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 Overread wrote:
The marines are more valuable than the bunker. However the Marines are also likely go in, win and not die. So you get the bunker and the marines.

But if even one marine dies the Imperium suffers a net loss. Marines have to have a 0% casualty rate in battle after battle after battle to break even and we see clearly in canon that they don't. Hell, depending on how much credit you give the assorted "sacred and priceless relic" lines it's arguable that the precious hand-made bolter rounds fired in the attack are worth more than the bunker.

Also if the Imperium adopted a policy of just obliterating everything from orbit the Chaos and Xenos forces would adapt to just letting the Imperium destroy itself. They'd always keep themselves active in populated areas and such. Ergo if the Imperium's policy was total orbital obliteration the enemy would just use that against them every time. Chaos would have no problem sacrificing a few cultists to see the Imperium destroy its own defensive installations, bunkers, factories, civilian populations and more.

And it's better for the Imperium to spend vastly disproportionate resources to preserve those targets? A factory destroyed by orbital bombardment is a factory lost but so is a factory that makes a single space marine instead of entire regiments of LRBTs.

Also, let's once again not forget about the guard. Orbital bombardment is not the only tool, it's just the tool that solves most marine tasks better than marines can. If the problem is a few cultists you send in a regiment of guardsmen that costs 0.000000000000001% as much as the marine force.

They are more prepared to use the Marines in combat even if it puts them at risk.

But they shouldn't have marines. Marines at 2-3x the effectiveness of storm troopers and 10-20% of the numbers make sense. Marines at their canon numbers are an idiotic waste of resources that are a net loss for the Imperium simply by existing.

You also realise this is the same Imperium where technology and science is heavily regulated and unsanctioned scientific work is illegal and punishable by death or worse. Where machines are considered religious; where innovation and change is bad.

Where they can lose entire planets and systems in administration; where they refuse to use even basic AI systems and instead use human brains turned into calculators?


It's not a sane setting. Any sane setting would see the Imperium expand the marines a millionfold to win. The Imperium is insane.


It's broken and twisted and crippled. It survives through sheer momentum, but at its core its got something rotten. It's insanely fearful of things. It's technophobic, xenophobic and more. Heck even the use of the guard itself makes little sense when you consider what they go up against. Their equipment is way below what the Imperium can produce at their best even without using marine level tech.

Ideology is far more important than logic to the Imperium but in the case of just mass producing Astartes there are legitimate reasons for not doing so and they all stem from the Horus Heresy.
Astartes are the Emperor's Angels, the saviours of humanity. The Imperial populace reveres them almost as gods and when Astartes are deployed to a warzone the locals often experience a wave of religious zeal.
There are numerous instances of Renegade Astartes leading popular uprisings against Imperial rulers because, as with the Heresy, many Astartes see themselves as the better choice to rule the Imperium. These instances are still the rarity but the respect and awe that Astartes command is exactly why they are not massed to their Crusade-era levels. With a particularly charismatic Chapter Master, the Astartes could start another Heresy level event.

Aecus Decimus wrote:It's stupid as hell

Yes. That's 40k.

Your point is?

I always get annoyed at the idea that, because 40k is absurd, nothing needs to make sense. 40k is absurd, but Marines make sense within the universe. They are a previously mass produced troop that is now the elite of the elite within the Imperium. They're used because the are fast, durable, and strong, while not being too bulky to enter most buildings, even the 10 feet tall Primaris. They're a slightly bigger target than most people, sure, but it is slightly. Due to being superhuman, they can be dropped anywhere from giant canisters, and tend to drop behind enemy lines to take them out. In lore, they're supposed to travel so fast that they can't be targeted, but let's just assume that they'll use different strategies, like causing massive heat waves, or dropping many drop pods, depending on the enemy counter. They're also not the worst to produce, as long as geneseed is not lost. Sure, you can only really use the best of the best, and they usually die before becoming a Marine, but there's not such a shortage that if ten marines were to die on a mission, they couldn't be replaced.

40k is cool first and foremost, but it is good to make sense, or else the cool factor just fails.

The thing is, it's important to remember that killing an Astartes is pretty damn difficult. You can wound or seriously injure them but an Astartes can also go into a form of suspended animation to help with the healing process. Even then the various implants often mean that even with a serious injury, such as the loss of a limb, the Astartes can continue fighting until the battle ends for more advanced medical treatment.
Sure you might get a spot of bad luck where a Rhino gets obliterated by a Titan and its occupants are very much toasted but that's going to be pretty rare. Add on things like bionics and the ability of some Apothecarions to grow replacement limbs and Marines can be back in fighting shape in a very short span.

That is true. And while it is one Marine per world, if we assume one million and one million, not every world is in constant need of Marines. I view them as good shock troops, morale boosts, and even force multipliers for the right jobs. They're versatile, which is needed. The issue is when they become unkillable monsters in books. It just stops being fun. But that's true of most factions.

Indeed, there are many worlds in the Imperium that will never know conflict. My favourite part of the Wolftime novel is a Navy officer having their entire life turned upside down because it shockingly turned out that Orks were real.
Space Marines don't need to be so numerous as to defend every world, that's what the PDF and to a degree the Guard are for. There aren't enough Chapters to defend the Imperium but to make hundreds more would bring that same Imperium to ruin.

Might be a controversial take, but I don't think marines are that irreplaceable, outside the wealth of experience contained in the older members of a chapter.

It appears to be possible to crank out Astartes at a huge rate, and the basic gear is high-end but not irreplaceable.

Chapters also have no limit on the size of the scout company, and can maintain as many scouts as they wish. Some chapters are known to have extra scout companies. Assuming intact geneseed stores, some chapters appear to be able to recover from horrific combat losses in a pretty short space of time, varying presumably due to differences in recruitment capacity and ongoing attrition post-catastrophe. The implication, in combination with the relatively high attrition rates of some chapters, is that there are an awful lot of initiates feeding into the main body of a chapter at any one time, rapidly replacing combat losses. Chapter fortress monasteries are probably full of hundreds or thousands of initiates working through the process to enter the scout company proper. That would suggest the Imperium could easily make far larger numbers of marines if it wished, but chooses not to (spectre of the Heresy etc.), as raised by others in this thread.

It is probably a bit like fighter pilots, where a small proportion do the majority of the killing, and the rest provide support and suffer the majority of the casualties. Veterans are survivors who likely take lower casualties, and newer marines probably die at disproportionately high rates and are rapidly replaced by elevated scouts.

 Overread wrote:
Any sane setting would see the Imperium expand the marines a millionfold to win. The Imperium is insane.

The problem is that marines are over and over again presented as not being insane. GW tells us they're a genuinely effective weapon that matters to the Imperium. For the insanity defense to work GW would need to admit that marines are too few in number to matter and portray them as being, at best, a futile attempt that will never matter in the long run. Marines can kill stuff 1v1 but there will never be enough of them and for every battle they win a thousand other battles will be lost because the Imperium was stupid enough to invest in marines instead of normal forces. But unfortunately GW refuses to do this.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Any sane setting would see the Imperium expand the marines a millionfold to win. The Imperium is insane.

The problem is that marines are over and over again presented as not being insane. GW tells us they're a genuinely effective weapon that matters to the Imperium. For the insanity defense to work GW would need to admit that marines are too few in number to matter and portray them as being, at best, a futile attempt that will never matter in the long run. Marines can kill stuff 1v1 but there will never be enough of them and for every battle they win a thousand other battles will be lost because the Imperium was stupid enough to invest in marines instead of normal forces. But unfortunately GW refuses to do this.

I mean GW doesn't have too?
A nation a war for 10 Thousand years that has lost territories; lost technologies; that has "corpse starch" as a food source.

GW doesn't "have" to spell it out. The setting is full of evidence that things are not working.
The fact that the Imperium is always best with war; always struggling to find more troops; always fighting tooth and nail to hold onto every bit they can and often lose huge chunks. All these things surely show that for all the awesome of the Marines; they are not enough. Heck Primaris are 100% a display of exactly what you mean. That the Imperium sat on the Marine tech and dogma for 10K years and didn't expand them to make them as effective a force as they could be. The fact that Primaris are not just a display of what could have been, but that major players argue against their use in the setting and more is surely doing exactly what you're asking GW to do.

I think there's way too much Bolter Porn, and Games Workshop isn't very good at actually using the Unreliable Narrator trope, but rely on it pretty heavily. It almost feels like the despair of the galaxy, more than anything, is an aesthetic in 40k, rather than a true backdrop. I want more stories to be normal dudes in the Imperium interacting with the Imperium. I want to feel that the populace suffering has a true impact, rather than a set-piece for Marines to kill aliens. it's one of the reasons why I prefer 40k as a setting, rather than using 40k for stories. It's really hard to advance the 40k universe, and do it well. I'd rather small stories happen throughout the timeline, and the timeline rare ever advance. In addition, the mystery is being bled from the universe. I can't even say slowly. It often feels like I could ask who Horus' second in command's dad is, and I'd get a proper answer. It's weird when the whole point used to be filling in the holes yourself for your dudes, your headcanon.

40k, for me at least, has become rather disappointing. I love the universe. I love a lot about it. But it really does work better as a setting for RPGs, Wargames, and Video Games, than a proper story. Stories within it work well, but stories progressing it have to deal with so much baggage that it's got to be insanely hard to do well. I hate how the Horus Heresy turned out, for example. How big the primarchs is laughable to me. The trailer for the Horus Heresy tabletop game made me laugh at Horus lifting the marine like a toy.

So, as I never gave my answer to the thread, no. We shouldn't expand the volume of Astartes. I feel we should go back to the older lore feel. The old art has such a good look to it, the way the lines are drawn, the way the lore is written. I want a return to the classic 40k. Maybe not Rogue Trader, but 2nd or 3rd would be my sweet spot. Sorry for rambling.

 Overread wrote:
The setting is full of evidence that things are not working.

But it's also full of evidence that the marines aren't to blame. GW keeps telling us that space marines are the Imperium's only hope, that without them the Imperium would collapse completely, that when things are bad the only chance of victory is the miraculous intervention of a marine force to save an entire sector, etc. For the insanity defense to work GW needs to stop doing that and portray marines as doomed tragic heroes. They can win a battle here and there but none of their deeds will ever matter and the rest of the Imperium barely bothers to acknowledge their irrelevant existence.

Do you realise in this thread we are comparing a single Terminator Squad with the firepower of the Biggest Nukes!!!

This is Bonkers!!!

What will be the next step in this escalatio n of insanity:

Comparing an Intercessor with the Beatles.

A versus scenario between a Tactical Marine and Zeus??

Leman Russ killing Khorne inside the EOT and becomming the new lord of Skulls??

A Drop Pod making a detour and destroying by accident the Tau homeworld.

A Bunch of Black Templars getting a bit too zelous and killing hand to hand the whole population of 40K Terra.

Mephiston having a bad dream and erradicating the Leagueas of Vottan out of reality??

Is there ANY limit to bolter Porn?

As this toxic loop gains traction and retrofedback... I can see that in 10 years time the average BPA (bolterpornaddict) will by default assume that each time an adeptus astartes blinks a whole tyranid fleet goes into oblivion (just because some BL "novella" hinted so and it became a meme).

The degeneration of this akward and niche sector of the 40k community is becomming both comical and saddening. :(


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Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Overread wrote:
The setting is full of evidence that things are not working.

But it's also full of evidence that the marines aren't to blame. GW keeps telling us that space marines are the Imperium's only hope, that without them the Imperium would collapse completely, that when things are bad the only chance of victory is the miraculous intervention of a marine force to save an entire sector, etc. For the insanity defense to work GW needs to stop doing that and portray marines as doomed tragic heroes. They can win a battle here and there but none of their deeds will ever matter and the rest of the Imperium barely bothers to acknowledge their irrelevant existence.

Which Perfectly fits their role as PROPAGANDA and FEAR troops, not ment for proper front line combat.

If you assume this paradigm suddenly the whole setting makes much more sense without the need for titanic ammounts "plotanium".

In the future, when I explain to my pupils how military propaganda brainwashes the public... I will use Dakka Astartes Fanboys as a case study.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
If you can win the fight without irradiating your agri-world that feeds 100 billion souls on the nearby forge world, and win it quickly without disrupting farming production, then do that.

But how exactly is this scenario happening? If the enemy is concentrated in a single place than a lance strike from orbit can kill them all with minimal disruption, as even annihilating everything in a hundred mile radius would be a very minimal impact on an agri-world as a whole. Spending the resources required to create and support the marines on more farming capacity would do more to feed the forge world than would be lost in the orbital bombardment. And if the enemy is so numerous and spread out that destroying them from orbit would have a meaningful impact on production then space marines are irrelevant, they can't kill enough enemies to matter before they run out of ammunition.

Marine Strike Cruisers can blast them from orbit if they need to, sure. But if the enemy are spread out and it takes a campaign to do it, than that's what they do. They can resupply via pods or gunships.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

If you can board and disable rebel-held defense platforms so they can be returned to loyal service befote the next Ork Waagh shows up, then do that.

Assuming you can do it without the rebels setting off the dead man's switch nukes as the marines take the platforms, and assuming the marines don't cause sufficient damage to destroy the platforms while firing RPGs/plasma guns/etc inside them. And again, there's the question of resources. A single marine is worth more than all of the platforms, so instead of making and supporting the marine just build more gun platforms to replace the ones you have to destroy.

Dead-mans switches might happen, but how many rebel commanders are willing to sacrifice themselves and possibly 1,000s of their troops if they believe that they can hold out against the Marines? It's also quite possible that bringing a Techmarine along could disable any potential dead-mans switch.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

If you can board and disable an otherwise invulnerable-to-the-forces-at-hand Tyranid vessel while it's still dormant, then do that.

What scenario is there where marines armed with man-portable weapons can destroy a Tyranid ship but the warship carrying them can't? Now there isn't even the collateral damage argument to worry about.

Being able to quietly disable a dormant ship after approaching it looking like an insignificant threat is a thing. Just opening up on a whole fleet of vessels, potentially waking them all up prematurely might do more harm than good. There's an entire game about it called Tyranid Attack, look it up

As for "a marine is worth more than a factory, orbital station, etc.", no he's not. They come and go and die all the time. The value is in the institution of the chapter and the capabilities it provides. How many normal soldiers lives would be spent taking it otherwise? How long would it take? Does delay prolong the war, requiring a million more men and a billion more tons of materiel? The chief strategic capability of Marines is to strike so fast and so hard, that the enemy doesn't have time to react or adequately countermaneuver. And these things specifically can get a thorough capitulation, shortening the time of conflict and saving potentially millions or even billions of lives, not to mention all the factories, cities, agri-farms, etc.

The Imperium does not NEED Marines. The Guard/Navy/Sisterhood/Mechanicum could totally fight all the wars instead, but it would take more time, more lives would be lost and more damage would be incurred. Marines have their niche and perform it well. Which, btw, is a great argument in favor of NOT expanding the number of Marines. They are a niche and specialized force that sits alongside a whole host of other "branches" of the Imperial military. There doesn't need to be more of them because they're not expected to do everything, they're probably barely expected to do 5% of the fighting or even less. They're just often at the forefront and providing much of the initiative in major joint operations.






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This is just incoherent.

By “Astartes fan boy” I assume he means “folk with an interest in the background, and really enjoy extrapolating from there, but always keeping speculation tied to established in-universe fact”?

For instance, they claimed every Astartes action is a loss because they’ll always lose Astartes.

Well. No. Not at all. Because as well as being tough to put down? Astartes are really, really hard to kill.

Blow a limb off a baseline human, and our chances of survival are slim without immediate medical care (even it’s just tying off the limb to prevent or reduced blood loss). Not only blood loss but shock can see us turning up our toes, pushing up the daisies and joining the choir heavenly.

On an Astartes? Blowing that limb off is an effort in itself, thanks to their power armour. But even if you manage that? Their armour and enhancements both massively reduce the chance of them entering shock. Synthetic internal and external pain killers kick in, and the Larraman’s Organ deals with the blood loss.

Sure, the loss of a limb or even an old fashioned nuggeting* can take the Marine out the fight, but it will by absolutely no means kill them.

Organ trauma similarly is heavily mitigated. Two hears, only one needed to survive in the short to mid term (though the other will need replacing with bionics for continued peak efficiency). Knacker their kidneys? Their armour can, again in the short term, step in with some form of blood cleansing.

And if it’s really, really bad? Like….think of the Sir Robin song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and all the horrible fates mentioned by his Minstrels happened to the same Marine in the same engagement? Sus-an Membrane kicks in. Now that won’t necessarily heal the Marine, but entering organic bio-stasis again greatly increases the chances of overall survival and patching up, by massively extending the window of opportunity for medical aid to arrive.

So sure, they’re likely to take casualties. But the survival rate would be astonishing, because that’s what they’re designed for. And it all adds to their threat.

Consider movie scenes, where a character is crippled and is all “I’ll hold them off as long as I can”. Astartes can do that, even with both legs blown off - and not be slipping in and out of consciousness. Leave them a pair of Bolt Pistols, and they’re gonna make a helluva mess before anyone gets past them.

*Nuggeting is a LARP term where, during battle**, you lose all armour and hit points on your four limbs. The 25% less painful version, where you’re left with one intact limb but still can’t exactly go anywhere, is of course known as a Drumsticking. The victims are naturally referred to as Nuggets and Drumsticks accordingly. A movie example of a Drumsticking is Anakin at the end of Revenge of the Sith.

**Well, I say during battle. It can also happen on the path as a result of a half arsed mugging***, or, if I’m feeling fruity and want to practice surgery skills, anytime I think I can reasonably get away with it without anyone returning the favour.

***A proper mugging leaves you dead, and your soul already interrogated, preventing anyone finding out exactly which Cheeky Chappy hacked you into tiny bits then made off with whatever was in your pockets and bags and that****

****it’s a game, but nobody ever said you have to play nice.

I just have a problem with the numbers because nonsensical minimalism breaks my immersion in the setting.

I’ll revert to my earlier opinion that self same nonsensical minimalism only benefits the background, as your chances of a miracle rescue by His Angels are ludicrously small.

Yes The Imperium would benefit from a ten or even hundredfold increase in Astartes head count, and no that wouldn’t necessarily mean any Chapter being bigger than Codex Compliance.

But…it’s The Imperium imposing that on itself, because it’s hide bound, backwards and utterly obsessed with ancient rules, whether or not the once’s enforcing said rules actually understand why a given rule was first introduced.

Another example of this is the Ad Mech. All fear the Abominable Intellect. Thou Shall Not Create The Abominable Intellect.

But….does anyone, in-universe, truly know at what point a Machine Spirit becomes Abominable Intellect? I’d say….probably not, no.

They know it’s Bad. They understand Abominable Intellect buggered things up and ended the Golden Age. But they don’t know the why, or the how.

Yet it’s the reason why they test and test and test newly recovered/rediscovered/dusted off STC fragments. Because at some point, what they call a Machine Spirit was developed into AI, but have no way of knowing when that happened. Was a freak occurence, or the result of natural improvements?

Helsreach shows that there is such a thing as too much damage for the Marine's enhanced blood to help, this should be considered

Hence I said really, really hard to kill, not impossible

Certainly they can suffer catastrophic injuries and still be saved, patched up and get back to business.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Modern nuclear bunkers would require a direct nuclear hit to take out, and even then, I doubt it would be guaranteed.

Fortunately a mere nuke is trivial compared to 40k weapons. There are direct canon quotes that starship weapons are capable of destroying entire continents with a single salvo. The only possible issue is collateral damage, not a shortage of firepower. https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/frggzr/naval_combat_range_and_firepower/

Now add shielding of a kind we know to be able to resist the scale of artillery found on warships (void shields)

If the fortification has so much shielding over such a wide area that it can survive a continent-destroying broadside from an orbiting warship then what exactly are marines going to do against it? Even titan weapons can't breach that level of shielding.

There will be damage, but the structural integrity and function of an installation will be unlikely to be harmed unless the marines or defenders are trying to harm it.

The concrete structure of a bunker may still be intact, the delicate computer systems are unlikely to survive marines firing automatic RPG launchers everywhere (on top of their heavy weapons). And nobody cares if you capture the concrete shell of a building when everything of value inside it is lost.

Also, the gaining intel from eating brains thing is absolutely canon, and has been for >30 years. One of the marine implants is explicitly for this purpose, and the initiation rites for many chapters involve eating corpses after this stage of implantation to celebrate and test the new skill.

It's stupid as hell and relies on GW having no idea how brains actually work. The only sensible thing to do is to reject it as non-canon nonsense.

That would require an absurd level of firepower, to destroy an entire cave system. Modern day nukes would likely struggle to, er, blow up mountains. Rock is pretty hard to blow up. 40k easily has the tech for some rebels to hermetically seal off deep portions of the cave to prevent them dying from the overpressure or the O2 beimg sucked out.

Every weapon in the battleship’s arsenal was prepared and oriented down at the surface; torpedo arrays filled with warshots that could atomise whole continents in a single strike, energy cannons capable of boiling off oceans, kinetic killers that could behead mountains through the brute force of their impact. This was only the power of the ship itself; then there was the minor fleet of auxiliary craft aboard it, wings of fighters and bombers that could come screaming down into Dagonet’s atmosphere on plumes of white fire. Swift death bringers that could raze cities, burn nations.
-Nemesis

or

A mighty Repulsive-class Grand Cruiser with powerful reactors and heavy armour in sloping facets of adamantine and ceramite scores of metres thick, the vessel carried a weight of armament and ordnance that could reduce a continent to ruins with a single salvo.
-Black Crusade

A mere cave is no issue at all.

I am pretty confident that the above BL quotes are hyberbole. The same Repulsive-class grand cruiser, with a single broadside, struggles to destroy a stationary, unshielded Imperial cruiser hull at point-blank range. An Imperial cruiser is 5km long, and only about 500m thick along much of it's length. Yet, we are supposed to believe that the same firepower is capable of devastating a continent? Australia is the smallest continent on Earth, and the majority of it (Australia proper) is 4000km wide. Nearly a thousand times longer than an Imperial cruiser, which can survive the firepower of a Repulsive cruiser without shields (although likely heavily crippled).

It really doesn't add up.

Also, void shields don't block everything- attack craft attacks somehow circumvent them, for example. A person can walk through a void shield, but couldn't shoot a laspistol through one. It isn't clear at what velocity the shield kicks in and blocks a given attack.

That cruiser is a much smaller target, and unlike many sci-fi settings, 40K naval battles are conducted at really quite long range. So we can probably assume a lot of the Repulsive’s firepower would miss the Cruiser. Whereas when launched at a planetside target, especially if you’ve established a matching orbit? It’s all gonna hit there or thereabouts.

I also watched a fairly interesting video on YouTube, explaining how and why atomic are less useful outside of an atmosphere, due to how they actually work. Note however I didn’t say ineffective, just less effective.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That cruiser is a much smaller target, and unlike many sci-fi settings, 40K naval battles are conducted at really quite long range. So we can probably assume a lot of the Repulsive’s firepower would miss the Cruiser. Whereas when launched at a planetside target, especially if you’ve established a matching orbit? It’s all gonna hit there or thereabouts.

I also watched a fairly interesting video on YouTube, explaining how and why atomic are less useful outside of an atmosphere, due to how they actually work. Note however I didn’t say ineffective, just less effective.

Sure, but BFG has rules for a stationary target at point blank range- full firepower is used essentially. Even with the lances included, a Repulsive leaves an unshielded cruiser on 1 or 2 hitpoints out of 8 on average. That is basically in ideal conditions where you would expect every shot to hit.

Also, one of the authors of BFG has stated an approx. range of 1000km per game CM, so combat is typically fought at 60000km or less. It is long, but not enormous.

I mean thats roughly 12 times the distance from New York to London. I'd say thats pretty enormous.
Relative to the distance between Earth and the moon, sure its not as big but still.

 Gert wrote:
I mean thats roughly 12 times the distance from New York to London. I'd say thats pretty enormous.
Relative to the distance between Earth and the moon, sure its not as big but still.

Apologies, I wasn't very clear- not enormous for void combat distances in scifi (in reference to what MDG said), or in comparison to distances in space in general. It is big compared to planetary distances.

The BFG ruleset strongly implies that anything less than 15000km is point-blank range for voidships, and is basically a guaranteed hit at that range for stationary targets like defenses. This makes sense, any weapon system that has the precision to fairly reliably hit a moving target 1.2km long at 30000-60000km range is going to be incredibly accurate at shorter ranges.

Hmm, I need to find the supplementary rules for fighting in orbits above planets.

Even so, it’s a helluva distance over which to aim at something comparatively tiny. If you’re off by a degree of aim, or the target is moving and your calculation is off? Not a lot of your firepower is going to hit - especially compared to unleashing the same firepower against a planetside target, which may very well not be 600,000km away.

And for further thought, here’s that video i mentioned,

BFG established torpedoes to have hundreds of gigaton yields. Further sources continued using high-end weapon yields fitting in the era of the Star Wars Incredible Cross Sections “Biggatons” firepower calculations. These numbers are consistent among many sources from the time, back when Warhammer 40k lore was consistent and more thought-out.

You don’t have to take my word for it. People have already gathered and collated all the references, and they show their math:

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?p=2092582


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Even more:

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=123079


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The second one is an even better source since it links to various specific source analyses.

Responding to OP; I use a headcannon of x10 to maintain suspension of disbelief; Marine numbers are ten times larger going all the way back to the Great Crusade.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
BFG established torpedoes to have hundreds of gigaton yields. Further sources continued using high-end weapon yields fitting in the era of the Star Wars Incredible Cross Sections “Biggatons” firepower calculations. These numbers are consistent among many sources from the time, back when Warhammer 40k lore was consistent and more thought-out.

You don’t have to take my word for it. People have already gathered and collated all the references, and they show their math:

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?p=2092582


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Even more:

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=123079


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The second one is an even better source since it links to various specific source analyses.

I have created a new thread for this discussion, as I think it is sufficiently off-topic and interesting in its own right.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/806994.page

The only change that'd make sense is increasing the total nr of chapter, not the size limits.

Yes a single unsupported Space Marine chapter on its own could not take down a world in anything but a temporary fashion. That's literally the core function of the chapter size. If they're in a conflict where they need to recruit more people the Codex already has a provision for this: declare a Crusade.

Thus the easiest would be to change the nr of chapters out there from a thousand to a million or a billion or some such number. Say that the Empire itself isn't even sure how many there are exactly, with most lesser chapters being the successor chapter of a successor chapter of a successor chapter in a loooong line all the way back to one of the original legions/chapters.