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How does it work when Space Marines are in a battle regarding losing wargear and actual Space Marines: isn't everything of extremely high value?

Isn't it very important that they don't lose any kind of wargear?

What about a slain Space Marine? Yes the Apothecary can remove organs, but the rest must still be very important to bring to safety, the marine himself may not fall into enemy hands, and the Power Armour may also be reused.

My point is, does it play a bigger part of the battlefield operation not to lose anything compared to how Astra Militarum operate?

Chapter serfs / support staff perform battlefield recovery - there's mention of specialist teams with modified Thunderhawk Transporters for picking up drop pods, for example.

I'm pretty sure Space Marines don't lose their war gear unless it gets broken, or taken from their cold dead fingers.

I seem to recall in the Ultramarines movie from several years back, a relic weapon got broken while fighting a daemon, and the Chapter just made a new relic and pretended it was the same relic.

Unless it's something of ritual significance like a Chapter relic such as a Company Standard, then recovery takes place after the battle is won.

Even in the case of geneseed the fallen Astartes' location is often marked for later recovery rather than immediate removal.

 kyrtuck wrote:
I'm pretty sure Space Marines don't lose their war gear unless it gets broken, or taken from their cold dead fingers.

And in most cases it's a capital offence for someone outside the Chapter to touch a Marine's wargear - the short story Argent touches on this.

But what about hard fought battles and losing battles where it's not possible for a nice and calm recovery afterwards during tea time?

Wouldn't they have to prioritize recovery during the actual battle? Boltguns, heavy weaponry and slain marines...

In a losing fight the priority is not taking more Astartes casualties than necessary.

Recovery of a venerable relic would be considered important but a few Boltguns or some armour less so.
If there is no geneseed to recover and further engagement would result in more Astartes death then the armour gets left behind.

Space Marines lose stuff, war is mostly an exercise of losing stuff and winning is just losing less than your enemy.

It is a big part of the whole "grimdark future in which everything sucks and humanity is slowly attritioned to death" thing.

And then a few hundred years later, the Imperium rolls in again and the Blood Ravens hoover up all the juicy relics… I mean they carefully require the relics of brother chapters, to Definately be repatriated with all speed.

 Flinty wrote:
And then a few hundred years later, the Imperium rolls in again and the Blood Ravens hoover up all the juicy relics… I mean they carefully require the relics of brother chapters, to Definately be repatriated with all speed.

The stuff that the Inquisition doesn't Hoover up and dump into the Deathwatch.

Depends how you look at it.

Even with the difficulty of manufacture, a Chapter need only equip around 1,000 Brothers. Which isn’t a tall order.

So whilst rare in galactic terms, they’re not irreplaceable.

But then we run into the Ship of Theseus. Even before Mk10 Armour? It’s always been a modular design.

As in, if your chest plate gets stoved in, it’s just the chest plate that needs replacing. And perhaps elements of the wrecked one are incorporated into the replacement.

So a given suit of say, Mk6 could, strictly speaking, have been among the first off the original production line during or even before the Heresy. And over the past 10,000 years it’s been maintained and repaired again and again and again and again. It may or may not have any original parts left.

And it’s that which forms the irreplaceable. Bits, bobs, entire suits can and are replaced fairly regularly. But to lose a relic? That that gone, most likely to never be recovered.

Different Chapters may have very different approaches.

For instance, Dark Angels. During the Heresy, they were one of the more numerous Legions. Yet there’s been a reticence among the powers that be to use their Geneseed stocks to create new Chapters.

What follows is For Example Speculation.

And so, the Dark Angels Chapter, and its proven descendant Chapters, may be less worried about recovering every last scrap of Geneseed from those that fall in battle, because they’re not hard up for replacement.

Quotes stolen from a Reddit thread:

Throne of Light wrote:Brother-Apothecary Cadeuc worked tirelessly to drag casualties out of the line of fire.

Battle of the Fang wrote:Sturmhjart stole a quick glance over his shoulder, back toward the gaping gate-ruins. The proud arches slumped into rubble, studded with gigantic fallen lintel-stones like megaliths. In the light of the fires he could see squads of kaerls hurrying to the front, many carrying fresh ammunition crates. Some of those contained boltgun magazines. Those carriers would sell their lives to get them to the Wolves on the front line.

Deathwatch wrote:The rest of the team fell in behind them: Karras first, then Rauth, Voss, and finally Zeed, trailing four of the five gun-servitors in his wake, three of which carried the extra ammunition Voss had secured to their chassis. Strapped to the back of the last gun-servitor was a black case belonging to Sigma. As yet, the inquisitor hadn’t opted to share any information about its contents.
...
Karras glanced down at the ammunition reserves strapped to the back of the servitors’ chassis. Each carried grenades of various types and magazines loaded with bolter-rounds. One carried two extra promethium canisters to refuel Voss’s flamer. And then there were the remaining melta-charges.

Oaths of Damnation wrote:They were not the hold’s only occupants. As the Exorcists sat, a dozen figures did the opposite, rising from the benches at the far end of the compartment and shuffling to their duties. They were a detail of Chapter serfs, brought down from the Witch-Bane with instructions to resupply and administer to their masters before they re-entered combat. Clad in black-and- red robes, cowls raised, they moved down the aisle deck between the seated Space Marines, gripping the railing that ran along the compartment’s roof to steady themselves against the flyer’s juddering.

I'd guess that once the serfs / servitors had delivered their ammo they'd grab anything left behind before they return to base for more supplies (how many serfs would it take to carry a wounded / downed marine?).

Quite a lot. A fully armoured marine is about a ton. Amd that is from firstborn days. The bigger primaris in Gravis would be somewhat more I think.

Well that is part of the point of the setting. A constant, grinding decline. It's why Marines arn't sent into every situation, mass produced guardsmen with mass produced lasgun taking that job where some random melta shot isn't going to destroy some 10k year old vetren or relic.

Some chapters are scarred by such losses, being unable to replace terminator armour, vehicles of dreadnaughts. It helped build fluff, flavour and lore. Like, post Maccrage ultramarines probably shouldn't be running much termi armour since they lost their entire first chapter on that moon. On that point you're probably not recovering much stuff if you lose a war vs tyranids, and the inquisition would raise eyebrows if you picked up stuff after a chaos incursion.

Places like the mechanicus, terra and the inquisition probably have stockpiles of things like Geneseed saved for extreme occasions. But before Cawl it was meant to be very intentional that eventually things would run out, humanity would collapse under the face of races such as orks, nids and even tau. All of which could replace and even innovate new tech.

They didn’t lose the war though. All of the lost equipment could be salvaged. Likely to need a bit of a rub down and a fresh kick of paint at least. And also possibly the last user to be hosed out of the insides…

Also, despite the focus of the background? The Imperial Guard in most situations are plenty.

It might take a while, but any one planet or system wanting to leave The Imperium will be defeated. An Ork Waaaagh! can be overwhelmed and so on.

Marines are the final word in Imperial Force Multiplier. But the Guard are, and pretty much always have been, the true back bone. The untold faceless billions no foe in the Galaxy has ever truly defeated.

Their forces are too numerous. Their orders of battle too varied. Sure, you might be well placed to do in say, a Cadian Infantry Company. But what about the Smellyfeet XVIII Armoured Company moving up in support of said Cadian Infantry Company? Or the Catachan Light Company, all dispersed behind your lines to best take advantage of their fieldcraft and sabotage skills? Not to mention the Ratling Snipers attached to the Cadians who will insist on putting one through the bonce of your officer equivalent.

In the old days (2nd Ed) every piece of space marine gear was treated as a holy relic and would be passed down from generation to generation of marine. Serious efforts went into recovery of equipment from battlefields and making new equipment was also part of a long drawn out religious process. Also the technological stagnation was a much bigger part of the setting and the imperium didn’t have the ability to create new sets of terminator armour aswell as other equipment. But also, lore wise, space marines rarely die on the battlefield so recovery of equipment was easier.

That’s all fallen by the wayside and the scale of war across the galaxy is bigger and more visible. Especially with the rapid deployment of high numbers of primaris marines. I imagine recovery of gear beyond vehicles and drop pods is not as crucial/practical.

I expect there are some rogues that make a good living raiding battlefields after a fight to find genuine Astartes equipment and sell it on to collectors like planetary governors (would make a good black library series).

But, again, in the old days if a treasured piece of equipment like crozius or a captains power fist was to find its wad into someone collection and that chapter found out they would rain hell in the recovery of the artifact.

I think that probably still true in the modern law.

It definitely is. Even processing scraps of Astartes armour is a crime for regular folks but it's considered so holy that a particularly pious person might try their luck anyway.

But someone with power and influence could pretty easily handwave a reason why they might have a given item.
"Ah yes, Brother Captain Osferth of the Knights of the Void gifted my ancestor Lord Tuvius the 8th that sword with a fancy cross on its hilt. Indeed Marshall Grunwold it is very similar to the Black Templar insignia, what a small galaxy this is."

 Gert wrote:
It definitely is. Even processing scraps of Astartes armour is a crime for regular folks but it's considered so holy that a particularly pious person might try their luck anyway.

But someone with power and influence could pretty easily handwave a reason why they might have a given item.
"Ah yes, Brother Captain Osferth of the Knights of the Void gifted my ancestor Lord Tuvius the 8th that sword with a fancy cross on its hilt. Indeed Marshall Grunwold it is very similar to the Black Templar insignia, what a small galaxy this is."

If you play Dawn of War 2, the Blood Ravens have a lot of gifts from other Imperial organizations... from Adeptus Custodes armour and weapons to Grey Knight Power Armour.

 Flinty wrote:
They didn’t lose the war though. All of the lost equipment could be salvaged. Likely to need a bit of a rub down and a fresh kick of paint at least. And also possibly the last user to be hosed out of the insides…

You aren't salvaging Space Marine armour (and associated weapons) that got vaporized by a warp blast or melted by acid and/or bio-plasma.

Some can be salvaged, but definitely not all of it.

The Blood Angels managed to lose 95% of their numbers, and presumably much of their armoury during the Secoris disaster, but a mere 600 years later they were seemingly back on top form, with a 1st Company which could deploy almost it's entire strength in Terminator armour.

First Founding Chapter benefits. Can't have one of the OG Loyal Chapters, defenders of Terra, and sons of the greatest martyr in the Imperium, fade into nothing.