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 Grey Templar wrote:

Vatsetis wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
There are far fewer assassins than Space Marines. An Imperial commander is far more likely to have a small number of marines at his disposable than an assassin.
.

Any Source for this apart from headcannon?

If we have 1000x1000 adeptus astartes... Subtract the training, support, logistics combat attrition, etc... We Might have perhaps 500 marines aveilable per chapter for front line combat, from those perhaps 2/3 can be send alone as a Not Ninja to do assasination missions... So we have like 300k Astartes Assasins Stand offs in the IOM.

We have like 6 assasin cults... Do you really think we have less than 50.000 vindicares, and if the number of those are in fact just 500 how is that they are worst than the mass produced bolter porn acolites?

Also Astartes dont follow the IOM chain of command, the are ******Cowboys Warmongers, Assasins do.

Assassins are only trained on a single planet, Terra. They are under the direct command of the High Lords.

While direct numbers are never given, the implication is that they are extremely few in number.

300k on terra is a extremely low number, thats less than a a city block of a hive city. Nobody will even notice then among the trilion inhabitans of terra.

Some one make my lough when they say that Astartes cost the resources of 10 guardsmen but were 100 times more effective... If so, why not have a trillion marines

A single boot of a Marine power armour has more OC for the IOM than a IG squad.

IoM Astartes are just boutique troops for parades and propaganda, every know and then they scare some hopeless traitors to keep them fit.

Bolt Porn is just to sell books, the moment you try to make some logistical sense out of the setting SM become party clowns (curiously enough they share the colour palette).

Vatsetis wrote:

Some one make my lough when they say that Astartes cost the resources of 10 guardsmen but were 100 times more effective... If so, why not have a trillion marines

You should re-read that post because it is explained in it why .

Why not squillkons?

They tried that. Then half went rogue and nearly destroyed the entire Imperium

That’s why.

To most in The Imperium, Astartes are mythical beings. Something often included in Ecclesiarchy art and sermons as His Angels. But your actual chances of seeing them is tiny, even if you’re in The Imperial Guard.

On deeper thought? The actual number of war zones which would require (no, not desire) Astartes intervention is going to be pretty small. The Imperium already has truly vast armies. The Guard alone number in the untold billions. And most planets will have a large number of PDF Troops.

Opportunistic Raids can be handled by those. Not necessarily efficiently, but handled all the same.

And franky, a good chunk of Imperial Worlds aren’t even lynchpins. Worthy of defending sure, but not critical, such as Armageddon or Necromunda etc. And so in terms of Astartes, lower down on the priority list.

It’s all about the brutal calculus of war, and reserving your Best Stuff for the Most Serious Warzones.

As such, there’s simply not the need many might think for oodles and oodles of Astartes. Their numbers are few by design.

At the scale of the Imperium I'd wager the Guard are well into the Trillions. Especially when you consider their general method of conducting war is basically WW1 "flood the machine guns with bodies" style of control, complete with commissars executing guard as examples and all.

The guard is a mass produced system of defence. Vast numbers shipped around the Galaxy to defend and take worlds.




And yep whilst the game and lore heavily focus on the Marines, the actual reality of the setting is Marines are super rare. Heck the same is also true of Chaos Marines as well. Most Imperial Guard fighting against Chaos will encounter legions of cultists and warped machines, but actual marines in full armour is rare even then. Sure when a major campaign is underway when Horus is marshalling his forces, then you see vast legions of Marines pitted against Marines. However such events are rare, they are the moments of vast history being told and of worlds burned and lost and reconquered.

Someone help me with fluff logic: By my understanding, any writer can "POOF" a new chapter (1k Astartes) into existence any time they wish. Just say they are the great great great sub faction of the purple nurples of Zion 5, of the Tau Seti Cluster or something.

What cannot be done is "new" original founding chapters right? There are no "missing" chapters from the 1st founding?

Or is the OP asking to break the 1k limit and go back to legion strength? Which is a bad decision for very obvious reasons.

In M41 it is assumed that there are about a thousand Chapters. 9 of those are the modern incarnations of the Loyalist Legions from the Heresy.
That being said, prior to the opening of the Rift there were more Chapters dying than almost any other time in Imperial history and then the Rift consumed numerous Chapter homeworlds and fleets. Guillimans Ultima Founding did something to alleviate this damage but I don't think the number of Chapters has exceeded its pre-Rift levels.

 Gert wrote:
In M41 it is assumed that there are about a thousand Chapters. 9 of those are the modern incarnations of the Loyalist Legions from the Heresy.
That being said, prior to the opening of the Rift there were more Chapters dying than almost any other time in Imperial history and then the Rift consumed numerous Chapter homeworlds and fleets. Guillimans Ultima Founding did something to alleviate this damage but I don't think the number of Chapters has exceeded its pre-Rift levels.

That likely depends on just how many Primaris Cawl had made in his 10,000 years. Which of course would require some idea of how much of that was spent in perfecting the process.

Folk also need to keep in mind the overall Primaris Project (Bods, Guns, Tanks) wasn’t just 10,000 years in the making, but a process barely exposed to attrition, barring any part of the process where things went a bit wrong.

And that does matter a lot. Even if Cawl only spent the last 500 years of that only churning out the Perfected Products? We know turning a human into a Primaris is a more stable process than Firstborn, thanks to ideal equipment and purer, even purified, Geneseed. And when done, off into cryosleep until Guilliman returns and Cawl can reveal all without being instantly murdered to death for being a naughty little Heretek.

We can also reasonably infer the Impulsor, Repulsor etc, being STC (albeit more complex in design than Rhinos etc) were likely made throughout those 10,000 years - and all without any being wrecked or damaged. Certainly any impression just pulled them out of Physical Exhaust Sphincter Kappa Goon Beta is entirely erroneous. And now they exists in those numbers, maintaining is somewhat easier, especially if we can assume Cawl would’ve stockpiled spares and repairs as well.

You know that would be grim bit of fun to have the Primaris suddenly hit with supply issues. Perfected warriors who can't get replacement parts because the project was so secret and so under wraps that there isn't the infrastructure for long term wide spread support

Don’t make me do another thread on Imperial Logistics!

 Overread wrote:
At the scale of the Imperium I'd wager the Guard are well into the Trillions. Especially when you consider their general method of conducting war is basically WW1 "flood the machine guns with bodies" style of control, complete with commissars executing guard as examples and all.

The guard is a mass produced system of defence. Vast numbers shipped around the Galaxy to defend and take worlds.




And yep whilst the game and lore heavily focus on the Marines, the actual reality of the setting is Marines are super rare. Heck the same is also true of Chaos Marines as well. Most Imperial Guard fighting against Chaos will encounter legions of cultists and warped machines, but actual marines in full armour is rare even then. Sure when a major campaign is underway when Horus is marshalling his forces, then you see vast legions of Marines pitted against Marines. However such events are rare, they are the moments of vast history being told and of worlds burned and lost and reconquered.

CSM might be even rarer than Adeptus Astartes.

BUT, and is a big BUT, Csm are in an "Astartes supremacy" society (what Horus wanted) ... AA Believe they are independent, but they are just tools of the High Lords and Inquisition, reduced to comically powerless "chapters".


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TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Anyone ever shot something that was moving at impossible speed?

You’d need more than impossibly-fast reflexes to pull that off. Which as we all know, is impossible.

So 1,000 Marines in a Chapter is good to go.

This is dumb, seriously.

Are you the sort of person that would enlist the VDV just for the cool ads and Myth??

Or perhaps you are just a smart trol.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AtoMaki wrote:

Vatsetis wrote:

Some one make my lough when they say that Astartes cost the resources of 10 guardsmen but were 100 times more effective... If so, why not have a trillion marines

You should re-read that post because it is explained in it why .

Tried to re read and couldnt find it, sorry.

Could you pass the link so I can make self criticsm, comrade?

Vatsetis wrote:the moment you try to make some logistical sense out of the setting

Well, there's your problem and solution rolled into one! The setting doesn't make sense, and doesn't have to. So long as the general "idea" of Astartes being rare, but valuable, elite troops is met, then that's all you need to know. Numbers are just window dressing.

Perhaps you are right, Im pretty obtuse... I believe fiction is not an independent bubble outside of reality... But rather a derivation from it (and therefore both must follow the same basic rules). .. You know, like most of humanity understood life before the xviii century (or George Miller today).

Surely nowdays smart WASPs with "Scientific Method" know better, after all they have conquered the world (both geographically and culturally) and their reign will surely last forever (or until the antropic collapse, whatever comes earlier).

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That likely depends on just how many Primaris Cawl had made in his 10,000 years. Which of course would require some idea of how much of that was spent in perfecting the process.

Folk also need to keep in mind the overall Primaris Project (Bods, Guns, Tanks) wasn’t just 10,000 years in the making, but a process barely exposed to attrition, barring any part of the process where things went a bit wrong.

And that does matter a lot. Even if Cawl only spent the last 500 years of that only churning out the Perfected Products? We know turning a human into a Primaris is a more stable process than Firstborn, thanks to ideal equipment and purer, even purified, Geneseed. And when done, off into cryosleep until Guilliman returns and Cawl can reveal all without being instantly murdered to death for being a naughty little Heretek.

We can also reasonably infer the Impulsor, Repulsor etc, being STC (albeit more complex in design than Rhinos etc) were likely made throughout those 10,000 years - and all without any being wrecked or damaged. Certainly any impression just pulled them out of Physical Exhaust Sphincter Kappa Goon Beta is entirely erroneous. And now they exists in those numbers, maintaining is somewhat easier, especially if we can assume Cawl would’ve stockpiled spares and repairs as well.

Cawl definitely made loads of Primaris but not all went into building entirely new Chapters, most went to rebuilding or reinforcing old ones. The vast majority of Ultima Founding Chapters were made from those Primaris who were part of the Unnumbered Sons that followed Guilliman during the Indomitus Crusade and were said to be Legion strength (in that people were getting worried Guilliman had a personal Legion of Space Marines).
It's probably safe to say that the Chapters that didn't die but were significantly battered by the big events of M41 and then the opening of the Rift are at least back to half strength by now, with a good portion of those reaching full or even greater than their pre-Rift numbers. As it stands (per Lexicanum) there are 39 confirmed Ultima Founding Chapters from GW sources be they Codexes, stories, or White Dwarf with 3 of these being re-foundings and I think by my last count there was close to 300 (possibly 400) official Chapters from GW sources over the years.

If we could accurately find a count of pre-primaris marines, it would be a generally simple matter to estimate the post primaris numbers.

To the post above, it's largely estimated there's about 1000 chapters, so that's simple 1000 lots of 1000 marines + primaris I guess

I'm just going to post my 2 cents again having given it some more thought, sorry if I've gotten math wrong, I'm also not going to bother thinking through attrition.

Basically there's say 10 million inhabited worlds, which I'll assume will average a pop of 5 billion.
00,000,010,000,000 worlds

30,000,000,000,000 (30 trillion) troops (maybe 1-2/3rds PDF), 3,000,000 per world (based on Earth)
00,000,002,500,000 Marines (Full status)(+/-500,000), 4 marines per 10 worlds, 1 per 2.5
(now honestly this is based on... Nothing, but you get the impression only 1-10 recruits per planet make the cut in the Marneus Calgar comic, of which "soft-worlds" (agri) produce next to none)

So what would exist based on those numbers?;
00,000,000,002,500 1k Chapters
|OR|
00,000,000,000,250 10k Chapters
Proposal: 50*10k Chapters + 2000*1k Chapters Galaxy-wide, splits the difference and allows flagship chapters (Ultramarines that seem to be everywhere for instance) to be a little more prolific.

Proposal: 10k is permitted for crusading armies for the duration of crusade (Black-Templar "abuse" this)
Proposal: 10k is permitted to 1st generation loyalists & can be granted as boons to Chapters that perform above and beyond.

A 1k Chapter is permitted up to 250 initiates & neophytes, and 300 aspirants, in addition to the cap (in the Marneus Calgar comic they chew through 300 kids and end up with 1 neophyte)
A 10k Chapter is permitted up to 1250 initiates & neophytes, and 1500 aspirants, in addition to the cap (Black-Templar "abuse" this)
This way you have guys sworn in as official full members, and an allowance of people who aren't officially part of your Chapter but are able to fill slots in a pinch in various stages of development from neophyte to full marine.

I get that people are saying about the drop pod causality rate being higher than we might expect, but I wouldn't expect marines to have to bypass fortifications capable of shooting them that often, they're shock & awe troops most of the time, but they'll have infiltrators disable or find holes in defenses. There's also probably a few sci-fi things they'll be doing on top of chucking chaff and flares around them (in the animation Astartes you see the boarding ship is followed down by missile interception drones), I don't think we have to assume they're automatically resorting to carrying hundreds of empty drop-pods.

I don't think there's much point speculating about the assassins, they're maybe more effective, but not well rounded and very expensive for whatever sci-fi reasons, something like an evasor is an expensive heat-seeking missile, the others are artisans or genetic freaks, space-marines are simpler grunts that are meant to stick-around a warzone.

IMO The marines aren't made on-mass because of material constraints and post-heresy blues. Marines are going through extra screening but are also being used up quickly, a fraction of aspirants are not genetically viable, and a larger fraction are not good enough to be "elite" soldiers, and added to all of this a chapter can only recruit from the pubescent boys, whereas the guard can have you from the point you can hold a rifle onwards to the point you can't.
There's probably also diminishing returns on Space-Marines, where they're much more effective than base humans in shock&awe/black-ops/hostile-environments/etc, but don't trade as effectively in straight forward defensive engagements and the like, the admin may decide there's a sweetspot between the risk marines present, the value they provide, and the resources they'll consume.

(On top of this, as others have said; Marines are propaganda tools, and there's value to citizens and soldiers having these symbols around)

 CaffeineIsGood wrote:
. . .There's also probably a few sci-fi things they'll be doing on top of chucking chaff and flares around them (in the animation Astartes you see the boarding ship is followed down by missile interception drones), I don't think we have to assume they're automatically resorting to carrying hundreds of empty drop-pods.

One obvious (and given) workaround is that they can just friggin teleport.

Teleport Terminators into any anti-Pod silo or C&C center first, and then the pods are away and the war is on.

How do you locate those C&C centers? Get a teleport lock on? This is what I mean, people just assume things will just *work* for Space Marines

 Insectum7 wrote:
One obvious (and given) workaround is that they can just friggin teleport.

Teleport Terminators into any anti-Pod silo or C&C center first, and then the pods are away and the war is on.

Why teleport terminators in when you can teleport a bomb instead? And why use drop pods if you can teleport?

 Bobthehero wrote:
How do you locate those C&C centers? Get a teleport lock on? This is what I mean, people just assume things will just *work* for Space Marines

Monitor communications and suss it out. Perhaps powerful scanning tech. Drop a dummy and see what fires. Or a Librarian just divines it. . . Space magic.

Lots of options.


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Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
One obvious (and given) workaround is that they can just friggin teleport.

Teleport Terminators into any anti-Pod silo or C&C center first, and then the pods are away and the war is on.

Why teleport terminators in when you can teleport a bomb instead? And why use drop pods if you can teleport?

Because Terminators can eat brains and gather more intel. Or themselves carry out further, more sophisticated missions.

Drop Pods because Terminator armor is better protection during teleportation, and Drop Pods will do the job for Power Armor with less risk.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Because Terminators can eat brains and gather more intel.

Is this even canon? It's certainly dumb enough that it shouldn't be. But now we've gone from "take out the AA defenses to clear the way for a drop pod assault" to some kind of spy mission where a random AA gun controller is a valuable intel source and a primary target instead of a means to an end.

And of course that's assuming there even is a control center. Against a Tau force, for example, AA defense is provided by squadrons of networked Sky Rays and Devilfish hubs. There's no fixed control bunker to teleport into, only mobile gunships flying around the battlefield. And because it's all networked together the loss of any one unit just means shifting it's responsibilities to the remaining units.

Drop Pods because Terminator armor is better protection during teleportation, and Drop Pods will do the job for Power Armor with less risk.

Less risk, assuming the enemy has no AA defenses, and only if you risk those terminators anyway by teleporting them into random bunkers to kill some poor sergeant monitoring the missile battery. It's all a needlessly convoluted plan when you're starting from a premise of total orbital control and precision teleport technology. Just teleport in a bomb and be done with it.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
One obvious (and given) workaround is that they can just friggin teleport.

Teleport Terminators into any anti-Pod silo or C&C center first, and then the pods are away and the war is on.

Why teleport terminators in when you can teleport a bomb instead? And why use drop pods if you can teleport?

Because Termis can leave a survivor to spread fear? . SM are just propaganda and fear troops, thats their role (like nowdays Russian Paratroopers) as actual combat troopa they arent just not very efficient (just like Russian Paratroopers).

Bunkers can be well made. Teleport a bomb in, and you’ve no way of truly knowing the job is done.

Teleport in 5 Terminators? That job is about to get as done as it’s possible to be.

Hell. Why not also broadcast the slaughter. If seeing their leadership utterly massacred by seemingly invincible behemoths of war doesn’t shatter the enemy’s nerve, nothing will.

Thing is a bomb would destroy all the internals of a bunker. So yes you've taken the bunker, you also now cannot use the bunker yourself. Considering how many warzones are push and shove with the Imperium, retaking and holding defensive positions is very important. That bunker you assault today is your defensive point tomorrow.


Terminators let you take the bunker and hold it. Sure they do a lot of collateral damage, but no way near as much as a massive bomb would.


Plus a Bunker might well have multi-layered defences. So a bomb would either have to be insanely powerful or you'd have to do it more than once to punch through each layer.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Bunkers can be well made. Teleport a bomb in, and you’ve no way of truly knowing the job is done.

Teleport in 5 Terminators? That job is about to get as done as it’s possible to be.

Hell. Why not also broadcast the slaughter. If seeing their leadership utterly massacred by seemingly invincible behemoths of war doesn’t shatter the enemy’s nerve, nothing will.

Hey! I thought this thread was about Loyalist Astartes. Don't be bringing 8th Legion tactics into this.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Because Terminators can eat brains and gather more intel.

Is this even canon? It's certainly dumb enough that it shouldn't be.

Bruh, do you even 40k? It's canon, yes.

But now we've gone from "take out the AA defenses to clear the way for a drop pod assault" to some kind of spy mission where a random AA gun controller is a valuable intel source and a primary target instead of a means to an end.

And of course that's assuming there even is a control center. Against a Tau force, for example, AA defense is provided by squadrons of networked Sky Rays and Devilfish hubs. There's no fixed control bunker to teleport into, only mobile gunships flying around the battlefield. And because it's all networked together the loss of any one unit just means shifting it's responsibilities to the remaining units.

It's just an option that's available, that's all. A possible reason you might use a squad insertion rather than bombardment. They can always use bombardment too.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Drop Pods because Terminator armor is better protection during teleportation, and Drop Pods will do the job for Power Armor with less risk.

Less risk, assuming the enemy has no AA defenses, and only if you risk those terminators anyway by teleporting them into random bunkers to kill some poor sergeant monitoring the missile battery. It's all a needlessly convoluted plan when you're starting from a premise of total orbital control and precision teleport technology. Just teleport in a bomb and be done with it.

Marines are basically written as wartime geniuses at planetary assault. It's literally their primary role and the thing they are perhaps best known for. The scenario I describe is just one of many options available, and it's safe to assume that the Marines are going to use whatever means they feel is optimal for a given scenario. "There's more than one way to skin a cat" is the aphorism at play.

On Drop Pods and AA fire?

Drop Pods are described as coming in at velocities AA weapons simply can’t track. This is why they’re the sole reserve of Astartes. Any lesser being would be killed by the speed of the descent and exceptionally rapid deceleration immediately prior to hitting the ground.

Those things do not land gently or softly. Rather, they decelerate only to the point they don’t break apart upon impact.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The ultimate weapon of terror and surprise, when a Drop Pod lands directly in the midst of an enemy line or formation and its occupants disembark and start wreaking havoc, there is little escape for the foe. Drop Pods are fired with colossal acceleration from an orbiting Strike Cruiser or Battle Barge, after which it screams through a planet's atmosphere with oversized rocket thrusters boosting it even further beyond terminal velocity; even the most advanced air defence systems have difficulty locking on to a Drop Pod travelling at up to 12,000 kilometres per hour.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

The ultimate weapon of terror and surprise, when a Drop Pod lands directly in the midst of an enemy line or formation and its occupants disembark and start wreaking havoc, there is little escape for the foe. Drop Pods are fired with colossal acceleration from an orbiting Strike Cruiser or Battle Barge, after which it screams through a planet's atmosphere with oversized rocket thrusters boosting it even further beyond terminal velocity; even the most advanced air defence systems have difficulty locking on to a Drop Pod travelling at up to 12,000 kilometres per hour.

Oh they actually put a number on it? I'm surprised. I was just poking at numbers yesterday but using 3,000 kph as a starting point.

Good reference, what's that from?

40K wiki thing. But it’s a genuine quote.

And it goes to show, when the Astartes are gunning for you? You’ve basically no time to react to them, and little chance of stopping them arriving.

Is that fast enough to not be shot down by realistic AA/Anti Missile defenses? I see that there are missiles to take out other missiles that move at twice that speed.

Genuinely curious. I'm very much a layman on this subject.

 Overread wrote:
Thing is a bomb would destroy all the internals of a bunker. So yes you've taken the bunker, you also now cannot use the bunker yourself. Considering how many warzones are push and shove with the Imperium, retaking and holding defensive positions is very important. That bunker you assault today is your defensive point tomorrow.


Terminators let you take the bunker and hold it. Sure they do a lot of collateral damage, but no way near as much as a massive bomb would.


Plus a Bunker might well have multi-layered defences. So a bomb would either have to be insanely powerful or you'd have to do it more than once to punch through each layer.

Insanly powerful like a Lance Salvo from Orbit you mean???

Astra Militarum is Cheap.
Navy has the firepower.
Assasins, Inquisition, Sorotitas, etc are Specialists.
Adeptus Astartes... look good in the posters I guess.