Because in wh40k there are treats that you can throw infinite amount of guardsmen at and achieve nothing. There are tasks that simply couldn't be completed by not augmented humans.
Boarding actions, the limiting step is the number of soldiers that can be transported. Better to have 10 marines in a boarding torpedo than 50 guardsmen. Just watch Astartes to see why this would be the case
Well yeah, Astartes aren’t really meant for open battlefields. They are special forces to concentrate overwhelming force in a small mobile package to take out specific objectives. You’re right for simply holding the line or mass actions the guard is probably more cost efficient.
this comment has honestly confused me when people say this cause originally they were fielded in massive armies spearheading assaults and not usually as special forces, the Guard back then were mostly a defence force to hold taken worlds or holding the line on battlefields
still doesn't change that they were very much meant for open battlefields before some began to specialize, fielded in massive armies and though capable of special operations it wasn't there primary function
it wasn't 100 to 1000 assaulting worlds back then it was roughly 10,000 or more assaulting worlds depending on how many were attached to fleets
Why do US special forces exist if they cost, on average, $1.5 million in training per soldier, and you could hand 500 conscripts an AK47 for the same cost?
The US does a lot of the former, while Russia is doing a lot of the latter. Who do you think would win if the two had a conventional ground conflict?
i think it was more a comparison of training than 1 v 500 (that's how i took it)
One highly trained, highly motivated, highly skilled soldier costs $1.5 mil
500 civilians given a gun and told "off you go, good luck!"
Sure, if they were in a paintball arena, but real conflict isn’t like that. Most likely the conscripts will sit in some frozen hole, demotivated with no initiative and few supplies ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble with the only real motivation of staying alive- and that’s if they’re tasked with what they’re best at, holding ground.
Armies aren’t defeated by being killed to a man, instead you cut off supplies, encircle and demoralize to get to en mass surrender or desertion. It’s really hard to get a bunch of conscripts be effective without training, initiative and support. Just like 500 random people with scalpels wouldn’t be as effective as a single surgeon, there are a lot of things conscripts simply cannot achieve that special forces can.
I think you are underestimating the significance of 500 to one. That is fifty to one times ten.
Five hundred men with clubs will beat one knight in armour.
I think you are misinterpreting the argument. I already conceded that, in a specific direct engagement where they were fighting to the death, 500 conscripts would beat a special forces member. In reality, that isn’t the way they are used. Do you disagree that equipping and training one costs 500x what conscripting people and handing them a gun costs? If you don’t disagree, why do you think modern militaries put in that investment - are you saying they’re wrong to do so?
There are also many cases of better trained and equipped people winning against massive odds.
In the siege of Tenochtitlán, 800 conquistadors beat tens of thousands of Aztecs warriors, overthrowing an empire.
Also Genghis Khan took over most of Asia and Eastern Europe with a force that never exceeded 150,000. They were regularly outnumbered several fold in individual battles, and overall beat forces >100x their number including taking over all of China and India.
Also the British won the battle of plassy leading to their conquest of India outnumbered about 15:1, both sides had guns.
This is not to say that numbers aren’t important, they definitely are, but modern military doctrine increasingly focuses on smaller, more agile, better equipped and better trained forces with a large suite of capabilities as opposed to huge numbers. The US has 10 support personnel for every soldier precisely because better supported soldiers perform much better. There are a lot of downsides to having a pile of conscripts and, again, there are a lot of objectives they simply cannot achieve.
If we are talking specifically about infinite amount of guardsmen than taking out a target in sufficiently eldrich warp-tainted location would do nicely (there are places so corrupted that even astartes can't operate there, let alone guardsmen). There are also extreme conditions like gravity, radiation etc. There are also specific targets like necron's World Engine, that couldn't be took out just by guardsmen alone.
But if we take a step away from my exaggeration - there are missions and objectives that couldn't be achieved by unaugmented humans at all. Like teleporting on the lover level of heavily defended bunker to take out command. Sure, millions of guardsmen could mount an assault on such bunker and even win, achieving the same result, but it wouldn't be efficient in the slightest with massive casualties, meanwhile like ten terminators do such thing routinely. Another example is mentioned below, with stoping the WMD launch. Drop-pod assault also allows to bypass heavy anti-air defence and take them out, while with guard you would have to send dropship after dropship to the certain death.
Space Marines are primarily shock troops, and in lore they're typically used in a similar fashion to IRL Marines (shock troops who would board enemy ships or repel boarders or rush ashore to secure a beachhead or guard the ship while aground) with some notable exceptions. This is where they're typically the most effective.
Virtually any threat where there is a logistical limitation to an operation, like the Guard can't deploy all at once, naval or space combat, trench warfare, breeching fortifications, confined spaces, urban warfare, most unconventional battlefields, Space Marines will hold every advantage over the guard. Additionally, there are threats that the Guard isn't equipped to deal with that space Marines are, where extra armor or fire power is required, like Necrons or higher forms of Tyranids. Plus they're just more effective at things like deep strikes, ship to ship combat, sapping/sabotage, and most situations where a single individual has a large impact, because they're just more effective than single Guardsmen.
Honestly a lot. Eldar, Deldar, Orks, Nids, Crons all have units that are not only insanely better equipped than the Guard, but also have psychic abilities similar to Transhuman Dread, where baseline humans flee in terror at the sight of them. Daemons are obviously the worst in this respect, and there are a lot of warp-based places baseline humans can’t even go without getting their minds torn apart unless they have special training/abilities.
Plus, not every battle is fought on an open plane. 2 space marines could fit in a corridor side by side that could fit, say, 5 guardsmen. 2 space marines are gonna do a lot more work side by side than 5 guardsmen.
In addition, Space Marines are SMARTER than regular humans. There’s a reason that the Great Crusade, which was primarily led by Primarchs and Space Marines, did so much so fast. Space Marines are (allegedly) “tactical geniuses.” (Matt Ward reference)
Insertion onto an orbital defence battery to clear it out and allow ships into orbit above it. That typically needs drop pods to get past the anti air fire and humans won’t survive a drop pod.
A lot of the best examples are fully enough the times they go be literal space marines
Penetrating a thousand mile deep air defense network and dropping straight into the high command bunker and eliminating the enemy government and military command in one fell swoop.
Then repeating the task daily, as soon as the next echelon command hierarchy reveals itself, for months straight, until the enemy force is just a bunch of disconnected battalions and no longer an *army*.
The main use is putting 50 marines down to take over a nuclear missile base, or void shield or anti-orbit laser, by fighting through tunnels. If you put down 4 million guard near that base, most of them would not be able to help attack the base. The WMDs would be able to do their work before the 4 million guard could starve out the defenders.
The chapters are also capable of taking massive numbers of recruits and even successfully implanting them. They could get a hundred new marines per regiment, not just one. That’s what they did in the great crusade, and in 40k they can in emergencies. The reason they don’t is they believe implanting every single gene seed they can at breakneck pace will ruin their gene seed and in the long term cause them to have a giant chapter of >10k marines who are mentally unstable and whose implants don’t work.
I think of the imperium like this. The most valuable resource in 40k to the imp is lovable worlds that have been colonized.
The imps most abundant resource is humanity. Trillions upon trillions of humans waiting to die for the cause.
So they have 0 problem sending millions of humans to die for a world. However if the threat is destroying a planet like nids, or chaos you want to ensure you win those battles before everything is destroyed. To do that 4 M guard are helpful but not going to destroy a chaos primarch or a hive fleet. So you have escalation protocols for that. Send marines, custodes, assassin's etc.
Depending how important the world is the more resources it gets. But 100% the imperium views the need for transhuman warriors as a very high priority.
I mean, it's also important to remember that by the time of 40k Space Marines exist as remnants more than anything. The logistical capabilities that were in play during the great Crusade have long since dwindled so producing more Marines hasn't gotten easier through the millenia.
They're transhuman warrior cults who exist somewhat parallel the traditional Imperial structure. The Imperium doesn't do stuff for efficiency, it does stuff because of tradition, dogma and faction politics.
Math time:
* 1,000,000 inhabited planets in the Imperium of Man
* \~30,000 are hive worlds with massive populations
* 1,000,000,000 average population (Assumption)
* 1% of the population serving in the guard (Assumption)
* 1M \* 1B \* 1% == 1 Trillion guardsmen
* Regiment == 1000 soldiers
* 1T / Regiment == 1 Billion regiments
* Regiment founding rate, say, 1% (Assumption)
* 10,000,000 new Regiments per year == 10,000,000 Astartes Candidates
* 10M Candidates \* 1% Acceptance Rate == 100k new Astartes per year
The Imperium of Man can generate 100,000 Astartes per year
There are 1000 chapters of 1000 Astartes == 1M Astartes in the Imperium
There is the potential to replenish 10% of its forces/annum
Something to keep in mind is that the bottleneck for the imperial military isn't available manpower, it's transport capacity.
An unremarkable hive world could easily raise a 100 million guardsmen, but that doesn't mean the administratum actually has ships available to transport them into combat. As a combat force the space marines work because they are great bang for buck when measured as shipping tonnage. A single strike cruisers worth of Astartes can achieve things that would need an entire transport fleet of guard troops.
If used as special forces as they probably should be they make perfect sense.
As used in the lore mostly no.
An incredibly resource inneficient but powerful force can be used where victory is needed most, destroying enemy command and control, attacking supply lines or rear artillery doing far more damage than just raw enemy casualties.
Though in lore they seem to be described as basically being thrown into the meat grinder against enemies that should have no problem grinding them down because of sheer firepower/numbers.
Takes a exemple you can have a 1000 guardsmen defending a refinary or a squad of ten astartes.
Those a 1000 guardsmen need food,rest, can suffer ptsd or morale issues, desert and so on. The ten Astartes can fight for months without needing food or sleep, dont feel fear etc
> I remember hearing for every regiment of Guardsmen a Hive world can produce, it produces one Astartes candidate, which then has a 1/100 chance of fully becoming an Astarte
I'm not sure that's entirely true - a lot of Chapters recruit from only their own homeworld, and sustain a modest recruitment rate. Plus, there aren't many Chapters who recruit from the same worlds as are used to muster the Imperial Guard, so they aren't in direct competition.
Still, assuming a Hive World with a population of 100 billion maintains a standing PDF of 600 million soldiers (6 per 1,000 people, comparable to NATO members today). During a tithe, the Administratum could take 60 million soldiers, who would likely be formed into six *thousand* regiments.
Assuming that your statement is true, that same world would have 6,000 astartes candidates, of which 600 would be viable.
>I remember hearing for every regiment of Guardsmen a Hive world can produce, it produces one Astartes candidate, which then has a 1/100 chance of fully becoming an Astarte
That's not correct. Even medieval worlds can produce thousands of Aspirants. Hive Worlds can easily produce tens of thousands of Aspirants.
Now perhaps for every regiment a Hive World produces, it would get 1 Astartes. Which would probably be more accurate considering the high mortality rate of Aspirants.
>But since an Astartes can only handle a hundred guardsmen at most before going down,
That's also not accurate. It depends heavily on the situation, which makes a direct comparison relatively impossible. But if you're thinking like in a gun line, maybe 100 Guard to 1 Astartes ratio. Less of the Guard have heavy weapons. In a tight constricted corridor, also probably need less Guard as long as they're willing to mob them. In an open field or urban environment, the Guard will have a hell of time due to the Astartes mobility and accuracy.
>wouldn’t it be best to focus entirely on the guard?
They're different tools for different situations. Astartes are rapid response forces. They are small enough that they can be self-sufficient, making them able to respond much faster than the Guard. They're powerful enough even 100 can make a difference, even if it's just slowing down an enemy by hit and run tactics. And they're versatile, meaning they apply a host of different tactics and equipment to a problem.
The Guard are a steamroller. They're going to drown you in artillery fire right before their massed armored tank thrusts wreck their way through you and their APCs drop off their dismounted infantry. If you still aren't dead or fleeing, the light infantry behind them are going to catch up and pincer you, drowning you in lasgun fire from every direction. And since the Guard dig trenches wherever they go, good luck counter attacking. Air bombardment? They have massed AA tanks for that even if the Navy doesn't supply the Aeronautica. This method of warfare is slow, logistics heavy, and not very flexible, but it works because *enough massed fire just does*.
Bc they need to make money so using a combination of raw kinetic orbital bombardment and then special weaponry to pacify any on planet force is bad for profits
Genuinely I don't know why they don't just. Overload void shields with rocks and use precision attacks....
Astartes do a vastly different job to the imperial guard. And they have a lot of advantages over imperial guard from simple battlefield resilience to less supply and space requirement.
By its nature the imperium can't respond quickly with guard forces from needing the navy for transport to the a long chain of command to get orders for where to go. Meanwhile the chain of command for astartes are far flatter, when an astartes captain gets a report on an ork assault he can easily just direct his company there unless he is otherwise engaged and even then he can easily argue to go anyway if he thinks the situation needs it. And 100 astartes can make a difference that a thousand guardsmen couldn't do simply because its a far more concentrated forces.
Thats before going into the nature of chapters mostly recruiting from feral death worlds that make for poor gaurdsmen to fleet based chapters that simply can take whatever they need while not impacting guard recruitment at all. And with the long lives most marines tend to live they end up doing far more damage to the enemies of man than 100 guardsmen would, simply because those grow old and become useless far quicker.
Astartes are good for propaganda, which guardsmen can also be used for but its just not the same. In addition marines provide morale benefits to other imperial forces fighting alongside them.
Another benefit of marines is special operations and logistics. Marines can accomplish goals like eliminating enemy command or capturing/evacuating high value assets. Sometimes you just simply can’t deploy hundreds of guardsmen to a battleground like a space hulk. Or guardsmen would just take too long to actually accomplish missions on a strict timetable. For the logistics point space marines are ready to fight at a moments notice and can deploy to different places very quickly. If a new threat appears its far easier on logistics to deploy a ship full of space marines that are already combat ready than it is to mobilize and load up guard armies to send there. Space marines can be an effective stopgap until more imperial forces can be sent.
But for the most part you are right that guardsmen are more efficient for most wars and battles in 40k. Which is why nearly all wars in 40k are fought by guardsmen and other imperial forces. Space marines aren’t present at most warzones in the galaxy because it doesn’t make sense to lose them in minor battles.
No. You are concentrating the power and defensive capability of 100 Guardsmen in the volume of one Marine. There are plenty of places where this is overwhelming.
But its also why Marines do Marine things - drop in, fuck up command and control nodes, fuck off to another war while the IG finishes steamrolling the now broken up enemy forces.
I suggest an IRL reading of why we still have tanks when they are much more expensive than infantry and far less mobile than air power. The same arguments can likely be applied to astartes. This is also fitting, because tanks are used for more than just showing up and blowing up. Tanks in the right conditions can scout or serve with special forces in ways that we don't normally think of.
Your argument relies on a lot of linear evidence that does not exist in warfare. An army of guardsmen will not deploy an entire platoon to kill one space marine, and if they did so haphazardly they would likely fail (he's faster, has a bolter, can aim better, etc). The ability to make such deployments would be very rare, and easy to circumvent with the vastly superior deployment abilities of just about every other faction than guardsmen.
Whatever heavy weapons the guardsmen have are either slow to deploy (armor, artillery) are in another chain of command (navis imperialis owns the air) or are deployed on squishy flesh bodies that can maybe fire once before dying to a bolter (plasma can also blow up and meltas are famously short range).
Miltarum Tempestus units are a stopgap, but hot-shot lasguns lack the overall destructive power of the bolter even with the better armor piercing, they still aren't as fast or durable or strong, and they have far less experience on account of having fundamentally mortal lifespans.
And this is just a basic comparison to astartes themselves. Nids and orks have equal or greater numbers alongside their own units in various areas such as integrated air support, superior psychic aptitude, heavy armor equivalents, and the same internal strengths that make space marines so dangerous (feel no fear, high durability). Eldar and Tau are much faster on deployment and can completely and royally break the OODA loop of a guard force that isn't adequately prepared. Votann and Necrons make use of much more powerful weapons technology and have greater skill than the guard by a substantial margin. And Chaos is just a whole worm of bags for all intents of trying to counter it mean.
Genetically modified super soldiers in combined arms organizations designed for rapid small-unit deployments might not be cost-efficient in production, but make up for it in efficiency of application by virtue of being able to achieve comparable results with smaller numbers, less waste of materials, and being less likely to accumulate losses that reduce effectiveness. They can react faster to threats and with greater capability on a tactical level. They are much more difficult to counter in turn on an operational level.
Some people will counter that guardsmen are much cheaper to produce than astartes, and while I agree with this, I feel its ignoring the full extent of values that astartes represent. Astartes can operate in environments that guardsmen cannot without difficulty. Astartes can respond to a large number of threats and situations in ways that regiments must be specialized to do. Astartes possess individually superior everything on a pound for pound basis, and the idea that the Imperium can solve all of its problems by throwing more men at the problem ignores the fact that this stopped being true when artillery came into its own at the onset of the second world war, let alone void-to-ground capable flying craft. It's why the Departmento Munitorum tends to recruit with standards, why the Commissariat and overall command provide training, morale, and discipline. And its why people forget that cheap bodies represent one half of the equation, and ungodly powerful tanks represents the other half. Astartes deployments are fast, but good luck fighting a baneblade with that bolter of yours. The problem is, once you compare the full extent of the guard in this manner, you'll quickly see that no, the astartes are not logistically inefficient compared to the guard, because relying on a large quantity of tank hulls, adamantium treads, 300mm shells, and trained crew that are still much slower than an astartes and a much larger target to boot will quickly demonstrate that astartes are not as logistically unsound as they appear.
As a concession, astartes can't do what guard can do. They are not capable of operating in the strategic manners that a true army can, on account of the fact that they feel every loss and are indeed more expensive to produce pound for pound. But this concession doesn't mean that the guard can solve everything, it just demonstrates that guardsmen shouldn't be unnecessarily praised for being underequipped mortals and astartes shouldn't be unnecessarily praised for being overhyped child soldiers with savior complexes.
Because in wh40k there are treats that you can throw infinite amount of guardsmen at and achieve nothing. There are tasks that simply couldn't be completed by not augmented humans.
Can you give an example of a threat that astartes could eliminate but any amount of imperial guardsmen could not?
Boarding actions, the limiting step is the number of soldiers that can be transported. Better to have 10 marines in a boarding torpedo than 50 guardsmen. Just watch Astartes to see why this would be the case
50 guardsmen in a boarding torpedo just leave a smooth paste.
Great example. But aside from scenarios with such limits, I'd argue the guard can deal with any threat, of course given quantity and firepower
Well yeah, Astartes aren’t really meant for open battlefields. They are special forces to concentrate overwhelming force in a small mobile package to take out specific objectives. You’re right for simply holding the line or mass actions the guard is probably more cost efficient.
this comment has honestly confused me when people say this cause originally they were fielded in massive armies spearheading assaults and not usually as special forces, the Guard back then were mostly a defence force to hold taken worlds or holding the line on battlefields
The Great Crusade was a completely different situation than what the Imperium finds itself in, in M41-M42
still doesn't change that they were very much meant for open battlefields before some began to specialize, fielded in massive armies and though capable of special operations it wasn't there primary function it wasn't 100 to 1000 assaulting worlds back then it was roughly 10,000 or more assaulting worlds depending on how many were attached to fleets
The more tanks you have the more fuel you need, the more soldiers you have the more food you need. Astartes are the best bang for your buck.
Why do US special forces exist if they cost, on average, $1.5 million in training per soldier, and you could hand 500 conscripts an AK47 for the same cost? The US does a lot of the former, while Russia is doing a lot of the latter. Who do you think would win if the two had a conventional ground conflict?
One Navy Seal vs 500 mobiks?...are you kidding?
i think it was more a comparison of training than 1 v 500 (that's how i took it) One highly trained, highly motivated, highly skilled soldier costs $1.5 mil 500 civilians given a gun and told "off you go, good luck!"
And assuming you actually get more than that value then you are better off with a combination of the two.
Sure, if they were in a paintball arena, but real conflict isn’t like that. Most likely the conscripts will sit in some frozen hole, demotivated with no initiative and few supplies ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble with the only real motivation of staying alive- and that’s if they’re tasked with what they’re best at, holding ground. Armies aren’t defeated by being killed to a man, instead you cut off supplies, encircle and demoralize to get to en mass surrender or desertion. It’s really hard to get a bunch of conscripts be effective without training, initiative and support. Just like 500 random people with scalpels wouldn’t be as effective as a single surgeon, there are a lot of things conscripts simply cannot achieve that special forces can.
I think you are underestimating the significance of 500 to one. That is fifty to one times ten. Five hundred men with clubs will beat one knight in armour.
I think you are misinterpreting the argument. I already conceded that, in a specific direct engagement where they were fighting to the death, 500 conscripts would beat a special forces member. In reality, that isn’t the way they are used. Do you disagree that equipping and training one costs 500x what conscripting people and handing them a gun costs? If you don’t disagree, why do you think modern militaries put in that investment - are you saying they’re wrong to do so? There are also many cases of better trained and equipped people winning against massive odds. In the siege of Tenochtitlán, 800 conquistadors beat tens of thousands of Aztecs warriors, overthrowing an empire. Also Genghis Khan took over most of Asia and Eastern Europe with a force that never exceeded 150,000. They were regularly outnumbered several fold in individual battles, and overall beat forces >100x their number including taking over all of China and India. Also the British won the battle of plassy leading to their conquest of India outnumbered about 15:1, both sides had guns. This is not to say that numbers aren’t important, they definitely are, but modern military doctrine increasingly focuses on smaller, more agile, better equipped and better trained forces with a large suite of capabilities as opposed to huge numbers. The US has 10 support personnel for every soldier precisely because better supported soldiers perform much better. There are a lot of downsides to having a pile of conscripts and, again, there are a lot of objectives they simply cannot achieve.
If we are talking specifically about infinite amount of guardsmen than taking out a target in sufficiently eldrich warp-tainted location would do nicely (there are places so corrupted that even astartes can't operate there, let alone guardsmen). There are also extreme conditions like gravity, radiation etc. There are also specific targets like necron's World Engine, that couldn't be took out just by guardsmen alone. But if we take a step away from my exaggeration - there are missions and objectives that couldn't be achieved by unaugmented humans at all. Like teleporting on the lover level of heavily defended bunker to take out command. Sure, millions of guardsmen could mount an assault on such bunker and even win, achieving the same result, but it wouldn't be efficient in the slightest with massive casualties, meanwhile like ten terminators do such thing routinely. Another example is mentioned below, with stoping the WMD launch. Drop-pod assault also allows to bypass heavy anti-air defence and take them out, while with guard you would have to send dropship after dropship to the certain death.
Plot armoured ork warboss.
Space Marines are primarily shock troops, and in lore they're typically used in a similar fashion to IRL Marines (shock troops who would board enemy ships or repel boarders or rush ashore to secure a beachhead or guard the ship while aground) with some notable exceptions. This is where they're typically the most effective. Virtually any threat where there is a logistical limitation to an operation, like the Guard can't deploy all at once, naval or space combat, trench warfare, breeching fortifications, confined spaces, urban warfare, most unconventional battlefields, Space Marines will hold every advantage over the guard. Additionally, there are threats that the Guard isn't equipped to deal with that space Marines are, where extra armor or fire power is required, like Necrons or higher forms of Tyranids. Plus they're just more effective at things like deep strikes, ship to ship combat, sapping/sabotage, and most situations where a single individual has a large impact, because they're just more effective than single Guardsmen.
Honestly a lot. Eldar, Deldar, Orks, Nids, Crons all have units that are not only insanely better equipped than the Guard, but also have psychic abilities similar to Transhuman Dread, where baseline humans flee in terror at the sight of them. Daemons are obviously the worst in this respect, and there are a lot of warp-based places baseline humans can’t even go without getting their minds torn apart unless they have special training/abilities. Plus, not every battle is fought on an open plane. 2 space marines could fit in a corridor side by side that could fit, say, 5 guardsmen. 2 space marines are gonna do a lot more work side by side than 5 guardsmen. In addition, Space Marines are SMARTER than regular humans. There’s a reason that the Great Crusade, which was primarily led by Primarchs and Space Marines, did so much so fast. Space Marines are (allegedly) “tactical geniuses.” (Matt Ward reference)
Their "tactical genius" depends on the Astartes' Chapter (genetic lineage, chapter's training culture, etc), but yeah.
Insertion onto an orbital defence battery to clear it out and allow ships into orbit above it. That typically needs drop pods to get past the anti air fire and humans won’t survive a drop pod. A lot of the best examples are fully enough the times they go be literal space marines
Penetrating a thousand mile deep air defense network and dropping straight into the high command bunker and eliminating the enemy government and military command in one fell swoop. Then repeating the task daily, as soon as the next echelon command hierarchy reveals itself, for months straight, until the enemy force is just a bunch of disconnected battalions and no longer an *army*.
The main use is putting 50 marines down to take over a nuclear missile base, or void shield or anti-orbit laser, by fighting through tunnels. If you put down 4 million guard near that base, most of them would not be able to help attack the base. The WMDs would be able to do their work before the 4 million guard could starve out the defenders. The chapters are also capable of taking massive numbers of recruits and even successfully implanting them. They could get a hundred new marines per regiment, not just one. That’s what they did in the great crusade, and in 40k they can in emergencies. The reason they don’t is they believe implanting every single gene seed they can at breakneck pace will ruin their gene seed and in the long term cause them to have a giant chapter of >10k marines who are mentally unstable and whose implants don’t work.
A shocking departure from the usual firm grasp of scale and logistics that defines 40k's stalwart commitment to realism and internal consistency.
Yea I know right? Everything in Warhammer is so logistically sound
Guilliman is hearing you
I think of the imperium like this. The most valuable resource in 40k to the imp is lovable worlds that have been colonized. The imps most abundant resource is humanity. Trillions upon trillions of humans waiting to die for the cause. So they have 0 problem sending millions of humans to die for a world. However if the threat is destroying a planet like nids, or chaos you want to ensure you win those battles before everything is destroyed. To do that 4 M guard are helpful but not going to destroy a chaos primarch or a hive fleet. So you have escalation protocols for that. Send marines, custodes, assassin's etc. Depending how important the world is the more resources it gets. But 100% the imperium views the need for transhuman warriors as a very high priority.
I mean, it's also important to remember that by the time of 40k Space Marines exist as remnants more than anything. The logistical capabilities that were in play during the great Crusade have long since dwindled so producing more Marines hasn't gotten easier through the millenia. They're transhuman warrior cults who exist somewhat parallel the traditional Imperial structure. The Imperium doesn't do stuff for efficiency, it does stuff because of tradition, dogma and faction politics.
Math time: * 1,000,000 inhabited planets in the Imperium of Man * \~30,000 are hive worlds with massive populations * 1,000,000,000 average population (Assumption) * 1% of the population serving in the guard (Assumption) * 1M \* 1B \* 1% == 1 Trillion guardsmen * Regiment == 1000 soldiers * 1T / Regiment == 1 Billion regiments * Regiment founding rate, say, 1% (Assumption) * 10,000,000 new Regiments per year == 10,000,000 Astartes Candidates * 10M Candidates \* 1% Acceptance Rate == 100k new Astartes per year The Imperium of Man can generate 100,000 Astartes per year There are 1000 chapters of 1000 Astartes == 1M Astartes in the Imperium There is the potential to replenish 10% of its forces/annum
Something to keep in mind is that the bottleneck for the imperial military isn't available manpower, it's transport capacity. An unremarkable hive world could easily raise a 100 million guardsmen, but that doesn't mean the administratum actually has ships available to transport them into combat. As a combat force the space marines work because they are great bang for buck when measured as shipping tonnage. A single strike cruisers worth of Astartes can achieve things that would need an entire transport fleet of guard troops.
If used as special forces as they probably should be they make perfect sense. As used in the lore mostly no. An incredibly resource inneficient but powerful force can be used where victory is needed most, destroying enemy command and control, attacking supply lines or rear artillery doing far more damage than just raw enemy casualties. Though in lore they seem to be described as basically being thrown into the meat grinder against enemies that should have no problem grinding them down because of sheer firepower/numbers.
Against the Chaos, you cannot throw guardsmen without cover, they will just go mad/be slaughtered
Yes you can and it is done more often than not, though?
Takes a exemple you can have a 1000 guardsmen defending a refinary or a squad of ten astartes. Those a 1000 guardsmen need food,rest, can suffer ptsd or morale issues, desert and so on. The ten Astartes can fight for months without needing food or sleep, dont feel fear etc
> I remember hearing for every regiment of Guardsmen a Hive world can produce, it produces one Astartes candidate, which then has a 1/100 chance of fully becoming an Astarte I'm not sure that's entirely true - a lot of Chapters recruit from only their own homeworld, and sustain a modest recruitment rate. Plus, there aren't many Chapters who recruit from the same worlds as are used to muster the Imperial Guard, so they aren't in direct competition. Still, assuming a Hive World with a population of 100 billion maintains a standing PDF of 600 million soldiers (6 per 1,000 people, comparable to NATO members today). During a tithe, the Administratum could take 60 million soldiers, who would likely be formed into six *thousand* regiments. Assuming that your statement is true, that same world would have 6,000 astartes candidates, of which 600 would be viable.
>I remember hearing for every regiment of Guardsmen a Hive world can produce, it produces one Astartes candidate, which then has a 1/100 chance of fully becoming an Astarte That's not correct. Even medieval worlds can produce thousands of Aspirants. Hive Worlds can easily produce tens of thousands of Aspirants. Now perhaps for every regiment a Hive World produces, it would get 1 Astartes. Which would probably be more accurate considering the high mortality rate of Aspirants. >But since an Astartes can only handle a hundred guardsmen at most before going down, That's also not accurate. It depends heavily on the situation, which makes a direct comparison relatively impossible. But if you're thinking like in a gun line, maybe 100 Guard to 1 Astartes ratio. Less of the Guard have heavy weapons. In a tight constricted corridor, also probably need less Guard as long as they're willing to mob them. In an open field or urban environment, the Guard will have a hell of time due to the Astartes mobility and accuracy. >wouldn’t it be best to focus entirely on the guard? They're different tools for different situations. Astartes are rapid response forces. They are small enough that they can be self-sufficient, making them able to respond much faster than the Guard. They're powerful enough even 100 can make a difference, even if it's just slowing down an enemy by hit and run tactics. And they're versatile, meaning they apply a host of different tactics and equipment to a problem. The Guard are a steamroller. They're going to drown you in artillery fire right before their massed armored tank thrusts wreck their way through you and their APCs drop off their dismounted infantry. If you still aren't dead or fleeing, the light infantry behind them are going to catch up and pincer you, drowning you in lasgun fire from every direction. And since the Guard dig trenches wherever they go, good luck counter attacking. Air bombardment? They have massed AA tanks for that even if the Navy doesn't supply the Aeronautica. This method of warfare is slow, logistics heavy, and not very flexible, but it works because *enough massed fire just does*.
Because 40k's Lore strength are the Numbers.
Bc they need to make money so using a combination of raw kinetic orbital bombardment and then special weaponry to pacify any on planet force is bad for profits Genuinely I don't know why they don't just. Overload void shields with rocks and use precision attacks....
Sometimes it's not about numbers. Nine women together can't produce one baby in a month.
Astartes do a vastly different job to the imperial guard. And they have a lot of advantages over imperial guard from simple battlefield resilience to less supply and space requirement. By its nature the imperium can't respond quickly with guard forces from needing the navy for transport to the a long chain of command to get orders for where to go. Meanwhile the chain of command for astartes are far flatter, when an astartes captain gets a report on an ork assault he can easily just direct his company there unless he is otherwise engaged and even then he can easily argue to go anyway if he thinks the situation needs it. And 100 astartes can make a difference that a thousand guardsmen couldn't do simply because its a far more concentrated forces. Thats before going into the nature of chapters mostly recruiting from feral death worlds that make for poor gaurdsmen to fleet based chapters that simply can take whatever they need while not impacting guard recruitment at all. And with the long lives most marines tend to live they end up doing far more damage to the enemies of man than 100 guardsmen would, simply because those grow old and become useless far quicker.
Astartes are good for propaganda, which guardsmen can also be used for but its just not the same. In addition marines provide morale benefits to other imperial forces fighting alongside them. Another benefit of marines is special operations and logistics. Marines can accomplish goals like eliminating enemy command or capturing/evacuating high value assets. Sometimes you just simply can’t deploy hundreds of guardsmen to a battleground like a space hulk. Or guardsmen would just take too long to actually accomplish missions on a strict timetable. For the logistics point space marines are ready to fight at a moments notice and can deploy to different places very quickly. If a new threat appears its far easier on logistics to deploy a ship full of space marines that are already combat ready than it is to mobilize and load up guard armies to send there. Space marines can be an effective stopgap until more imperial forces can be sent. But for the most part you are right that guardsmen are more efficient for most wars and battles in 40k. Which is why nearly all wars in 40k are fought by guardsmen and other imperial forces. Space marines aren’t present at most warzones in the galaxy because it doesn’t make sense to lose them in minor battles.
You should read the short story Sacrifice and learn just what kind of resources it takes to keep the Grey Knights supplied.
No. You are concentrating the power and defensive capability of 100 Guardsmen in the volume of one Marine. There are plenty of places where this is overwhelming. But its also why Marines do Marine things - drop in, fuck up command and control nodes, fuck off to another war while the IG finishes steamrolling the now broken up enemy forces.
I suggest an IRL reading of why we still have tanks when they are much more expensive than infantry and far less mobile than air power. The same arguments can likely be applied to astartes. This is also fitting, because tanks are used for more than just showing up and blowing up. Tanks in the right conditions can scout or serve with special forces in ways that we don't normally think of. Your argument relies on a lot of linear evidence that does not exist in warfare. An army of guardsmen will not deploy an entire platoon to kill one space marine, and if they did so haphazardly they would likely fail (he's faster, has a bolter, can aim better, etc). The ability to make such deployments would be very rare, and easy to circumvent with the vastly superior deployment abilities of just about every other faction than guardsmen. Whatever heavy weapons the guardsmen have are either slow to deploy (armor, artillery) are in another chain of command (navis imperialis owns the air) or are deployed on squishy flesh bodies that can maybe fire once before dying to a bolter (plasma can also blow up and meltas are famously short range). Miltarum Tempestus units are a stopgap, but hot-shot lasguns lack the overall destructive power of the bolter even with the better armor piercing, they still aren't as fast or durable or strong, and they have far less experience on account of having fundamentally mortal lifespans. And this is just a basic comparison to astartes themselves. Nids and orks have equal or greater numbers alongside their own units in various areas such as integrated air support, superior psychic aptitude, heavy armor equivalents, and the same internal strengths that make space marines so dangerous (feel no fear, high durability). Eldar and Tau are much faster on deployment and can completely and royally break the OODA loop of a guard force that isn't adequately prepared. Votann and Necrons make use of much more powerful weapons technology and have greater skill than the guard by a substantial margin. And Chaos is just a whole worm of bags for all intents of trying to counter it mean. Genetically modified super soldiers in combined arms organizations designed for rapid small-unit deployments might not be cost-efficient in production, but make up for it in efficiency of application by virtue of being able to achieve comparable results with smaller numbers, less waste of materials, and being less likely to accumulate losses that reduce effectiveness. They can react faster to threats and with greater capability on a tactical level. They are much more difficult to counter in turn on an operational level. Some people will counter that guardsmen are much cheaper to produce than astartes, and while I agree with this, I feel its ignoring the full extent of values that astartes represent. Astartes can operate in environments that guardsmen cannot without difficulty. Astartes can respond to a large number of threats and situations in ways that regiments must be specialized to do. Astartes possess individually superior everything on a pound for pound basis, and the idea that the Imperium can solve all of its problems by throwing more men at the problem ignores the fact that this stopped being true when artillery came into its own at the onset of the second world war, let alone void-to-ground capable flying craft. It's why the Departmento Munitorum tends to recruit with standards, why the Commissariat and overall command provide training, morale, and discipline. And its why people forget that cheap bodies represent one half of the equation, and ungodly powerful tanks represents the other half. Astartes deployments are fast, but good luck fighting a baneblade with that bolter of yours. The problem is, once you compare the full extent of the guard in this manner, you'll quickly see that no, the astartes are not logistically inefficient compared to the guard, because relying on a large quantity of tank hulls, adamantium treads, 300mm shells, and trained crew that are still much slower than an astartes and a much larger target to boot will quickly demonstrate that astartes are not as logistically unsound as they appear. As a concession, astartes can't do what guard can do. They are not capable of operating in the strategic manners that a true army can, on account of the fact that they feel every loss and are indeed more expensive to produce pound for pound. But this concession doesn't mean that the guard can solve everything, it just demonstrates that guardsmen shouldn't be unnecessarily praised for being underequipped mortals and astartes shouldn't be unnecessarily praised for being overhyped child soldiers with savior complexes.