jareddm wrote:
There was no "switch" the way you describe it. armor create was very much a rolling process and there were way more patterns of armor than the 8 marks that we hear about. There were dozens of different prototypes being used across the legions. New armor was constantly being created and given to new marines. This was going on all through the Great Crusade and the Heresy. Hell, Mk VI armor was already being handed out to the Raven Guards by 007.M31.

I would not be surprised if the vast, vast majority of marines died in the armor they were originally issued, or at least parts of the armor they were originally issued. And even then, that armor would most likely be repaired and passed on to another marine as well. It would be hundreds, if not thousands of years for Mk VII armor to become as common as it is in M41.

If you're looking to make a squad of brazen claws, circa 2nd founding, I see no reason at all that they couldn't be in Mk III.

 Gashrog wrote:
Actually if you go by the original WD129/RT Compilation armour fluff article (which you really should, since it's the most comprehensive treatment of the subject and the more modern sources - Imperial Armour 10 and Deathwatch - are pretty much truncated paraphrasals of it) there was a lot of replacement going on during there Heresy: Mk4 'Maximus' armour was so named because it was the then pinnacle of armour technology - at the time the Heresy erupted the Legions were about half complete in replacing their older armour, however when the Heresy erupted the Legions had trouble maintaining and repairing Mk4: "suits quickly became unusable due to quite minor battle damage", the article ended by saying by the time the Legions were broken the armour used was mostly marks 6 and 7.

Mark 3 however is a special case, it was never intended as a replacement to Mark 2 as it was a specialist suit designed for specific operations ~ that specialization trumps the more advanced 'general use' suits and as such it is still used by many modern chapters. So you can get away with doing a full squad in any timeframe. (the example Fire Hawks - a 21st founding chapter - squad in Imperial Armour 9 for example has three marines out of five having almost full suits - minus backpack - of Mk3)

 Gashrog wrote:
Actually if you go by the original WD129/RT Compilation armour fluff article (which you really should, since it's the most comprehensive treatment of the subject and the more modern sources - Imperial Armour 10 and Deathwatch - are pretty much truncated paraphrasals of it) there was a lot of replacement going on during there Heresy: Mk4 'Maximus' armour was so named because it was the then pinnacle of armour technology - at the time the Heresy erupted the Legions were about half complete in replacing their older armour, however when the Heresy erupted the Legions had trouble maintaining and repairing Mk4: "suits quickly became unusable due to quite minor battle damage", the article ended by saying by the time the Legions were broken the armour used was mostly marks 6 and 7.

Mark 3 however is a special case, it was never intended as a replacement to Mark 2 as it was a specialist suit designed for specific operations ~ that specialization trumps the more advanced 'general use' suits and as such it is still used by many modern chapters. So you can get away with doing a full squad in any timeframe. (the example Fire Hawks - a 21st founding chapter - squad in Imperial Armour 9 for example has three marines out of five having full suits - minus backpack - of Mk3)

 farmersboy wrote:

Agreed on the article. I still refer back to that. There is one piece of that fluff that seems to have been discarded though - mark 2 and 3 suits should have fixed forward facing helmets, as the neural interface hardware wasn't advanced enough to enable the wearer to be able to turn the helmet. I've never seen anyone model this...

 TheCustomLime wrote:
The Mk. 7 wase gradually phased in after the heresy as noted above. Gradually the older Marks became rare and rarer as they became irreperably damaged, entire chapters were destroyed or they were just plain lost. The older stuff never quite went out of use because the Imperium has a (mostly justified) fetish for old technology, power armor isn't exactly cheap and they are by and large every bit as good as newer marks. So it is also rare for a chapter to have almost or entirely no pre Mk. 7 armor.