Why make space marines so expensive to train and equip when something like this can end them easily?
Why make space marines so expensive to train and equip when something like this can end them easily?
Why make space marines so expensive to train and equip when something like this can end them easily?
The effective sustainability of Space Marines in warfare is a mixture of different things. Armour and physical durability are one thing, but they are in fact the second-to-last stage of not getting killed (behind only medical attention). Before that becomes mobility and speed, which they also have a significant advantage over most forces due to the aforementioned expense in training and equipment. Before even that comes being identified and targeted, which has all sorts of factors hampering it like morale, combat readiness, strategic and tactical momentum, and way before that they have to be there for you to shoot them in the first place.
If you want a more in-depth 'realistic' analysis on the matter, I'd start with the survivability onion in military theory, which tells us that weapons vs. armor is almost the last thing in determining if something is killed, and dozens of previous factors determine if you can even take the shot, let alone hit, to begin with.
But in short. Hitting a stationary target is easy. Hitting a moving target is hard. Hitting a fast moving target is very hard. Hitting a fast moving target with tactical advantages like surprise and momentum is extremely hard. Hitting a fast moving target with tactical advantges like surprise and momentum while your morale and combat readiness is poor is next to impossible.
however, SMs in full gear are so large and heavy that you could sense them on a seismograph or radar
Yes. This is why they tend to do poorly without support against factions that have the sensors to detect them, the mobility to counterdeploy and the firepower to defeat their armor. The Tau Empire, in particular, has an impressive record against Marines (insomuch as they don't take colossal casualties in order to consistently inflict damage on them) because of this. Many of the other factions do not have these abilities, or at least not to this degree, which leaves well-deployed, well-supported Marines to basically be able to mulch whatever at their leisure.
It's not just due to being tough and well-armored and all that, the Imperium makes and deploys things that are even tougher for much cheaper. It's a combination of mobility, durability, awareness and general strategic competence (for 40k anyway) that means the average enemy has to basically rely on blind luck to kill them even if weapons that can kill them are relatively common.
>Tau
eat my Bolter, Space Hippy!
A DEVGRU operator, or Delta Force, or the SAS, is several million dollars worth of training and equipment, yet a single bullet can end them easily. Why bother?
It's the same principle with Space Marines. They're elite, you use them as special forces at the tip of your spear, then have the regular army come in behind.
They are large and heavy, but still move at "transhuman" speeds (where transhuman dread comes from the realisation that something that big and heavy should not be able to move that fast), one book shows them moving at bullet-dodge tier speed to the perspective of an Eldar Aspect Warrior. Space Marines are not slow.
>A DEVGRU operator, or Delta Force, or the SAS, is several million dollars worth of training and equipment, yet a single bullet can end them easily. Why bother?
Unironically yes, when was the last time any of them were even useful, let alone critical to anything?
>What is Operation Neptune Spear
>one book shows them moving at bullet-dodge tier speed
Obviously not canon given the other 1000 books, movies, comics, RPGs, and wargames have them incapable of dodging bullets
>you could sense them on a seismograph or radar
We can already sense you on radar and seismometers. Not even calling you fat or especially dense or shiny, just a fact that the tech already exists. You can even buy it off the shelf.
Nah it'd bounce off
>eliminators and sniper scouts pick off your officers and elite troops
>infilitrators and reivers butcher your rear lines
>jump pack troops land right on top of you and tears you to shreds or gun you down
>heavy support marines blow up your vehicles from afar
>thunderhawks and overlord gunships blow up your air support
>Why make a fighter jet that costs millions when something like a screw can end it easily?
Because the chances of that happening are small
the gun that fires those bullets weighs 112kg. your strategy is to have those guns laying around randomly in your own trenches pointing at your own guys just in case a marine wanders in front of it. and you're paying 250000 dollars per gun to do it
>what are ogryn
very poor shots
>what are ogryn
Aren't they literally rarer than Space Marines?
>112kg
The Anzio 20mm can go down to about a quarter that. The weight depends on fast you intend to fire the rounds and how many you are carrying at once.
Two of those are target practice rounds which would do nothing to a marine.
That aside, comparing a marine to an ammunition requires we know what system you intend to fire it out of. I'm only personally familiar with the M61 series but I'm aware others exist.
Also, using electrically primed ammunition would probably be a liability against some of the imperiums enemies
> why have conventional weapons at all when we have nukes????
That's how moronic you argument is.
Yes, because chaos politely adheres to the genevium convention.
Anon if you think a piece of paper is what is stops people from using nukes, you're a fricking idiot.
Still doesn't stop 40k factions from just nuking one another
The only thing dumber than infantry in 40k is melee (lol)
>trying to conquer a planet
>destroy the planet
>oh wait I have nothing to conquer now
Anon you know war is not just "Kill as many things as possible" there's goals they're trying to achieve. You can not be this fricking stupid to think infantry are ever going to be useless.
The few factions that warrant exterminatus are the ones that are an existential threat that make worlds irrecoverable like tyranids or a full demonic incursion.
>the genevium convention.
Hahaha
A weapon is only as effective as its wielder. Plus space marines (despite the art) dont really do many pitched battles, theyre shock troopers and literal space marines.
You are right though that on a 40k global scale campaign, like 1k marines shouldnt really be able to deal with actual army groups and mass armour and combined arms armies with millions of men, much less 1 or 2 companies, despite the marinewank. They can and will get wiped out by the chapter if left unsupported in an unfavourable battle which they cant run from.
Marines can and did kill millions of ordinaries.
A chapter worth of marines is equivalent to a million troops at least.
But that's moronic.
I didn't say in direct combat.
The whole post was about direct combat
They can but not in open battle, only in situations suited to them and/or with a lot of support, at the end of the day in open warfare, at the kind of scales that exist both in real life and in 40k, more firepower can be brought to bear against them than they can bring back. A squad of marines can kill 1000 guardsmen in CQC, but they have to get into that situation, and on a continental campaign scale, they cant remain in that situation forever. An army with 10,000 tanks, 50,000 IFVs, and 700,000 men, plus air support of 3,000 gunships, 3,000 fighters, and 1,000 bombers, is easily going to take on and wipe out a chapter of 1,000-1,600, with like 50-100 tanks and 100-200 IFVs, with air support of maybe 40 thunderhawks. At the end of the day the marines will die to autocannons, bolters, lascannons, meltaguns, plasmaguns, tank shells, artillery, missiles etc. To say nothing of additional support like knights or titans. The idea that one company, yet alone a chapter, can conquer an entire world is stupid, unless that world's population is in the low millions and they have negligible defences or heavy weapons.
Pretty sure their armor can handle 20mm rounds, the plates are thick af and way stronger than steel
You would need a javelin
that’s not how calibres work
They are a scalpel, they are used for a very specific task and they do that task better than anyone else.
Marine wank is also a thing but they are intended to be Elite shock infantry that is easily inserted and extracted where you would need it. They are also good morale tools for the main body of the Imperial military, people are far less likely to run from conflict when they see superman on their side.
TLDR they do one thing really good and when you need that thing done they do it best.
>800kg living tank wearing power armor that renders them all but immune to almost every conventional infantry weapon on the battlefield
>strong enough to use weapon emplacements such as heavy bolters and lascannons as infantry weapons
>still moves at 65kph while having reaction times superior to normal humans
>blood instantly clots if they’re injured, body will enter a healing coma if necessary
>do not have a fear response. Extremely unlikely to break and retreat leading to massive casualties
You can’t imagine why anyone might want a squad of space marines around if you needed an Ork warboss dead?
>40k
>living tank
>armor
ahahahahahahaohnononono
Wait until you find out the Leman Russ is a literal tractor they strapped a shitty WWII cannon on
>land raider
>55kph on road
Actually incredibly good for a vehicle significantly larger than a modern MBT when you consider a Space Marine in power armor weighs close to a thousand kilos and the land raider carries 10 of them.
Space Marines and Land Raiders aren’t real btw
>gets a picture of an actual apc
>posts a cope image of a smaller vehicle
lol
>an actual apc
Namer is a Merkava MBT without a turret.
>3 crew + 9 troops
it’s an APC, sweatie
You've lost the plot. Sneed harder.
>gets btfo
>cries
many such cases
moronic non-argument, pic related is not a MBT nor an APC despite the chassis, the chassis is irrelevant.
>MBT no turret
So not a tank and missing one third of the weight.
Why would you compare the Land Raider to an APC instead of an Abrams when your dumb bait image compared its speed to an M1 Abrams?
>israelite vehicles
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAGAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
>goy vehicles
Makes sense why they have low profiles when they're crewed by rat people.
>Wait until you find out the Leman Russ is a literal tractor
Uh oh, it's a redditor repeating a meme without a source again
Uh oh, it's a newbie who doesn't remember this bullshit started here on /tg/
that’s what he said
You got me there.
Wheres the 1000kg from, I thought they were about a quarter of a ton? (250kg, not whatever imperial system bollocks)
I'm guessing they pulled those numbers from Death Watch. 1000kg is the far end of the spectrum though.
>bollocks
I know you still weigh things in stones, homosexual.
i think 1000kg would be a terminator
>still can't give stats for "conventional steel"
Conventional steel is a term used in real world armor measurements. That’s the issue.
The issue is the way it's used in the wikipedia article is in reference to specific weaponry, it's not at all comparable to way it's used to describe the 40k vehicles.
you have made a fool of yourself
be gone from this place and most no more
This thread again huh?
>bored israelite
Oh, that makes sense.
>let me just post the meme that proves I have no idea what I'm talking about.
RHAe is a measurement to describe how effective the armor functions against SPECIFIC ROUNDS using it in a general sense in the 40k vehicles can't be compared to the values described in the wikipedia article. We have no idea awhat the RHAe of modern tank armour is against 40k weaponry, there is no point of comparison.
homie, 40k tanks have smoothbore guns and get penetrated by ork guns, this is not a road you want to go down if you want to believe specs mahreens aren’t shit tier
>40k tanks have smoothbore guns
I suggest you go and look up the guns on modern MBTs, I have a feeling you might be surprised by what you find.
>40k RHAe is d-different because of super advanced weapons!
>heh, ackchooyalee modern tanks use the same 120mm smoothbore gun as leman russ!
bruh
Nuh uh anon, you don't get to try and weasel your way out of this after demonstrating your complete lack of knowledge about the subject matter.
the post you replied to was a direct reply to you pretending
>We have no idea awhat the RHAe of modern tank armour is against 40k weaponry, there is no point of comparison.
stop backpedalling, you fricking moron
The gun being rifles or not has no bearing on anything though.
That other anon is absolutely right, there is no point of reference for how well protected a modern battle tank is against 40k weaponry, unless the DoD has done top-secret testing where they throw miniature suns at Abrams tanks or some other nonsense. Plus trying to that being armed with a 120mm smoothbore gun means it has literally the exact same gun as a modern MBT is fricking stupid.
Also it's clear as day to anyone with a functioning brain that you thought that having a smoothbore gun was an indication of being inferior to modern tanks - why would you mention it in the same breath as being able to be knocked out by Ork weapons (typically characterised as being ramshackle technologically crude) otherwise?
holy brainlet fantard
the entire fricking discussion is about effectiveness of SM armor, which you tried to defend by pretending the weapon effectiveness is greater and we have no point of comparison
the tank’s main armament not being some advanced future tech and the armor being penetrated by “ramshackle technologically crude” (your words) weapons addresses the same fricking point
can wait for your next bout of mental gymnastics lmao
We all know you’re samegayging, anon.
40k is made with unrealistically small armies so that you can feasibly collect and paint them, and they use unrealistic tactics and weapons so that you can fit them on a tabletop and have them fight in heroic melee charges against tanks. I don't know why 40k fans think it's a slight against 40k that those unrealistically small armies would lose a realistic war in the real world against enemies using realistic tactics.
They're not meant to exist in the real world, they're toys. It doesn't make 40k any less cool or fun that the numbers don't make sense in real life.
>I don't know why 40k fans think it's a slight against 40k that those unrealistically small armies would lose a realistic war in the real world against enemies using realistic tactics.
Most lore arguments on /tg/ come down to fa/tg/uys getting upset that people don't share the same interpretation of something that they do
The quality of writing in 40k varies greatly, some authors have tried to bring a lot of realism into the setting, others don't give a shit
By stringing together certain parts of the "realistic" lore, while ignoring certain dumb or contradictory stuff, different fa/tg/uys can come up with different interpretations where 40k lore almost makes sense, most of the time
Basically people aren't arguing with you for trying to argue 40k powerlevels are weak, they are arguing with you because they think you are a lorelet and/or moron for not sharing their interpretation of 40k lore
we're really having the "space marines are inefficient and it would make more sense to do X, Y, or Z" type of thread again?
Come on, guy.
If space marines were efficient they’d be ‘Nids
Damn, you got a fatass thumb, OP.
The secret is that Space marines are actually mass produced. 40k wise they are in a sweet spot of mass produced and elite. More elite than Guard, Nids, Votann, Orks, GSC and Daemons who are pumped out like a factory. More mass produced than Eldar, Custodes and knights who need nonsensical amounts of resources to develop
>knights
The Mechanicus could manufacture more of those if they really wanted to. Knights are basically artificial scarcity to make sure the dumb peasants keep delivering everything the forge world wants
Canonical space marine lifespan is centuries
>Potential
Important word missing there, anon. Drop podding into the middle of an Ork camp for a spot of shock and awe is going to catch up with you eventually.
To be honest, I would have had a lot more respect if they'd had the 'nads to kill off the likes of Mephiston, or Calgar, or or or etc. when they moved the timeline forwards.
we don't actually know what the upper limit of space marine lifespan is because none have ever died of old age. We know that they start to slow down as they age so it's safe to say that they aren't biologically immortal.
The waters also get muddied by the variation in geneseed. There's one Space Marine in the Horus Heresy novels who's old and busted like a century into the Great Crusade (I exaggerate for effect but he struck me as 'young' to be elderly for an Astartes), and then on the other hand you have guys like Dante who were implied to be several thousand years old (although I'm given to understand now that's Sanguinius pulling Warp frickery).
In the p&p rpg (not the wargame) SMs are more or less unkillable by regular weapons. they have 8 points of toughness and 8 points of armor. so in order to hurt them your gun needs to do 16+n damage. They also have around 18-24 HP ("wounds") Most weapons in the game do around 1d10+3 or +5 damage which means it's impossible for a regular infantryman to hurt them unless he gets lucky with a crit.
I always - or at least, since 3rd - looked at it this way.
Marine had a 3+ save.
The most abundant AP3 weapon was the super-krak missile.
Coincidentally, at S8 it would also Instant Death the average T4 marine character.
Admittedly blatting anyone with anti-tank weaponry is going to ruin their day, but having it be the minimum reliable way to drop any given marine instantly is a handy mental shorthand, I think. For all my criticisms of the AP system, I will concede that it captured marines as these unstoppable terror troops quite well (until, of course, everyone tools up with the AP3 weaponry precisely because you're facing marines well over half the time).
I have never been a WH fan but I've been seeing these threads for years and years and through this tangential interest I still did not clearly understand the power level of a space marine. It's anywhere from generic roided up soldier (relative to other factions) to some kind of one-man-army. I've never seen lore as inconsistent and opaque as WH, not even capeshit.
they started off as well equipped but mostly regular dudes and then started having varying levels of superheroism
it's basically down to the specific writer or the dice
however you know a space marine is definitely very powerful if he has a name and not a helmet
anyone else might be a random mook if the story isn't about space marines but the guy with a name and no helmet is nearly always at the top levels of whatever the story is about
It's just plot driven. Every spartan died in the attack on Reach, but master chief kills the entire covenant empire on his own. Same deal here, the protagonist space marine is a one man army, the unnamed space marine is fodder for an alien protagonist.
it doesn't really matter if all the spartans were still alive and fighting (so on a consistent power level to master chief) on reach once the covenant glass the entire planet.
They’re really strong and really fast and wear armor made out of some fictional super material tough enough them impervious to small arms fire. Everything else depends on the writer and the opponent they’re facing.
>really fast
They're outright lumbering in several depictions of them
Dawn of War 1 and 2 intro cinematics
You mean when neither had marines as lumbering?
>impervious to small arms fire
*hypothetical small arms fire from hypothetical small arms fire because they die to anything in the actual game
So much of Warhammer makes more sense as a wargame, than as some super cereal totally consistent setting. Normal humans have 3s across the board in all of their stats. Space marines have 4s. They’re stronger, tougher, act first in melee, are more accurate with their guns (and have better guns than the modern assault rifle equivalent lasgun,) and, of course have power armor that makes them much harder to kill. For instance, a guardsman shooting at a space marine effectively has to roll a 4+ to hit, a 5+ to wound, then a 5+ to break armor (that’s actually an armor save that fails on a 1 or a 2, but whatever.) That’s a 10% chance, give or take. Meanwhile the marine needs to roll a 3+ to hit and a 3+ to wound, and the bolter ignores the guardsman’s armor. That’s more like a 40% chance to kill per shot. So a squad of guardsmen fights a squad of space marines, the guardsmen likely kill (or render combat incapable) one marine, while the marines kill almost half the guardsmen in their first volley, and there’s a decent chance the guardsmen flee immediately. But if a tank rolls up and blasts them, they die. If specialist, anti marine weapons like plasma guns shoot at them, they die. If they get overrun by a tide of gaunts, they die. If genestealers touch them at all, they die, etc etc.
The problem comes with the fact that 40k is a platoon to company scale wargame (depending on faction) but the fluff has all of these massive, sector spanning wars that you can never even come close to simulating with the rules as they exist. Even some massive 6k points Apocalypse game is, like, two companies of marines at most. So you have autists who say that marines, with their tiny numbers, can’t actually be as important to the Imperium as they’re made out to be, and other autists counter with increasingly absurd claims for what space marines are capable of to justify it.
Actually that's an interesting thought
What would be the minimum points costs, of a codex compliant 1,000 strong space marine chapter?
Picrel comes out to about 2500 points
Though thats lacking any non-dreadnaught vechiles
At minimum you'd be looking at 25000 points for a chapter
Once you add in vechiles you'd probably be looking at another 15000 to 25000 on top, there's really nothing that says how many vechiles a chapter should have
So minimum 25000, realisticly 50000 for a full chapter's worth
Ha, you don't even need a high calibre bullet. A gretchin with a rusty knifel can take out a Terminator if you roll to wound and the marine fails it's save. Marines being invincible super warriors is untrue.
Splinter rifles win again, stupid mon'keigh.
Terminators have 3 wounds, so a single stab wound from a gretchin will not kill him.
Only in 10th ed power wank version. Most other editions terminators have one wound.
"Oooh! My terminators are so hard! It takes THREE gretchin to kill one now!"
It's a retrofuturistic fantasy setting ruled by the rule of cool. There is nothing more stupid than think in realistic term about this fluff.
autism strikes again. these people need everything broken down and categorized and compared, until all soul is gone. You can't just say "they have strong armor and guns that shoot mini rockets," it's gotta be codified and cross referenced and worshipped as dogma
tangentially related, but watts says people always go against their nature in how they want to paint, people who are naturally loose want to be tight and vice versa, then when they’re working under pressure, they revert to their natural processes, fricking up what they were trying to do
The issue is that it is codified, very clearly. A bolter is S4 AP5. That’s equivalent to an eldar Shuriken gun, or a necron gauss flayer. All of these guns are scary, for a handheld infantry rifle, but are still fundamentally that.
The fluff and the crunch are obviously a world apart when it comes to 40k and anyone trying to argue a point about the fluff using something from the crunch (and vice versa) is either genuinely stupid, literally autistic, or a shitposter.
The fluff varies wildly depending on the author though, and most authors are kind of moronic and have 0 concept of scale, or of cause and effect, or of how actual modern, or even ww2 warfare works/worked. Only one who even thinks about it is dan abnett, and he still has issues.
Just letting you know, knights riding horses can't jump over castles either. In fact castles move a lot less than the tabletop would suggest.
Oh look, another 40k vs Real World thread!
Spoiler Alert: a few companies of Marines will curb stomp Earth in a fight. They'll knock out all Satcom and bomb the shit of the power grids and military installations of every major country. Terminators can teleport into the White House/Kremlin/CCP HQ, then kill Biden/Putin/Xi and all their top officials and generals.
Frick, Marines can eat the brains of the dead leaders/generals to find out every piece of important information like where the secret nuke silos are at or where other important assets are located. Or use librarians to suck the info from their minds. After that it'll be a cakewalk.
10000 space marines couldn’t even take poland, a country known for nothing but being defeated in wars
10,000 marines wouldn't be enough to lift your fat ass lmao
They'd cause a huge amount of damage, but ultimately they'd get wiped out by planes, helicopters, and tanks. First they'd lose their air support and vehicles, then they'd likely split up and it would be years of them causing mass casualties before they are all pinned down by ground troops and hit with a missile, apfsds round, or airstrike. 40 thunderhawks arent going to take on 10,000 figher jets, missiles are still missiles, and in the lore they absolutely do get fricked by orks using conventional (albeit powerful and in quantity) projectiles and explosives. Obviously if they just sit in orbit in their spaceships and use nuclear+virus weapons then they win.
>space marines would lose their air support and die to tanks helicopters and aircraft
>because I say so
Thunderhawks can literally fly in fro m orbit you colossal moron. That means they literally can operate outside of ranges all modern aircraft do.
Also not a single MBT on earth would survive a shot from a Las fusil. So not a single armored division would even reach space marine lines.
Well if they can, they never bother to do so, when space marines face orks the thunderhawks operate in support within the atmosphere and are regularly engaged by ramshackle ork fighter jets, who use visual range heat seeking or dumb missiles, and even cannons, to take them out. Or if you want to go off of the crunch then its the same story.
The only missile they have is the hellstrike, and while its probably powerful, its never described as being used from high atmosphere ranges (the crunch range is too short to be relistically useful).
A las fusil wouldnt destroy an MBT, it wouldnt destroy even an RHA armoured tanks. MBTs in fact should be relatively resistant to some energy weapons, due to composite armour incorportating a lot of ceramics and air gaps. Modern MBTs are able to resist 1,000mm+ RHA equivalent vs CE. Plus the main philosophy of MBTs is shooting first and not getting hit, which they are good at due to advanced FCS, fast turret traverse+targeting speed, and thermal sights. Theres no way that a tungsten dart fired from a 120mm cannon at 2000 m/s isnt going to damage something, especially as orks manage to get shit done with WW2 tier munitions.
>ww2 tier munition
their basic ranged infantry dude carry guns that fire a mix of 40mm~ something boolits that vary in caliber due to shoddy crafting yet still functions perfectly
They have stubbers (shootas) and heavy stubbers (big shootas) for most infantry, a shoota is a rifle calibre, a big shoota is about a .50 (12.7mm), maybe it goes up to about 15mm, above that you tend to call them autocannons, although orks are less likely to differentiate and may well use 20-30mm as infantry weapons, although a bigger bullet means you can carry fewer bullets and so cant fire it as much, unless its on a vehicle. Regardless, solid shot autocannons are still ww2 tier, its not like orks use apfsds, and despite that they get shit done vs power armour. So if orks can take out marines with anywhere from rifle calibre to autocannons, plus stikk grenades, rokkits, and full calibre APHE tank shells, marines would be absolutely raped by a heavy IFV with a 40mm autocannon shooting apfsds e.g. the PUMA, so they'd almost certainly get fricked over by a guard army.
*pic related, a .50 cal Black person rigged gun, which looks exactly like how an ork gun should look.
>missiles are still missiles
Most conventional anti-air missiles don't directly impact the target but instead detonate when they get near and shower the aircraft with shrapnel, which wouldn't be very good against a Thunderhawk at all.
40 thunderhawks would shit all over everything the US has unless those vague conspiracy-tier rumors about weird unconventional experimental propulsion craft are real but would probably still btfo them since thunderhawks are expected to go up against eldar craft.
Thunderhawks are also literal flying bricks. They can shrug off tons of firepower
Those 40 Thunderhawks also aren't the only air/spacecraft in a chapter's inventory.
What's the point of these threads? To make 40k and Space Marines weak compared to the real world? To feel smug to say that "akshually the US army can defeat a Marine/Tyranid/Chaos invasion"?
I've seen shit like this multiple times already on fricking /tg/, /k/, and reddit. Some of the people who argue on these threads are obviously redditors on r/40klore since they bring up the same talking points.
to make you seethe impotently
so you know how people attach their sense of self-worth and accomplishment to athletes playing games, as if their fat ass on a sofa somewhere has anything to do with the professional ball fondler? and they'll shriek and clap when the person, utterly unaware of their existence but wearing the same color shirt as the viewer, throws a lump of rubber better than the other dude in other color of shirt?
it's like that, but even more pathetic. my imaginary supermen are better than yours, ad infinitum
>how screwed would modern earth be against a single group of tyranids
come to papa with that zergussy
100 or even 1,000 marines, especially in urban warfare, would cause chaos and kill tens of thousands of guardsmen, maybe even 100,000+, but ultimately against actual ww2 scale armies of hundreds of thousands to millions, they'd be surrounded, hemmed in with heavy weapons and trenches, bombed, strafed, shelled, and pushed with Tanks+IFVs. You need a legion for mass open warfare, and even the legions had heavy imperial army armour+infantry+artillery support, and mechanicus titan support. A chapter could take on an almost empty backwater world with the population and resources of Norway, or shock&awe their way through a hive city, but they arent a force which can conquer actual planets. by themselves (short of having superiority in space and forcing a surrender).
Space Marines are obviously supposed to be doing surgical strikes against enemy command & control centres and other important assets before immediately fricking off to the next target, but unfortunately because they're an army on the tabletop that means they have to be depicted fighting and winning pitched battles that don't make a whole lot of sense.
I mean why wouldn't space marines in the numbers presented work in a pitched battle?
While they use drop pods often they have dozens of support systems that allow them to fight in a pitched battle.
It's like people arguing a WW1 army could defeat a modern army if they outnumbered them
I agree, although it makes sense for HH or for when they come together for a multi-chapter war with guard support (i.e like the legions) e.g. Armageddon which had like 50,000 of them alongside the tens of millions of guard and several titan legions.
Not enough of them for a ww2/modern scale, with the technological level of 40k. They could fight *a* battle, of a certain scale, they cant fight a proper campaign, and they wouldnt be able to take on an enemy with similar technological level. They dont have enough men, enough tanks, enough artillery, or enough air support. Like sure, they can take on a warband of orks or a chaos warband, something where they arent well organised, dont have huge numbers of infantry or tanks (maybe 1,000-80,000), and havent really got integrated air support or artillery, but if you're going to have them engaging a billion tyranids, or an organised human army, or a world's worth of orcs, by themselves, and winning, then its not so believable. Ultimately 40k is kind of based on WW1+WW2, except on a larger scale and with more technology. If you put marines in a situation where they're outnumbered by tanks, which are each capable of wiping out a squad, they're just not going to win, even without the artillery and air support and millions of guardsmen.
homie the argument is space marines can't fight pitched battles when they clearly can.
The other argument is space marines would somehow be bogged down by modern armies when space marines have literal laser snipers who would make any non infantry modern day unit melt.
The argument is over if a chapter can fight in an actual scale pitched battle, they arent an army, they can only fight a battle suitable to their numbers and support, they can take on divisions, but they cant take on actual full sized armies (formed of corps) by themselves.
They wont neccessarily have a choice, and a lot of them outright are moronic. If they choose not to fight, then they have to run, if they run, then they have to be able to run. They wont be able to run if they're surrounded, they cant run if they cant 1) airlift out and 2) not get shot down, which if they are intercepted by hundreds or thousands of fighers, and are dealing with SAM sites and SPAA, isnt going to happen. And even if they do run, where do they run to where they can avoid the situation just repeating again? They lack numbers both on the ground and in the air, they need to be part of a much larger effort to realistically be fighting a campaign. A chapter isnt a campaign capable army, its the equivalent of a special forces brigade, it can punch above its weight, but ultimately against an actual army it just dies. Yes a chapter can fight a pitched battle against a division, maybe a corps if said corps isnt mechanised and lacks air support, but no a chapter cant conduct a campaign to conquer a planet, or engage a mechanised corps, or an army, or an army group.
>have literal laser snipers
A modern battle tank outranges a lascannon ten times over
Proof? Do we have any definitive proof of a lascannon's actual effective range? Same thing goes with missiles? People like to claim shit like BVR, PGMS and JDAMS would shit all over space marines....
Without thinking that the Imperium doesn't have access to those things. Imperial aircraft, even basic ones like the Thunderbolt, can operate in space and can go toe-to-toe with advanced Tau, Eldar, and Necron planes as seen in the Aeronauritca books, so Imperial aircraft and missiles are clearly superior to modern ones.
You think a fricking F-35 can go fight a Tau Barracuda with railguns or Necron Doom Scythe with death rays, all of which have energy shields and countermeasures?
>Can go toe-to-toe with advanced Tau, Eldar and Necron planes
I agree that Imperial aircraft have plenty of technologies above ours, most notably being material science and the power of their weaponry (they're engineered poorly but the actual bits that go into them are still good) but almost universally we've been shown that Tau, especially Necrons and ESPECIALLY Eldar dramatically outperform the Imperial Navy in the air. Astartes are another matter, with better pilots and more advanced aeronautica but I just want to make sure that we're level-headed here, even if I agree with your point.
In the case of the Necrons, their Doom Scythe's famed advanced technology and healing Necrodermis hulls are actually vulrenable to basic Flak Tanks. The IG Codex entry for the Hydra showed that three Hydra Flak Tanks were able to shoot down entire wings of Doom Scythes and make the survivors flee......
If only the Hydra's tabletop rules were this good....
Yeah this is why I can't really take single excerpts from 40k seriously, as a 40k fan myself. We can make reasonable assumptions about how strong or weak things are and then GW make a bunch of unit-hyping solo feats like Stormsurges tanking the fire of entire SUPERHEAVY companies without their shields even flaring, Hydras shooting down the most durable aircraft in the setting, and random Skitarii shooting jinking Eldar bikers off their vehicles like it was nothing.
I get they exist to hype up a faction but they utterly annihilate any coherency we have in these discussions because there's always, without fail, some source that paints something as supernaturally strong, and another that it's ridiculously weak.
only the most moronic marine is going to fight a pitched battle against tanks and 99% of those moron marines are also moron strong and crazy, and are probably dropping in with or without a jetpack to successfully melee the tanks or personally apply melta bombs
but they can fight proper campaigns because a LOT of the horus heresy was literally just space marines fighting pitched battles against space marines, with the grand crusade prior to this also involving entire space marine legions genociding any civilization that looked at them funny.. often in pitched battles
they haven't lost that capability, if a space marine chapter needs to fight a pitched battle, it's going to fight a pitched battle
>they haven't lost that capability, if a space marine chapter needs to fight a pitched battle, it's going to fight a pitched battle
They absolutely did. About 1000~ strong chapter, assuming they are at full strength and throw everything they have at the enemy, does not have the same capability as legions of dozens of thousands marines, and that's just numbers, not the wargear that is no longer available in 40k.
A ork can turn a space marine into a new trophy with a rusted axe he found 2 seconds ago
A Tyranid born minutes before who exists by the gabjillions of trillions of a infinite number of hive fleets can kill a Space Marine with a single strike
A Fire Warrior only needs to land a single shot and there are nearly as many of them deployed as there are guardsmen on a battlefield
A chaos demon who there are a infinite amount of and will respawn instantly can kill a space marine in a single swing
A Necron only needs to hit once to make a marine practically incapable of fighting and maybe a second to seal the deal
A Eldar only needs to be killed to make the enemy look good so the enemies can do the things mentioned above to kill a space marine
Space Marines were always easy to kill thats the point
>Space Marines were always easy to kill thats the point
This reads like bait but it really is the point. Space marines aren't supposed to be unstoppable, they're supposed to show how insanely hostile the galaxy is that even something like a space marine can barely stand toe to toe with the horrific stuff out there.
But the Guard can totally kick more ass and hold the line because my human spirit, am I right? Ten thousand regular dudes with flashlights and honest human gumption will surely stomp those aliens who shred through 40,000 years worth of technological innovation in seconds and laugh in xeno at 40,000 years of weapons development will just roll over and take it out of pity because some regular jackass who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground points a lasgun or stubber in their general direction, by golly! Just fix some fricking bayonets and that'll totally succeed where Marines will get their shit pushed in by a neon tentacle, yessiree!
I thought space marines were primarily meant for boarding actions which is why their small numbers don't really matter.
Since we're talking about powerwank, reminder that a Space Marine Librarian /Chaos Sorcerer is easily a hundred times deadlier than any Star Wars Jedi or Sith
>inb4 no because some The Force bullshit
*casts Pestilential Wind and Curse of the Leper to reduce your pretty Jedi to a pile of maggot-strewn, liquefying corpses
>actually Space Marines wouldn't be able to conquer Earth because Humanity Stronk!!
Marine companies have routinely won against advanced xenos races like the Eldar and Necrons. You think Earth is gonna fricking impress them?
You gonna tell me that Earth is deadlier than a Necron Tomb World?
To be fair in almost every instance we have of Astartes fighting actual awakened Tomb Worlds with actual details like Damnos and Orpheus, the Imperials, Marines included, get completely thrashed. In particular, in the Second War of Damnos, it was heavuly flagged that if Cato Sicarius hadn't lucked out with a single Vortex Grenade then every single Ultramarine on the planet would've been dispassoinately dismantled.
They'd still be extremely dangerous to our planet, but Marines don't really match up to awakened Necrons unless extreme heroics (luck) gets involved.
A single company of Marines is enough to conquer an entire subsector.Pic related was enough to take over entire planets from Chaos during the Purge of Contqual BEFORE they got help from other Imperial forces. Sure they had some guard regiments and a few Titans who helped them, but it was the Iron Hands who did most of the work.
In the end, the Iron Hands executed one-third of the entire subsectors population as punishment. That's just ONE company of marines.
>inb4 it's not canon
It's in the Iron Hands codex supplement. It's definitely canon now.
ok, how did they do it?
Read the book and 8th ed Codex Supplement.
prove your own claims, homosexual
Read you fricking homosexual. And no, I'm not posting the book because I only have a physical copy
it doesn't describe how they did it, only that they did, a meaningful distinction to anyone replying to my post that's not an illiterate fricking troglodyte like you
With regards to the punishment thing they literally just started gunning down random civilians and even guardsmen. Not all of them, but 1/3 of them. They started moving down the hives and presumably other planets in the sector.
The survivors were so scared of the Iron Hands that the entire subsector become extremely devout and loyal, praying to the Emperor that the Iron Hands don't return.
By killing the enemy
Can Earth survive a Dalek invasion though?
>inb4 stairs
They fly now
Without the Doctor and alien tech that Humans like Torchwood have in the Whoverse? Pretty much objectively no. They're more or less immune to anything conventional that we can do and are only ever defeated by the whacky space hijinks of what is effectively an ancient eldritch horror and his casual universe-breaking technology.
No conventional weapons we have work on them at all, they can and routinely do hack everything they care to pretty much immediately and they're each individually technicians that nearly rival the Time Lords. Their primary weakness is their outlook - they're inefficient, intolerant to change and egotistical, they love nothing more than killing things personally or engaging in grand Skeletor-whacky plans because it's the only think they get a kick out of rather than just deploying lifeform devouring nanoswarms or whatever (whenever they build superweapons it's usually because they're being tardwrangled by a bigger Dalek with a bigger ego or Davros, who want to show off), which the Doctor routinely exploits, but our modern Earth couldn't.
Somehow Palpatine returned
why try to fight at all when a screaming 4 day old moron is better at it than youll ever be?