ptotection level to marines, also SOB... But this units have mostly human sizes and weights... Astartes on the other side are oversized and overweight just for the rule of cool... They might be good parade and terror troops but this gimmick renders them useless in most of the elite infantry roles. Just a moderate amount of rain and mud would put a lot of stress on their ability to move over open ground.

BTW scouts are being phased out of rules and fluff due to the primarization process which means doubling on this dumb "bigger is better" concept.

Vatsetis wrote:
BTW scouts are being phased out of rules and fluff due to the primarization process which means doubling on this dumb "bigger is better" concept.

Actually, Scouts still exist in all-Primaris Chapters. Just to clarify that.

Vatsetis wrote:
Modern day guerrillas find ways to get advantage everytime over Western armies that are heavily dependant on their vehicules due to the restricted mobility this means for the high tech faction in tight enviroments. The 40k guerrillas would surely do the same.

In Spite all the handwaving and adhoc justifications many battlefields in the 40k galaxy are probably more tight and packed that the most dense areas of nowadays Hing Kong or Manila... Good luck organising a cavalry charge in those streets.

Eldar aspect warriors have a similar ptotection level to marines, also SOB... But this units have mostly human sizes and weights... Astartes on the other side are oversized and overweight just for the rule of cool... They might be good parade and terror troops but this gimmick renders them useless in most of the elite infantry roles. Just a moderate amount of rain and mud would put a lot of stress on their ability to move over open ground.

BTW scouts are being phased out of rules and fluff due to the primarization process which means doubling on this dumb "bigger is better" concept.

Maybe if you wanna argue about space Marines you should read up a bit. scouts still exist,

as for urban battlefields, you seem to have this idea that an urban battlefield involves a bunch of people running around through buildings shooting small arms.

yeah thats not how it works. Marines need to get into a building but the doorway's to small? THEN THEY BLOW OPEN A BIGGER HOLE (which has the added advantage of allowing them to bypass any defences of the doorway) this isn't even some made up tactic, it's used in real life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse-holing

Marines would likely do that. likewise, warfare like what you might see in pictures of modern war where small teams are used and damage is minimal? yeaaah that's not what M.41 war is gonna be like. they practice total war we can see it from the very terrain pieces GW sells.

any "thick dense city" is going to be turned into smouldering ruins fast.


less of a worry about doorways and narrow corridors when they're mostly all rubble eh?

To answer the question of the OP as to why all Space Marines don't have access to refractor fields like officers in the Imperial Guard do, I would say because they don't need them really. Your average Space Marines already has excellent protection thanks to their very nature and their armor. They don't require that sort of sophisticated equipment since a regular Space Marine is less important both from a tactical and from a logistical point of view than a Imperial Guard officer. Their officers already have even stronger force field for that matter. Even elite veteran Space Marines have access to better forcefield tech.

As for size and weight of Space Marines being a disadvantage in urban combat or combat in rough terrain, this is of course a huge problem for them and it doesn't make much sense to invest so much energy in making physically mighty super-soldiers instead of more practical military skills than raw strength, but it's a fantasy setting where, much like in Transformers, bigger is always better.

Vatsetis wrote:
Modern day guerrillas find ways to get advantage everytime over Western armies that are heavily dependant on their vehicules due to the restricted mobility this means for the high tech faction in tight enviroments. The 40k guerrillas would surely do the same.

Guerillas are driven to the tactics they use because of the overwhelming conventional forces that will meet them in any other form of combat, so conventional forces are already being effective in the way they are meant to be effective. In the modern world though, conventional forces aren't politically free to virus bomb whole continents to eradicate guerillas, whereas in 40K the Imperial forces don't have the same restrictions. Besides, you can always send in the Guard.

Space Marines can be effective without being "tunnel-rats", because the Imperial army isn't limited to Space Marines. It's like saying the Air Force is dumb because airplanes cant dig a trench. Space Marines can be effective enough to justify their existence without being able to do everything.




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BrianDavion wrote:
Marines need to get into a building but the doorway's to small? THEN THEY BLOW OPEN A BIGGER HOLE (which has the added advantage of allowing them to bypass any defences of the doorway) this isn't even some made up tactic, it's used in real life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse-holing

I always felt like this was part of the traditional Sergeant w/Powerfist "thing". They just punch through walls.

I know scouts "still" exist and that SM have a lot of firepower at their dispossal... I wasnt arguing against those points.

If a Space Marine force needs to used a specialiced unit as scouts or massive firepower to overcome an obstacle as simple as a narrow staircase my point is solidly established.

Vatsetis wrote:
I know scouts "still" exist and that SM have a lot of firepower at their dispossal... I wasnt arguing against those points.

If a Space Marine force needs to used a specialiced unit as scouts or massive firepower to overcome an obstacle as simple as a narrow staircase my point is solidly established.

They need a Powerfist which any traditional SM unit could carry. Or meltabomb, even Krak grenades maybe for lighter obstacles.

Lord Zarkov wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
Isn’t the crux terminatus some sort of force field?


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To be fair though with all the resources of the imperium you could probably equip a thousand SM with lascannons with no issue.

It would just be a boring story, probably.

The crux itself is not no, it’s just a badge with a sliver of the Emperor’s armour.

The confusion comes from the 3rd Ed Chapter Approved article that first granted them an invulnerable save being named ‘Crux Terminatus’, but the article itself just said it was because the armour was legendarily thick rather than due to a force field.

The issue was that they changed from 3+ on 2D6 in 2nd to 2+ in 3rd to simplify things, but then the designers decided they were being killed to easily by banshees and the like so added the 5++.

Is that still Supposed to be true, that the crux is made with a bit of the emperors armour? Back when terminator armour was rare and couldn’t be reproduced it might make sense but I think terminators are 10 a penny now in 40k. There can’t be enough armour to go around

And if they need to move upwards??

Even if they only need to move horizontally not all walls can be just breached... Buildings can colapse if done carelessly, you cant simply punch holes through an unknown enemy ship with out risking a major explosion... Some goes for many industrial instalations... Then again the origin if this debate was that marines could not be shealthy and all of your "solutions" require the use of noisy brute force... Thanks fir conceding on that point.

Having to breach holes of 2x2 meters wide in every wall sort of defeats the porpouse of a "fast" superhuman strike force.


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 Insectum7 wrote:

Vatsetis wrote:
I know scouts "still" exist and that SM have a lot of firepower at their dispossal... I wasnt arguing against those points.

If a Space Marine force needs to used a specialiced unit as scouts or massive firepower to overcome an obstacle as simple as a narrow staircase my point is solidly established.

They need a Powerfist which any traditional SM unit could carry. Or meltabomb, even Krak grenades maybe for lighter obstacles.

Sorry how those a meltabomb allows a 750kg armored monster that dosent fit a narrow stairway to reach the fith floor of a building?

Vatsetis wrote:
And if they need to move upwards??

Even if they only need to move horizontally not all walls can be just breached... Buildings can colapse if done carelessly, you cant simply punch holes through an unknown enemy ship with out risking a major explosion... Some goes for many industrial instalations... Then again the origin if this debate was that marines could not be shealthy and all of your "solutions" require the use of noisy brute force... Thanks fir conceding on that point.

Having to breach holes of 2x2 meters wide in every wall sort of defeats the porpouse of a "fast" superhuman strike force.

No concession happened, Marines can still stealth about when not breaching. Meltabombs are supposed to be pretty quiet too, iirc the old Wargear book. If they need to go upwards they use stairs like everyone else, or knock a hole and do a pull-up.

What's your purpose here really . . . ?

Because Hab Blocks aren't made out of wood.

 Insectum7 wrote:
...What's your purpose here really . . . ?

*bad Vatsetis voice impression* "To explain to you how I'm right and you're WRONG!"

Vatsetis wrote:
I know scouts "still" exist and that SM have a lot of firepower at their dispossal... I wasnt arguing against those points.

If a Space Marine force needs to used a specialiced unit as scouts or massive firepower to overcome an obstacle as simple as a narrow staircase my point is solidly established.

What point was that again? That you don't like space marines or the rules of the fictional universe that they reside in? If so, maybe you should find a fictional universe more to your liking. You sound like you would enjoy hard sci-fi of the military bent.