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So i was looking through some notes on Power Armour, and under the entries for the Mark II 'Crusade' Armour, i noticed that one word in particular was changed. The oldest source i could find, says "efficient" whereas the newest source i could find, says "effective". Was this change mentioned anywhere else?


MARK 2

[---]

This sort of armour was used throughout the Great Crusade. Many maintain that it is the most efficient of all Space Marine armours, although its overlapping plates are notoriously difficult to repair. Actual examples of this armour, much repaired and carefully maintained, are still used in small numbers by many Space Marine Chapters.

White Dwarf, #129, Sept 1990

-----------------------------------



Mk. II ‘Crusade’ Armour

Regarded by many as the most effective suit of power armour, it was notoriously difficult to maintain and dropped out of common use by the 41st Millennium.

Power Armour Through the Ages, 27 Oct 16

I mean it's a synonym. Effective and efficient are pretty similar terms.

If it had swapped from efficient to awful yeah sure but this isn't even a real change.

The words effective and efficient both mean "capable of producing a result," but there is an important difference. Effective means "producing a result that is wanted". Efficient means "capable of producing desired results without wasting materials, time, or energy".

The difference is that when something is effective it produces a result even if it takes some unnecessary resources to do so. When something is efficient, not only does it produce a result, but it does so in a quick or simple way using as little material, time, effort, or energy as possible.


For example, a efficient set of PA might mean its max performance was not so good, but instead it had well optimised electronics and fuel lines whereas a effective set of PA might have exceptional performance but is a gas guzzler with atrocious electronics and cooling.

So my question still stands. Was there a in-universe reason for this notable change?

I'm with Gert in that this was likely someone just re-writing the reference and adapting it a bit with a new term that was close enough to suit whilst being different enough to be a little fresh on the old statement.

Maybe effective just sounded better than efficient and conveyed how superior they were to other powersuits and so forth.

Agreed. Doesn’t read as a retcon, reads as someone being fancy (kinda) with a thesaurus.

It's not even a retcon just a different focus in a description. You can be efficient and effective at the same time.

Talk to two different people about the same thing and they might well highlight two very different key properties of it

While the words are similar, they do convey vastly different ideas in this context.

Does it do it’s job? Yes. It is effective.
Does it have reasonable costs for getting it done? It’s efficient.

Something like tactical dreadnought armor or a custodes is going to be very effective. But they are not very efficient. They get results, but the resources for them are quite intensive. Or the humble lasgun. It’s only vaguely effective (there are better guns out there) but is crazy efficient.

Does it do the job it’s supposed to, and is it worth the points you pay in game terms.

With the specific example from this thread on Mk 2 armor, I honestly think the “efficient” was used incorrectly before. If something does it’s job really well, but is finicky and has a huge upkeep, it’s effective (does the job well) but not efficient (has a high cost to get those results).

From a marine PoV, it’s a price worth paying. It can be a high maintenance piece of gear, and take months in the shop to make sure everything is working well. But if it keeps the marine alive as he’s charging though a breach for the deadly first moments of the assault, it’s a price worth paying.

Does not make it efficient, but marines are willing to pay for the results.

I lean toward the change occurring because the minimum wage copywriting mook that was using the autosummarise function got caught with an autocorrect issue.
Come on Gentleman-Ranker. You’ve had some stellar thread titles, but this one is a bit too arbitrary

I am shocked so many people here has problems grasping their supposed mother language. What? According to you people affect and effect or hear and here are identical synonyms too? These are completely different words even in normal usage, never mind military one. Say, AK-47 is extremely efficient, rugged, and cost effective weapon, while KSVK heavy sniper rifle might be extremely effective one (albeit costly), but no one sane would swap these words for either gun. Or for say T-34 and IS-3 tank, same difference, one is efficient, the other effective, these are not equivalent machines or descriptions

And the whole thing is made even worse by the fact Mk II was not efficient. It was terrible armor, maintenance heavy, prone to jamming, and with helmed being bolted to torso also really inconvenient and hard to use. That's why it was dropped the second something better came along. No one sane would call it effective either, sure, it did its job but the fact nearly every single design detail from it was almost immediately abandoned/changed in every subsequent mark, even retro primaris ones, suggest it was junk in that respect too (and it really should be, the thing had weak spots everywhere in its armor plates making it the worst by default)...

In fact, looking into books I have on hand, the only reference to it being any 'efficient' is the backpack power source, and even that in comparison with really mediocre and primitive semi-powered MK I suits. So, yeah, maybe it was 'efficient' on day one of Great Crusade compared to Thunder Warrior gear but as soon as Mk III and IV rolled around, it was obsolete piece of junk everyone wanted to dump (and Horus even used the supply of new marks as bargaining chip and throttled the supply of new stuff to legions he considered loyal to the Emperor, something he wouldn't bother with if Mk II was any good).

You can still have something which is both Effective and Efficient at the same time. A description might only reference one of those aspects not both. So its perfectly possible to have a random lore quote that references one then change to the other.


It could also just be like school homework "re-write this in your own words to make it fresh and new" and thus a new word is chosen that might not be identical but is good enough for a statement about an item in a fantasy military game.


It also appears that efficient was the earlier use so perhaps someone did spot the mistake based on the lore that came before and after and corrected it. Replacing efficient with effective.

Heck sometimes just different references can give people different impressions on things.



This isn't some peer reviewed document on real world military hardware that's based on extensive study; review; testing; field testing; reports and more

I've seen some nitpicks for 40k lore before but this might take the cake.

 Irbis wrote:
I am shocked so many people here has problems grasping their supposed mother language. What? According to you people affect and effect or hear and here are identical synonyms too? These are completely different words even in normal usage, never mind military one. Say, AK-47 is extremely efficient, rugged, and cost effective weapon, while KSVK heavy sniper rifle might be extremely effective one (albeit costly), but no one sane would swap these words for either gun. Or for say T-34 and IS-3 tank, same difference, one is efficient, the other effective, these are not equivalent machines or descriptions

.

Emphasis mine....

Cost effective is a type of effective sometimes the words are, indeed, synonyms.

Also MKIII didn't replace MKII. It wasn't a straight upgrade, it exacerbated the issues of MKII in order to maximise survivability. It was largely reserved for special issue to assault troops in sieges and boarding actions where the extremely high maintenance was less of an issue and frontal survivability paramount. This is why MKII was never replaced by MKIII, but also why MKIII continued to see use in these specialist roles after newer general-purpose MKs were developed.

 Gert wrote:
I've seen some nitpicks for 40k lore before but this might take the cake.

But is it taking a cake or a biscuit?

Depends how much tax it wants to avoid I suppose.

 Haighus wrote:

Cost effective is a type of effective sometimes the words are, indeed, synonyms.

Ehhh. . . They *can* be in a word salad sort of usage (which this case might be). But they're really in more of a venn diagram relationship. Something can be effective without being efficient.

I could imagine a case where the lore on armor was expanded in more detail in a novel or a FW deep dive or whatever, and then somebody changing the wording in other passages to reflect it. I just can't say that's the case here. I assume not, but there is an *extensive* array of things I haven't read.