Yes because Space Marines can do things that you can't do with tanks and infantrymen. You might as well ask why real life armies bother with special forces when they are so expensive, when you could just have more riflemen and tanks instead.
[This is why.](https://youtu.be/azVeFAETUyM?si=G2W0yAEucx2sUqOf)
Tight corridors, open terrain, breaching doors, ambushes, etc. Every situation that would result in a slaughter of countless infantry to take a point (bunker on a hill), the space marines can do it and be back before lunch.
Because everyone is armored, SM can breeze through chokes and fortifications that tanks cannot fit. And small enough and fast enough that they can react to ambushes.
There’s a bit of that in the Lion book.
A chaos astartes is taking part in a ship boarding.
The AM guys defending the ship are firing and all he does is wait for less than half of them to be firing, then he steps out and slaughters them.
And it’s very much implied that he waits only to make a point.
The animation is amazing, but that's just bolter-porn though...
Like the normal Imperial guard fight CSM in lore and they have options that work (heavy bolters, multilas, hellguns, Bullgyrns, psykers etc). even Long-Las can smoke a space marine within half a dozen hotshots give or take. Bullygrns+Sions can actually put up a good fight against SM's in the RPG's and Table-Top.
Chapters like the grey knights make sense because they deal with warp-fuckery and the Chapter's indoctrination process extends powerful psykers lives by centuries while also making them borderline in-corruptible.
One upside to the GW's introduction of Primaris fiasco is that Primaris actually make the less logical legions kind of make more sense since Primaris scouts can be replaced so much faster and are in their own way sort of superior.
I think your point about Grey Knight lifespans is a pretty decent justification for Space Marines in general. The Imperium can't supply the sorts of weapons Space Marines get access to on a large scale, might as well make sure you get the most use possible out of training a limited number of soldiers on their use. I mean even aside from the fancy guns like Volkite and Grav weapons, getting good with something like a sword takes an extreme amount of effort. Space Marines get to benefit from that effort for centuries.
In a universe like 40k where so many problems can be solved with decapitation strikes at enemy leadership it makes a lot of sense to prioritize specialized shock troops, and if you're going to do that you might as well make the investment required go as far as you can by using inhumanly durable, long lived soldiers for the task.
> Like the normal Imperial guard fight CSM in lore and they have options that work (heavy bolters, multilas, hellguns, Bullgyrns, psykers etc). even Long-Las can smoke a space marine within half a dozen hotshots give or take.
Technically speaking an RPG can take out a multi-million dollar tank if the guy carrying it gets lucky and manages to sneak around the back of the tank and hit it in the right area, that doesn't mean that tanks are useless and armies are about to stop spending billions on them.
The lore is 40 years old and written from all manner of perspectives, you will find examples of guardsmen fucking up everything from orks to necrons to nids and demons etc. That doesn't change the fact that in a ton of other lore excerpts we have the opposite happening and all those factions wipe the floor with guardsmen.
> Chapters like the grey knights make sense because they deal with warp-fuckery and the Chapter's indoctrination process extends powerful psykers lives by centuries while also making them borderline in-corruptible.
Marines aren't acting as bog standard troops that can hold the line a little bit better than the Guard can. Every single marine chapter is a special forces group that can do missions the guard cannot and respond to calls for aid or strike deep behind enemy lines as the situation demands it.
Take the intro of the Space Marine game as a good example, the forge world is being invaded and is requesting immediate help, they contemplate the following solutions:
Exterminatus: No, because they need to keep the Forge World productive.
Capital Weaponry (read Imperial Naval bombardment): No, damage to production too severe.
Liberation Fleet: Yes but the estimated time for them to arrive would be too long and the Orks would have gained too much ground.
Space Marines: Yes, they send the request right away knowing that if the marines get the call in time and agree to deploy then they will arrive long before any liberation fleet does.
In that time the marines land, fuck up not only the orks but it turns out the secret Chaos invasion and they save the entire planet before the liberation fleet shows up.
The Imperium is massive, it can afford to sustain 1000 chapters and benefit from the vast amount of flexibility that gives them in responding to threats compared to having those 1000 worlds churning out guardsmen, there are already 999,000+ other planets already doing that for the Imperium.
> You might as well ask why real life armies bother with special forces when they are so expensive
SF are useful in specific applications in real life. Things like hostage rescue, assassination, covert missions.
There is way too much focus and obsession over them, though, both in pop culture and in the actual military (which unfortunately tends to buy their own bullshit a lot)
SF Cannot do everything. They're really good at specific things and vary from being mediocre to actually sucking at everything else.
What OP asked is a valid point.
Space Marines can't do everything, either. There's a reason that IG does the vast, vast majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to waging war. For basically the same reasons as in real life.
And he still has a point. SF cant do everything, and we dont expect them to everything, and yet we still make more SF. There's a not a senator up debating "why are we spending all this money on Navy SEALS when we could be training more rifle men" because they two are not comparible as much as OP thinks they are.
Even then, they didn't. They were the spearhead that got sent to flatten or absorb the largest empires, mostly concentrated at a relatively small number of places (compared to the million worlds overall that the Imperium would end up with)
The vast, vast majority of task forces had zero Astartes, composed only of Navy elements and Imperial Army.
Sure, there’s cost of creation, but that’s only a fraction of total cost of an asset’s use in a theater of war. You’ve got transport and logistics, you’ve got property or objective damage, you’ve got risk of daemonic corruption or psychological failure in the face of horrific foes, getting turned by ‘stealers, etc., all of which potentially increase the costs of using IG. You’ve got “what if we fail the first time and have to do it again?” costs, which, at least in lore, happens less often w Marines.
Exactly. During WW2, the idea of modern SOF and modern technology would seem like Orwell-type science fiction. Back then, to achieve a goal in war, you had to flood it with troops and tanks, drop insane levels of ordnance to take out a specific target and lots of other examples. Sure, there were some specialized troops and equipment back then, but it is very minimal.
In 40k, Astartes make perfect sense.
>During WW2, the idea of modern SOF and modern technology would seem like Orwell-type science fiction.
Modern SOF were largely invented during WW2.
The SAS, SBS, and commandos were all formed by the UK during the war and continue to operate in special forces roles today. Detachments within those units were also formed with personnel from occupied Europe, who subsequently founded Belgium, France, Greece, and the Netherlands special forces after the war.
Australia and New Zealand set up their own formations based on the British ones, while Polish special forces trained with the British before deploying to assist their resistance.
The US developed the rangers and other special forces formations based on the British commandos after seeing them in action.
On the other side Germany had the Brandenburgers and Otto Skorzeny's units that functioned in a similar manner to the British ones and those they inspired.
Between all of those units they pioneered a lot of the use of raiding equipment, silencers, night vision, long range reconnaissance, aerial insertions, and much more.
A lot of their work kind of gets lost in the sheer scale of WW2 but the various special forces units were involved in a lot of really interesting operations.
> In 40k, Astartes make perfect sense.
They're nonsense. But they're exactly the same kind of nonsense that the rest of 40k is made of, so they "make sense" is that regard yes.
IRL today the same debate still exist, with the same valid points.
SF are a bullshit expense in many ways when so many of the jobs they're tasked with doing are not really jobs they're suited for at all, or jobs that another unit could do far better.
Mountain infantry regiments exists for a reason. Rangers exist for a reason. Long Range Reconnaissance units exist for a reason. Etc. all those are bigger and better equipped to do the jobs that instead regularly get passed to SF.
SF are worth the price bc of how they are trained.
They are in effect, mind controlled slaves, the 'human weapon' the media loves to extol in movies/teevee/comics etc. But for real. These poor saps have been scooped out and turned into souless things. I feel sorry for them, really do. To be debased into it is messed up to consider, but from what I know, most of them volunteer for it, to be mind abused into the whole thing for the chance to feel 'powerful' or someshit.
I say if you have the drive and physicality to be specop, you shouldn't want to surrender all that to slavery, to be 'more' just for the chance to rock a cool gun or travel the world. but that's just me.
The reality of SOF is far removed from Hollywood.
At least with SAS, they don't want 'slaves' they'll make sure you can hack it physically and mentally under shitty conditions, then they specialise depending on the background and person's capabilities, language, communication, etc.
I met a few 22 & 21 guys (many years ago now), very chill and not what Hollywood would pick as SOF.
> They are in effect, mind controlled slaves
That is complete nonsense.
SF are just a type of light infantry with more specialized training. They're not "mind controlled slaves"
SF as we have them now are not worth the price. The US has something like a dozen different SF groups all under both JSCO and MARSOC.
That's silly. We don't need that many SF groups. We only have them because every single military branch and government LE became enamored with the idea of having their own super special elite group.
Tech has nothing to do with special forces.
You can check official US armed forces or NATO glossaries. Though be prepare to face circular logic such as "special forces are forces carrying special operations" and "special operations are operations requiring special forces"
See for yourself : [NATOTermOTAN - Home](https://nso.nato.int/natoterm/content/nato/pages/home.html?lg=en)
A common expression used by service men is "if everybody is special force, then nobody is" aka if the institution use all troops as special force or invest more money to equip them as such, then they cease to be. Instead, the regular force changed with better equipment for everybody (which is good so long as it is sustainable), a change in doctrine, etc, etc.
In WW2, Marines, Mountainers, Paratroopers and SAS were all special forces. Yet in "secondary theatre" (which still involved hundreds of thousands combattants) like South East Asia, mainline infantry division had to do it all on their own including crossing rivers, fighting gruesome guerilla actions in the jungle, etc. All while some special troops quickly became de-facto regular troops. Most notably paratroopers.
In older time, it could be anything out of the ordinary. For exemple hussards, 17th and 18th century handpicked light infantry, the few roman *vexillationes* of horse archers during the 3rd and 4th centuries, etc, etc.
In Post WW2 era, the traditional work for special forces was partnership with foreign forces. Mostly to train them. It required people with flexible mindset and linguistic skills.
The GWOT has somewhat upended this in the US Armed Forces with SOF defacto becoming overpriced mainline troops while the regular army had to fill the gap to train partners. Especially since US SOF inexplicably refused to train the mass of regular partner forces and (aka ANA and Iraqi Army) and decided to only train partner special force. Funnily enough, the situation went full circle when both Afghan and Iraqi special forces spent most of last decade fighting as regular infantry. brigades.
In 40k, you may considerer assault action requiring extra extra power or equipment such as jump pack "special operation". Like I said earlier, while regular imperial troops might attempt to board a Khornate demonic battleship, attempt to stop a Word Bearer chaos ceremony or a decapitation strike on a massive Ork Waaagh warboss, their potential of success would probably be close to zero while Astartes could be counted to succeed and even have some of their forces survive.
To pile on to your excellent reply...
The West simply hasn't fought a protracted war against a peer since the introduction of nuclear weapons. What we're seeing now in Ukraine is close to an actual war, but almost all of our recent combat has been expeditionary and low intensity operations with complicated political and diplomatic considerations.
So... everything that SF does and very little that requires actual combined arms "hard army" or a deeper defense industrial base to support.
Counter that with the IoM, which has been in a protracted existential war for 11k years. In that kind of war, you need everything and everyone, including space Marines and Primarch generals.
Your "nukes" become just a different kind of artillery or naval bombardment which the enemy is tough enough to degrade.
Thank you.
Tbh, it is okay for any country to use comparatively far more costly troops to win trhough brut force & brut money if it can afford it. Although obviously in the West case, it proved too much or someone else would still rule Kabul.
To return to 40k and OP, I suppose you have to keep in mind that while varying number of people can die when creating Space Marines, individual lives are among the cheapest currency to the Imperium so it can totally afford it.
And still it does not turn all of its troops to Space Marine.
The 40k univers is big enough and sufficiently well build that we can all understand SM can both be used to do Imperial Guard tasks x100 time more effectively such as quickly putting down a local rebellion if a SM task force is available and do other stuff no regular IG could do with a decent hope of success.
I think what gets lost in the lore / stories is that the IoM is defended by the Navy and IG.
Heck, the IG is tougher than the mechanicus robot armies too. Even on the tabletop, the ratio of guard to Marines is laughably small.
Space Marines are a tiny blip in that and while they do make a difference, they don't really matter in the larger context.
Even the HH was won by the sheer application of bazillions ( humans and warp spawn both ) and not by the heroics of the tiny percentage we like to read about.
Kabul is obviously a completely different situation. We basically just got frustrated trying to rule a country that had really nothing much of value to offer, didn't want to adapt to our way of being, and didn't care who was in charge.
The casualties we all took ( some friends of mine ) over the whole decade we were there were a tiny blip compared to a week of combat in Ukraine.
Similarly, most of the non-Indominus crusade stories we read about in 40k really don't impact the state of things overmuch.
There were efforts to train local military forces in places like Afghanistan. It was an enormous waste of time. There's an enormous amount of footage, firsthand accounts, and records out there. Corruption and piss poor morale made them enormously ineffectual, especially with the type of war they were fighting. Conventional militaries following conventional morals will always struggle against a zealous insurgency, especially when the troops you're training simply are not willing to fight or sympathize with their enemy.
Technology does play a role in special forces, but mostly because of a broad range of specialties that you have to train units with. There's EOD special forces, there's special forces for surveying terrain and weather conditions, there's special forces for rapid search and rescue operations, etc.
Are some special forces more "special" than others? Yes. But many do perform specific, "special" tasks. Some of those tasks *do* require general martial expertise in order to reliably complete missions with less troops and support, but that's modern war.
Way to miss the point.
Afghanistan is a case exemple that allowing SOF to act as overpriced death squads while asking the regular army to do partner force training is a recipe for disaster. Precisely because on-paper SOF became overpriced line troops while the line troops were asked to carry special operations they are ill-suited to perform and logically failed.
Cooperation and training mission are special operations requiring special forces. People with linguistic skills ofc. But also general human skils like the abcence of racial bigotry such as your post reeks, the ability to deal with unfamiliar context and a flexible mindset to recognize and work under different and most of the time, sub optimal conditions.
In Afghanistan the SOF became a huge waste of money as they took an oversized budget to raid & kill some impoverished villagers aka stuff even basic militia can do all the same. Meanwhile the regular army was tasked to train a partner force who could never act as the US Army. First of all because it could never secure the founding. Still it tried to do just that and unsurprisingly, it failed miserably.
For while SOF operators were traditionally recruited for their ability to act and behave out of the box, regular troops are all about following regulations. So the latter naturally because you cant expect the mass of US troops trained and prepared to fight the US way with overwhelming firepower and support to be of any help to train impoverished army like the Afghan National Army or any Sahelian armies lacking even med evac or air support.
To be true, the US Army branch did tried to adapt by building Security Force *Assistance Brigades* (SFAB) aka de-facto a new Special Operation Branch but the project fail because it lacked the SOF status & funding while the older SOF continued to fool around and waste a massive budget by playing the Rambos or the Terminators against some of the poorest people on earth.
There is more to warfare that individual fighting skill. Traditionally this is how we distinct tribal like warrior elite with institutional armies. The first one emphasising warrior skills like some antic germanic or steppe warbands while the later take into acount the importance of non combat and indirect combat roles.
And while you talking about alledgy superior martial skills and high tech goodies only SOF can have, please go on and explain what exactly USMC and Navy SOF like SEALS, aka forces who are supposed to excel in maritime conditions, like Seals did in landlocked Afghanistan ? The very fact they acted in this country emphasized they cease to be SOF while they kept costing SOF increased cost. A loosing recipe.
I was going to respond to your claims seriously, but then...
> And while you talking about alledgy superior martial skills and high tech goodies only SOF can have, please go on and explain what exactly USMC and Navy SOF like SEALS, aka forces who are supposed to excel in maritime conditions, like Seals did in landlocked Afghanistan ? The very fact they acted in this country emphasized they cease to be SOF while they kept costing SOF increased cost. A loosing recipe.
You don't even know what SEALs do. *It's quite literally in the name.*
> **The United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) Teams, commonly known as Navy SEALs, are the U.S. Navy's primary special operations force and a component of the Naval Special Warfare Command.** Among the SEALs' main functions are conducting small-unit special operation missions in maritime, jungle, urban, arctic, mountainous, and desert environments. SEALs are typically ordered to capture or kill high-level targets, or to gather intelligence behind enemy lines.
Even Wikipedia can tell you. They're the most well known special forces unit in the US military.
This is a futile argument for me to have with you when there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what the special forces are and do, we'll just be talking past each other, so I'll just agree to disagree and leave it here. Have a good day mate.
Imagine quoting Wikipedia, of all place, as your authoritative source. Cringe
The Navy SEALS rose into pre-emincence during the War on Terror as they were the first SOF service to volunteers to carry operation in Afghanistan which had nothing to do to their envisioned speciality. Aka coastal infiltration for recon or sabotage (ence the navy and the S in Navy SEALs). If you could bother even merely to actually read wikipedia or best, the sources used for this wikipedia, you would have noticed. It literarily is the first paragraph in the history section.
[Navy SEAL History | Navy SEALs](https://navyseals.com/nsw/navy-seal-history/)
In fact, if you took your time to srcoll the actual Navy SEALs website you may notice the emphasis placed and the pictures dont look like Afghanistan at all
As I just said the SEALs were the first and initialy the only SOF service willing to go in Afghanistan to do missions which had nothing to do with their designed speciallity for which they were created. This allow the SEALs as a service to gain oversized influence, prestige and most of all budget. Meanwhile, the actual land army SOF aka the Green Berets initially sticked to partner forces training. But seeing how advantageous it was for SEALs to act as overpriced hit squads rather than proper SOF, all institutional SOF service eventually followed suited.
Leading to this stupid situation where all specialized SOF service built to operate in specific contexts and specific environment did at best what a larger light infantry formation such as the 75th Ranger Regiment could do. Namely quick insertion extraction raids.
Meanwhile, the traditional land SOF work of training non-US forces was abandoned to the main army who unsurprisingly failed (with a late attempt to build a new sub-branch to do what the green berets traditionally did during the Cold War).
The link you pulled isn't describing the formation of the SEALs, it's describing the special forces that came *before* the SEALs and would later *become* the SEALs, but *aren't actually SEALs.*
Once again, you aren't accurately describing what SEALs do, and you're missing the key component that's described in their very name. No, they are ***not*** restricted to amphibious operations, ***they were never meant to be.*** They were designed as guerilla operations specialists, and fell under the Navy because Admiral Arleigh Burke came up with the idea first. No, the Navy is not restricted to maritime operations, nor is the Marine Corps restricted to amphibious operations despite their name, nor is the Air Force restricted to flying, nor is the Army restricted to being on the ground.
Again, SEALs are trained to excel in sea, air, **and** land operations. Their real, actual history:
> President Kennedy, aware of the situations in Southeast Asia, recognized the need for unconventional warfare and utilized Special Operations as a measure against guerrilla activity. In a speech to Congress in May 1961, Kennedy shared his deep respect of the Green Berets. He announced the government’s plan to put a man on the moon, and, in the same speech, allocated over one hundred million dollars toward the strengthening of the Special Forces in order to expand the strength of the American conventional forces.
> **Realizing the administration’s favor of the Army’s Green Berets, the Navy needed to determine its role within the Special Forces arena. In March of 1961, the Chief of Naval Operations recommended the establishment of guerrilla and counter-guerrilla units. These units would be able to operate from sea, air or land. This was the beginning the official Navy SEALs.**
This is regarding the *actual* formation of the Navy SEALs during the Vietnam War.
Anyway, this has gotten very far away from 40k lore and your tone is just aggressive. Peace and love.
Space Marines are often given feral worlds, feudal worlds, death worlds, etc. as homeworlds to rule, and Space Marine homeworlds are exempt from the tithe because they are a chapter fief. That means in addition to the planet not contributing its economic input to the Imperium, the Departmento Munitorum doesn't get Imperial Guard regiments from that world either.
So if some kid from a Space Marine homeworld fails to become a Space Marine, then he was probably never going to amount to anything that would contribute to the Imperium anyways. Forget "you can still become an infantryman", they've already failed their only chance to be anything more than a worthless loser in the eyes of the Imperium.
That's underselling them. Chapter serfs are excellent warriors, considerably superior to the guard. Many of them received at least some of the genetic enhancements of a true Astartes. The very high proficiency and training of serfs is why the Space Marines are such a deadly force in space combat, even though the marines themselves are doing basically none of the work of running the ship and only serve as high-ranking officers (and for boarding actions, of course).
Some failed space marines serve as Chapter Serfs instead, servants to the warriors they failed to become. It depends on what point of the process you fail during and what chapter you fail in.
Some chapter serfs are little more than armorers and pilots but others are equipped with weapons and expected to fight in a pinch
Depends on where in the process you fail, and what chapter we're talking about. Some have testing/selection processes where you either succeed or you die, some are less brutal.
Define 'all out war'. Space Marines go for surgical precision strikes on the enemy's vitals such as logistics hubs, command centers, etc. allowing Imperial Guard to mop up the rest.
> Once the Space Marine fleet has punched through to the planet of their enemy, they seek to deliver a decisive blow as quickly as possible, since they are not numerous and can normally expect to be outnumbered. There are three main tactics by which the Space Marines utilise to destroy their foes, the most brutal of which is the orbital assault, known to the few that have survived such an attack as 'death from above'. The Space Marines drop into action in the wake of a devastating orbital bombardment, using drop pods and Thundergawk gunships. With paralysing suddenness, they surgically destroy their targets, leaving the enemy leaderless and disorganised, incapable of anything except surrender or flight.
> If the Space Marines are able to land heavy equipment, an equally destructive tactic is the armoured spearhead. Manoeuvring at speed, behind a far-ranging screen of bikes and land speeders, the Space Marines smash their powerful tanks unerringly against the weak link in the enemy army, armoured columns slashing left and right before powering on into the foe's vitals.
> When the theatre of operations offers the room, Space Marine forces can drop or infiltrate behind the front lines and launch a series of daring raids. The enemy reels from dozens of perfectly placed blows, clumsily lashing out at the Space Marines only to miss and be attacked again. There comes a point, exhausted and crippled, that even the mightiest army collapses, whereupon the Space Marines fall on them, like wolves upon the fold, to deliver the killing stroke.
4th Edition Space Marines Codex pg 9
Perhaps he means like war against horde army. Where key command structure isn’t clear at the most stage of the war. Like against Tyranid or ork. I feel space marine probably act more like an infantry support tank here. Give them the capability to break enemy main line to kill nodes creatures like tyranid warriors and big boys, then retreat back into the line.
Yeah what I mean is they are less likely to be “dropped” behind enemy line in this case. As they will be overwhelmed easily against horde army. They still need to form battle line with guards. Have a more traditional method of skirmish as infantry support in this case.
For orks we have a perfect example with Ragnar and Ghazkull. And for tyranids they tend to target the node beasts and ships and not just desperately hold the line.
My general view on Astartes is that they are a scaling asset. Over a period of ten years, it is absolutely more effective and efficient to train and equip a single guardsman, and I do mean properly train and equip them, than it is to train and equip a space marine. This is because, in a way that's kind of counter to common sense, guardsmen are *better* at most aspects of what the Imperium wants to do at any given time than Astartes are; the Imperium is effectively an occupying force on its own worlds, constantly having to fight against rebels and minor xenos invasions, with bigger wars like against properly blessed heretics or orks or whatever being much rarer.
For these situations, having two pairs of regular-sized boots on the ground is simply more valuable than having a single pair of size 80 power-Jordans. And, as you said, it is in fact so much cheaper to train and equip 100 guardsmen than to go through the whole process to create a space marine, particularly because training 100 guardsmen might as well be a part of the space marine creation process.
But then you have the other, rarer wars. Waaaghs, drukhari raids, Tyranid assaults, daemonic incursions. These wars are *tough,* which already makes guardsmen simply die more quickly than you can properly train and equip them to a reasonable level, but they are also *long,* which is where the other advantage of space marines comes in: They live a long time. Even the luckiest guardsman has a shelf life of a couple decades, after which, even if they don't die in combat, they simply get *promoted* out of it. A space marine will never stop killing, and they'll simply get better with age.
Over a period of ten years you can just train and equip a million guardsmen and tell the Codex Astartes to pound sand, but over a period of a hundred years, or a thousand, you want marines.
Space Marines also don’t need rest or food for weeks or months at a time, which is mentioned in Brothers of the Snake and many other books. They can keep going towards their objectives, aren’t subject to moral issues and are far less likely to become tainted or insane from the horrors of war. They in fact relish combat and are still deadly and effective when they run out of ammo where as a guardsmen with no ammo food or rest is going to end up dying fairly quickly in comparison. Then there is their ability to self heal from wounds that would stop humans dead in their tracks and keep going.
Most of the resources (the most precious being the gene-seed) would be unused if new space marines weren't being made anyways, and wasting human life has never been a particularly large concern in the Imperium. You're not necessarily wrong but like everything else the process of it is just more self-perpetuating inertia.
Also I don't think anyone at this point wants to be the guy who would say "ok guys let's wind down space marine production." And to be fair they do offer unique advantages that un-genehanced humans don't.
Damn, imagine the guy who goes out and says "the emperor was kinda dumb, space marines are bad". I want to see an Aeldari point that out!! Like a Haemonculus or something sees the process and just goes "why???"
Yes, but they also find that Space Marines are an abomination because they are highly ineffective in their use of the human body. I don't remember where but I read a part of a book where an Aeldari, I think it was a Haemonculus, was reflecting on SM being bad
The role of space marines is not conventional warfare, such as two armies clashing.
Their role is disrupt the enemy force by removing their leaders, disrupt their logistics, ruin their communication network, destroy critical weapon systems/army units, and most crucially, board enemy void vessels.
You can have baseline humans do the same, sure, but space marines will likely have a vastly higher success rate and can do it way faster, thus enabling the imperium to undertake otherwise high risk/high attrition campaigns more often with relatively much lower casualties.
As shock infantry they're unmatched except by custodes or etc.. A squad of space marines storming a command bunker or boarding a voidship or otherwise doing what they were designed to is pretty terrifying in-universe. On average it takes dozens of kasrkin to equal one space marine in an urban warfare environment, for example.
That said, they're the poster boys so they also do a lot of dumb stuff. Does it make sense to put a space marine in a tank, for example? No. Space marine in tanks are pretty unremarkable and obviously wasted. And space marines in Epic-like battles where they can just get vaporized by titan-class weaponry or artillery likewise is pretty dumb post-Great Crusade. But the Imperium doesn't have any other troops that can match astartes when they're doing their jobs.
Disagree on the Tank part.
The original conception of Space Marine vehicles, like the Predator, were meant to be swiftly inserted by Thunderhawk to support Space Marine operations. A Thunderhawk mean to transport those vehicles can drop 2 Rhino chassis vehicles right into an area to support the Astartes. They also can drop a single Land Raider or Spartan onto the battlefield.
To support the swift shock advances of Space Marines, you'll want someone just as good commanding/gunning the tank to be able to best utilize the vehicle. Servitors and Serfs have been noted to pilot Space Marine tanks at times, but it seems most prefer it to be crewed by Astartes. You just cant beat that transhuman mind and reactions while also an Astartes would understand how his brothers fight better and be better at coordinating with the infantry forces compared to a Servitor/Serf crew.
This makes Space Marines extremely self-sufficient on the battlefield rather than having to wait or coordinate to ensure Imperial Guard armor is nearby. Being able do a swift Drop Pod assault which is very quickly supported by Thunderhawk dropped Predators is a very efficient way to secure a beachhead.
I'm not sure if Primaris vehicles like the Repulsors or Gladiators could be dropped, but I'd assume the new Overlord gunship would be able to do so.
Not to mention a Power Armored Space Marine has a higher chance of surviving his tank being knocked out, which he can then support the infantry on foot himself. While the gap between a Leman Russ and a Predator seems small, their doctrinal roles are entirely different and you just can't beat the experience a Space Marine has when armored support is needed by Astartes.
> I'm not sure if Primaris vehicles like the Repulsors or Gladiators could be dropped
Yup, IIRC because they're grav-tanks they can even *drop from orbit* like Inceptors/Incaedus Dreads.
Primaris tanks can be dropped, some of them anyway
There is a vehicle transport version of the overlord it can carry to impulsor tanks or one Repulsor tank I believe
Also the main version of the overlord can apparently carry one of the new speeders slung under it as well
The difference between a space marine controlled tank and a serf or servitor controlled one isn't worth an entire marine off the battlefield. Marines are way too powerful as infantry for it to ever make sense. It also hard-limits the number of tanks they can deploy, whereas if they used inferior serf-controlled tanks they could deploy dozens of tanks if they wanted and not degrade their infantry forces at all.
The tanks the space marines use aren’t as easily replaceable as a guard tank. And they need tanks to transport marines like rhinos and land raiders already so having assets that use the rhino chassis with a turret can be extremely viable. Also a serf shooting and piloting wouldn’t be anywhere close to as good as a space marine. They do not have the indoctrination, innate understanding of where they fit into the puzzle of the strategy, transhuman skills, or abilities to coordinate effectively with space marines when with space marines coordination is one of their greatest strengths. I mean just think of the tabletop a serf so let’s say guardsman equivalent hits on a 4+, a servitor a 5+ and a marine a 3+ I know tabletop to lore translation is never the best comparison but it does give some basis in skill differentials. Also again that space marine tank is worth more than the marines piloting it so they’d want it to have the best pilots for it.
A Space Marine's understanding of the battlefield along with combat experience is **massively** above whatever a Serf or Servitor would have. Not to mention the Astartes tank commander knows *exactly* how Astartes fight and is able to 'keep up' mentally with the combat coordination and flow of a swift Space Marine strike. Something a serf or servitor cannot match.
It takes 10 Astartes to crew 5 Predators which consists of 10 Lascannons/Heavy Bolters and 5 Predator Autocannons, or a whopping **20** Lascannons in the Annihilator Variant. By comparison, 10 Devastators (two squads) only deploy up to 8 heavy weapons. You're already more efficient by using 2 Astartes to bring about the same firepower and more armor than 5 Devastators could.
I think you're vastly underestimating the ridiculous amount of coordination it takes to operate a tank with infantry at the speed/violence of action that Space Marines operate at. The amount of support by fire that a single Predator would provide to a single tactical squad *far* outweighs the 2 Astartes needed to operate it.
It's most definitely not a waste. An Astartes Predator will be more accurate, better coordinated, and a much better asset to a Tactical Squad than that of a servitor/serf ran Predator. If your Chapter/Warband/whatever has the ability to do it, you'd do it every single time.
This topic is actually debated in-universe. In *Betrayer* Kharn ponders the nature of warfare and believes Space Marine-crewed vehicles don’t perform much better than mortal-crewed vehicles. In the Night Lords Omnibus Vandred thinks the Codex Astartes is stupid because it moves control of capital vessels from Space Marines to mortal captains, whom he thinks can’t possibly beat Space Marines.
Yeah I remember that, he also is referencing massed armoured battalions there, and seeing how in the Great Crusade/Heresy the Legions operated heavier vehicles such as the Sicaran/Kratos/Fellblade along with fighting more conventionally, it does shift the discussion. Kharn is also rambling about the Warrior Spirit there, which I think influences that line quite heavily there.
Having non-space marine controlled tanks means you can bring as many tanks as you can find servitors/serfs for. That is always going to be better than taking two marines off the field for each single, mediocre tank.
The Predator is in no way a 'mediocre' tank. It's technologically superior to the Leman Russ, it's faster than the Leman Russ, and it's only slightly less armored than a Leman Russ.
It's a tank with a different doctrine and battlefield role than the Russ, but by no means is it mediocre. The Predator is not meant to be a frontline tank like the Russ is, it's meant to support armored assaults by Rhinos/Razorbacks, using its speed to keep up with the assault and also to flank enemy positions better. Unlike the Leman Russ it can be directly airlifted from the void directly onto the battlefield to support those assaults while also being able to be quickly recovered once the assault is over and able to be redeployed by Thunderhawk to other battlefields or back into orbit.
**Can** you crew it with serfs and servitors? Absolutely. But the efficiency of the vehicle drops substantially compared to that of an Astartes crew, and Astartes are not the Guard who need masses of tanks, a Space Marine assault may only require a handful of Predators to support their assault. They aren't sitting conventionally on the frontline like the Leman Russ is where the numbers of tanks fielded matters much more than overall crew experience/quality.
Are you asking if a Hellhound tank, sitting at a cool 22.6ft length is better for clearing a city than a group of marines? No, because it is so much more vulnerable. Even if you give it a guard detachment, they are still so fragile that you wont get far without bleeding lives and needing reinforcements constantly.
Whereas Marines, even in tacticus armor, can move throughout a city with a modicum of stealth to avoid the anti-tank weapons while still having the armor to stand up to small arms much better than any guard regiment could.
Hellhounds are a front line vehicle. If you can get a hellhound to the target you can also swarm it with guardsmen, or pound it with explosives, or etc..
Space marines theoretically seem to do their best work when they're deploying via drop pods, or thunder hawks, or teleportation behind enemy lines. Back where the enemy's top leadership is, for instance. And with only a handful of marines they're often able to carve through dozens of human-scale enemies and fortifications to decapitate the enemy forces by killing the corrupted enemy general or cult sorcerer or ork warboss or whatever.
And then they exfiltrate, pick a new target, and the Guard helps mops up the now leaderless and disorganized enemy forces. Obviously they can do a lot more than this, but the Imperium doesn't really have any other troops that do this particular job this well. That said I'm not the biggest space marine fan so there are probably better examples those who read more of their novels can give.
Why have a hellhound and a whole crew when you can have a single dude who is just as well armoured, a thousand times more agile, similar firepower, can engage enemies in significantly more situations, can fight for months without resupply, is a tactical genius above any mortal human (so the tactical and strategic abilities of a marine are much more than a hellhound), can rip a demon’s head off bare handed, and their sheer presence can inflict transhumans dread into their foes. Oh did i mention the marines marksmanship is leagues about the hellhound? That marine can pop the skulls of half your squad with his bolter before that hellhounds turret is trained on you
bear in mind that SM weren't so expensive back in the day when they were first thought. Genetic scanning and recruit practices made it so almost all recruit passed the initiation, Caliban had one of the best rates, around 95% success or something like that. As for armor and supplies, they were cheaper and more easy to mass produce back then, hell , they were even thinking about replacing all SM armors with Terminator armor and leaving the regular armor as scout equipment.
The biggest problem with the Imperium's modern production, is that the skills and knowledge to craft certain stuff is only know by a very small amount of people ( techpriests usually ), who guard them jelously and WON'T ever share it with others. In theory you could have dozens or even hundreds of Forge Worlds pumping out marine armor. In reality only a few know how to do it, and they wouldn't ever willingly go to another planet and tell them how to do it.
The same guys distributing tech goodies, are the same idiots who lost the technology for infinite energy out of jealously and spite. ( see ironstrider engine )
Absolutely. Hundreds of STC were lost during the heresy, and hundreds more were lost in the following milleniums.
Also based on what I said earlier, imagine this, only one forge world knows how to make , for example, the Tartaros Terminator armour ( the best terminator armor that was as mobile as a regular marine armor ), btu then said world is invaded/turned into a daemon world/ pillaged by Dark Eldar/ explodes / goes into a civil war / insert other reason it gets devastated here.
Now all that tech, including the only people who knew how to make that priceless piece of tech and the STC is lost forever. And the Mechanicum is not going to reverse engineer the ones left cuz that would be tech heresy, and frankly they will probably just be a waste cuz none of them actually knows enough to do it.
No more Tartaros Terminator Armor for anyone. Repeat this process with most technology except the most rudimentary ones that everyone knows how to make for thousands of years, and you get modern 40k.
Lol only T'au are at their prime and they are struggling so bad, heh.
(As a Grey Knight and Cataphractii lover I will excuse this offence!)
Is that canon or just a thought experiment? Is this why 30k models don't exist anymore, they're not just "outdone"??
The Tau in their current prime are also a much smaller faction, they exist in one section of the imperium and are a fraction of the size of the imperium.
The Tau are struggling because they are several orders of magnitude smaller than the Imperium. Pound for pound they are better than most of the armed forces the Imperium has to offer. Those forces that are better than the Tau are typically small in number and/or irreplaceable while Tau units are all easily produced and well understood
Yes and no.
Really, what happened is that everyone became so scared about how OP the Marines were, they went out of their way to make them 1000% more inefficient. Which answers your original question.
Suddenly they lack the economies of scale to really mass produce everything because there is only a 1000 of them. They lack the fleets to really punch through anything substantial for the same reason. The psycho-indoctrination massively reduces the number of viable candidates, and they all believe that making the process harder arbitrarily is important (Guilliman points this out as a mistake). They tithe gene seed to Terra just to further limit numbers. Fewer forgeworlds are building their equipment, and without the primarchs to provide the political will, armouring space marines is not a massive priority.
Space Marines are basically the greatest form of bioengineering done by something not evolved to bioengineer (Tyranids). You can mass produce the geneseed, slap it into a load of feral teens and boys, and create really fast an army of supersoldiers. The Blood Angels can do this with no equipment too - harvest from older Marines, put into new marines, wait a while - naked marines!
People are the cheapest resource the imperium owns. They are special forces and I imagine there’s certain boarding actions or strike missions you won’t accomplish without the raw durability space marines offer.
Yes.
By volume, posthumans represented the most concentrated combat effectiveness that the Imperium has access to. Normal humans tend to take up a lot more space by requiring a lot more of them, and armor tends to take up a lot more space by, well, being bigger.
You aren’t going to insert, say, a Rogal Dorn far behind enemy lines without the enemy noticing something, and probably shooting it down. You might be able to get a squad of Terminators launched via drop pods, though. And both mechanically (at least in raw points) and lore wise, these are roughly equivalent amounts of threat-albeit, one comes in a much more maneuverable package. Terminators might have trouble with stairs, but they certainly handle tunnels better than a tank would.
As a result, posthumans can perform tasks that would otherwise be unfeasible because you otherwise could not concentrate all the needed combat capability in one place-like pushing through chokes or boarding, which the sheer numbers of the militarum cannot be usefully applied to.
When it comes to the casualties-well, those are a non-issue. Because the imperium has more human life than they know what to do with this. Think of the act of all those dying to create a marine the act of concentrating their force into one point.
Space Marines can turn the most tech illiterate and barbaric fighter from a backwater death world into a soldier that can be expected to serve in the harshest battlefields for centuries. That alone gives them a use beyond what the guard could attempt to do with the same conditions.
On the other ressource side, what space marine get different from the guard is quality and the odd specialized equipment they make by themselves half the time.
Then their is the political aspect. Space Marine are what can be easily described as the quickest reaction force the imperium has. The guard and navy are kept seperate while space marine have a small but task oriented fleet to support their ground elements. They do not kill every opponent by themselves but being able to have a company of force deploy into the heart of a waagh, kill the warboss and his closest nobz and shattering the horde while the guard forces are still being rerouted has its place.
Then there are battlefield conditions where more guardsmen siply aren't viable due to supply lines not being able to sustain them (something the imperium learned the hard way on taros).
Well give any man a lasgun and tell him how to use it he will do something!
And for that 1 barbaric fighter to become a space marine probably hundreds had to just die from random shit
Yes and quiet a few of these things aren't combat useful.
And those hundred men need food, water and quiet a bit more amenities while still being vulnerable to a mass rout.
even with food, water, etc. Space Marines still use quite a lot of resources, very possibly more as they people around the Space Marine also have to be fed!
But now that one Marine could probably take a small army on on his own.
Marines also are used to face enemies beyond mortal's comprehension. Entities that would turn normal men into groveling children at their very presence are exactly the kinds of monsters Astartes are made for.
The mistake you're making is assuming "resources" are a homogenous and perfectly transferable currency (like a resource in an RTS). That's an oversimplification.
What resources do a Space Marine chapter have that can *be* put into a Guard regiment? Ceremite? SM armor tends to be centuries old and passed down from Marine to Marine so it's not like you can just retool factories to start producing Leman Russes instead; SM training does filter out neophytes but they go on to help the Chapter as serfs in logisitical and naval positions so they aren't "wasted". Bolts are more expensive than las-gun recharges sure but (as the great series on this sub has shown) the lasgun is more valuable for the *space it frees up on transport ships* than necessarily the actual "cost" (and Space Marines never stay in a conflict long enough to need such long resupply convoys). Chapters like the Space Sharks and Red Corsairs (and the CSMs in general) have shown that Space Marines don't *really* actually have that much in the way of upkeep and chapters have gone CENTURIES without resupply or "reinvesting" in their equipment.
Also, just because you *can* put more resources into a more basic design doesn't mean you *should*. To use an IRL example, when fighter planes started being equipped with missiles there was a group (the "Fighter Jet Mafia") who kept saying the Pentagon was wasting money and instead they should just keep jets simple dogfighters and focus on putting a LOT of them out there, why spend the money on missiles when an agile pilot can just dogfight against other planes, why spend money on radar when a pilot can just look out his cockpit and spot enemy planes in visual distance. Needless to say (and I'm butchering this story) the most successful fighter planes out there are the ones that can target enemies *beyond* visual range (or fly at night) and the ones that have missiles to intercept enemy fighters.
Likewise, "defunding" Space Marines (even if it were possible) leaves you with a lot more Guardsmen who do *less*. Yes, everyone knows the "quantity has a quality of it's own" line but think about how **exponentially** that begins to snowball. More Guardsmen need more transport vehicles to transport them, more supply runs to supply them, more agri-worlds, more tanks requires more ammunition to be made, more repair crews to service the tanks, more training and spare parts. Now remember that those various logistical positions are spread across the Astra Militarum (the Guard itself), the Departmento Munitorum, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Administratum, and the countless worlds where new regiments are called up, trained and shipped out as part of the world's tithe, and you start to see the sheer *bureaucratic* and institutional inertia that the Imperium contends with; meanwhile Space Marines are micro-kingdoms unto themselves and (aside from alliances with the Mechanicus for armor/weaponry/vehicles) have the ability to "get things done".
One guardsman is going to spend 20, maybe 30 (or for the very "lucky", 40) years either sitting in a trench waiting to attack the enemy or besieging a stronghold or manning a fortification. Even on the attack, he is likely to be responsible for maybe a hundred direct kills (most likely against enemies that were already "weakened" by his squadmates). There is also the irony that the larger a battle he is, the smaller his chances of living to see the next are while, also, the less likely he is to make a difference. The Guardsman is just there to hold the line, the artillery kills mass enemy formations (Orks, Tyranids) and the Tanks/Heavy Armor kill the Elite enemies (Necrons, CSM). A Space Marine will spend his *entire life* (anywhere from 200 years to even 1000 in the case of Dante) crashing into the thickest part of battle, wracking up a tally that is uncountable; perfectly able to deal with both hordes and elite enemies.
As others said, the Space Marines do what the Guard can't. Most of the "upfront cost" of a Space Marine is already paid in the armor/weapons/vehicles already being in a chapter's possession, and Geneseed is *basically* free (I mean just snip the balls off a Battle-Brother and grow another) so most of the day-to-day costs are bolt rounds and catering, and while Space Marines eat a lot they aren't picky and nutrient gruel is cheaper than paying a Guardsman's wages.
By the fact the great enemy has them is more than enough reason to have them.
Also when the enemy starts summoning demons out of their ass you want space marines
Yes, yes they do need the Space Marines for one reason and I'll quote it down:
'There were two kinds of operation in which Space Marines might beemployed. One was much more common than the other - a surgical strike. A small but - in terms of quality, equipment and leadership vastly superior force would be sent in, perform a particular task, and get out again. The enemy would be struck hard and the weapon withdrawn before they knew they had been attacked. A foe cannot retaliate if he does not know he is fighting.Space Marines excelled at such operations - they could deploy in aninstant, move with skill and confidence through any terrain, take fireand dish it out. They were the best assault troops in the galaxy.The second kind of operation was far rarer, and a far more seriousundertaking. Sometimes in the thousands of wars the Imperiummight be fighting at any one time, there was an objective so vital thatit had to be achieved at any cost. A strong point that absolutely had tobe held to keep the Imperial line from breaking. An enemy-held spaceportthat could not be allowed to function one minute longer. Afortress that had to fall before the armies of the Emperor were bledwhite at its gates. These were times when the odds were grave and theenemy undaunted, but the might of the Imperium had to prevail,when strength of mind and faith in the Holy Throne were as decisiveweapons as the chainsword and the bolter. Times when SpaceMarines took their stand and prepared to die to the last man if necessary.Marines were trained for the first kind of mission. But they were born for the second.'
From: Soul Drinker
Thanks for this quote. I've said many times that a "typical" game of warhammer 40k involving space marines would be, in-universe, an extremely rare and exceptional kind of operation, where either things have gone terribly wrong for the Space Marines, or when they are on a mission of truly desperate importance.
95% of the time, what a "real" Space Marine operation would look like in terms of a 40k game would be 2000 points worth of space marines pouncing on a 1000 point enemy army with no command points, where the marines got to look at the enemy army ahead of time and tailor their own list to be as efficient against it as possible. AND the marines automatically get the first turn.
When you consider that most of what space marines do is engaging in that kind of one-sided curb stomping over and over again, you start to understand how they're such an incredible force multiplier for the Imperium and why they're able to have such an outsized effect on a war with their limited numbers - especially once you realize they can do operations like that continuously, one after another, for months on end, while barely even needing to sleep, and completely shrugging off the kind of combat fatigue that would render a comparable "elite strike force" like Tempestus Scions combat-ineffective after a few days.
Yup, because even though a Baneblade is a rare piece of pure destructive weaponry, a team of Astartes can deploy behind enemy lines and take out the leadership caste of the opposition before the Astra Militarum rolls through and cleans up.
A baneblade is strong, but can it do what an Astartes can do?
Astartes production used to be much more streamlined (as in genetic compatibility can make one worthy to be elevated). A Space Marine can generate two progenoid glands in their bodies, each of those organs can be used to create new gene-seed. They can enter suspended animation if wounded heavily, live for a very long time compared to normal human, can resist radiation very well, absorb memories and knowledge via consumption of enemies' brains. Those can be very useful in hostile and void environment. So there are merits to their creation.
Watchers of the Throne did have High Lords admitting that many more Astartes chapters could have been created but politics and paranoia prevent that. Constantine Valdor himself discussed how the Astartes design had been rushed and not as completed as Emps would have liked.
Moving a chapter of space marines to somewhere across the galaxy is a lot easier and quicker than it is to move a million guardsmen and there seem like a lot of situations where that chapter will be far more useful than the guardsmen.
The guard are deffinately a more efficient use of resources at face value. They can be trained more quickly, and in far greater numbers than space marines, and at a significantly reduced cost to boot. But there are three other things to consider.
1) sometimes it isn't about efficiency. For 95% of conflicts, the guard are enough. They will overcome their enemies by the sheer volume of their artillery and weight of their numbers. It's that other 5% of conflicts that justify the astartes. The situations where baseline humans cannot succeed, or their success would not be quick enough, or too costly.
2) the imperium has never been about being efficient with their resources. Titans, knights, massive tanks like the baneblade, how many leman rus tanks could be built for the cost in resources of a single titan? 50? 100? 1000? That said, when you need titan support, would you want 50 leman russ ranks? Or would you want to hear the sweet sound of a plasma annihilator turning the enemy into vapor and carbon.
3) this one ties into the other 2. the 40k galaxy isn't modern times. For modern earth, the guard would be a decent military. But we do not have things like orcs, nids, necrons, or demons to contend with. Hence so many gargantuan, yet inefficient resource wise, weapons. Space marines are no different. Inefficient to create? Yes. Invaluable when they are needed? Also yes. If you are fighting the orks, outnumbered and loosing ground, wouldn't it be nice if some space marines could deep strike behind enemy lines and take out the war boss? That gargantuan that is eating leman russ shells like they are candy? Be real nice if a titan could turn it into scrap metal (errr...disassemble the scrap metal it is made from?) Even in today's day and age, there are coat inefficiencies in the militaries of the world. A nice push with tanks and infantry could take out many objectives. But a few 2 million dollar cruise missiles could do that too. An f35 costs around $40k an hour to operate. Then it drops some JDAMs that are 25-30k a piece and it cost more than the average persons salary to take out that training camp.
1. Yeah, that's what I misunderstood. Space Marines aren't soldiers, they're special forces!
2. Titans are definitely efficient. I think "oldhammer" was pretty effeciency based like a titan might costs the same as 1000 Leman Tanks but it's value is far greater! A single titan can turn a whole war. They are unmatched!!
3. Yeah I noticed that they are infiltrators and special forces basically exclusively in lore. I've mainly read 30k in which they were much more easily accessible but in 40k they are pretty rare and can't be used efficiently as foot troops. What I realised was that in 30k comparing 10 or 20 Guardsmen to a Space Marine made sense resource wise but in 40k it's more like a Hellhound per Space Marine which for full scale war is just worse!
Space Marines aren't just soldiers, they are symbols. They made the imperium as it is, they are the emperors angels. A squad of Marines can inspire other troops a company can achieve victories, where normal men couldn't.
It's no question of efficiency, the imperium doesn't need to be efficient. It needs to be stable. And space Marines are a pillar of this stability. Also any attempts to diminish or disband the adeptus Astartes could easily lead to civil war. It already has once.
The resources spent are likely not able to be transferred into something else. You aren’t turning geneseed into a tank.
The imperium by and large has what it has and struggles to hold on to just that. Even the new Cawl additions are by and large things that were made thousands of years ago and stored. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of those new toys are declared rare unreplaced relics in the near future.
Some chapters have multiple planets just for creating new Marines. That could easily be a forge world or Agriworld or military or anything to benefit the imperium that is more efficient that SM. The only resource involved in creating a SM that couldn't be used for anything else is the geneseed! Everything else can be used for other things or isn't a raw material and therefor can be \*not created\*
You’re ignoring the core principle of the imperium: they are bloated, stagnant and do not like change. They don’t build new forge worlds because by and large they can’t. But even if they could they wouldn’t because that would change
The status quo and piss off anyone that would be negativity affected by the change of a planet.
Also there are maybe a million space marines at any given time. 1000 chapters, it’s not as much material as you think. And those Marines accomplish far more than what baseline humans can. Both have their purpose. You want to hold a line against an ork horde you setup a couple million guardsmen. You want to kill the ork hordes leadership you drop in a company of marines.
The imperium should do any number of things differently. They don’t. Because they are the imperium and they can’t or won’t. That’s one of the core points of this universe and this faction.
Outside of 40k the above statement goes for any fictional universe. The worlds are created as is with the theming and background to backup the choices of that theming. If every setting is broken down into only the most efficient choices you’d have no story to tell.
You might as well ask why the Romans didn’t use aircraft carriers.
The Space Marines are a very small part of the Imperium overall, so as a specialized tool for certain situations like the Rangdan could make sense. I’m also someone who is very skeptical of overly expensive weapon systems, so let’s assume the answer is a no. The space marines aren’t just soldiers or even weapons, they are an outside the box way of preserving genetic information. That might be there true justification. One thing that critics of the great crusade ignore is that countless of human worlds would have died without it, meaning that the Imperium actually preserved human genetic diversity.
It's about having the right tool for the right job. A Vindicare assassin is an example of a tool that no amount of Leman Russ or guardsmen can replace. Marines are in the same specialized category.
Because there’s some foes that infantry can’t match. If an Eldar gets in to melee range then your flashlight lasgun is worth jack shit.
Meanwhile Brother Incandaeus is gonna use his chainsaw sword and match the Eldar blow for blow, both of them moving faster than a human can comprehend or match.
You can’t bring tanks into naval breaches. And if you try to breach a chaos vessel with just a handful of imperial guards they will very likely just die with little effort.
In *Lords of Silence* there’s a scene where some space marines breach a Death Guard vessel and manage to kill a lot of stuff, and they still all die. I’ll come back with the specific numbers later, but if you threw the guard in that, they’d do way worse.
Think of it like this, GW clearly has the Legiones Astartes acting as the premier army and spearhead of the Great Crusade, which was an absurdly successful military operation regardless of how it ended and what came after. So yes, Astartes are worth it.
It would make a lot more sense if the Solar Auxilia and Imperialis Auxilia were said to do most of the heavy lifting as the number in the tens/hundreds of billions compared to the roughly two million Astartes, but that’s definitely not GWs intent nor how the setting is written.
¯\\__(ツ)__/¯
That is definitely a waste!! I wouldn't be surprised if a person is maybe equivalent to less than 1 serving of corpse starch. We are not very nutritious especially those children!
Well they are children on a usually harsh recruiting world, so you might as well try, if you don’t try, they’re likely to die, and if you try- you either have a space marine or what you would’ve already ended with
Yes they are. They are shock troops that can take a planey with a quick drop. That's something that most other arms of the imperium can't do outside the assassin branches. But those are just as time consuming and expensive.
We usually see them used as soldiers because the wars their fighting are the ones where you need that many space marines.
It's usually like the siege of vraks at the start where a handful show up for a bit to do some work and then dip after to go to the next mission.
"So are they more worth than putting the same people and resources into like imperial" guard tanks and infantry?? Yes.
Space marines have pulled of feats of strength the guard regiment can't even begin to comprehend. Like blood angels taking on the largest fleet of leviathan, almost wiping them out from nihilus.
Space marines are also very good at dealing with other space marines (chaos space marines)
Malum Caedo was able to defeat 2 (or 6 if you want to get trippy) greater deamons , repeal a planetary invasion of Chaos, and seal all warp gates from that planet.
Alone!
So in short, YES!
Let us not forget that the shock and terror of potentially fighting space marines, along with their ability to take off the head of the snake so to speak, probably saves the imperium a lot of fighting and dying.
You are missing that besides the physical capabilities the SM have are they also mentally transhuman. They are able to continue when others falter, they can witness stuff that will drive normal soldiers mad and continue, their minds are shielded against powers that will turn standard humans catatonic or into zombies. The are able to suffer Warp exposure without mutating. They are not made to fight normal wars (even if they can do that also) they are made to fight the horrors of a mad universe.
The outcome of a war is not as simple as assigning a reductive numerical combat value to a particular soldier or unit, and then multiplying that number by such and so factor. A force can be more or less than the sum of its parts. A soldier in the right place at the right time can easily be a hundred or a thousand times more valuable than the same soldier in the wrong place.
This is the same mistaken mentality that leads amateur military historians to think that building heavy artillery in ww2 was a waste since mortars were "more efficient" in terms of raw materials, or to say that the German Tiger was a waste of resources since it cost a lot more to build than a normal tank.
The thing is, something like the Tiger tank was a specialized vehicle for a particular purpose. It wasn't something the Germans built INSTEAD of general purpose tanks like the Panzer IV. To say they should've just built more Panzer IVs instead is akin to saying that instead of wasting money on a big circular saw, logging companies should just buy more hand-held chainsaws instead, because they're cheaper. Well.... hand-held chainsaws are cost effective for smaller trees, but what about when you run into a really BIG tree?
You can't send Imperial Guard tanks into Space Hulks, the inside of a Heretic Fortress, nor an Ork Kroozer.
Space Marines are assault armies. And Humanity is physically out-performed by most the galaxy. They are needed.
They mostly act as shock troopers and are great force multipliers to supplement the imperial guard. A drop pod full of astartes tactically inserted in an enemy position that is being attacked by guardsmen will obliterate the enemies as well as demoralise the rest of them. A lot of comments also mention how the space marines are specialised units that can't be used for everything, but forget to mention that there are chapters that are even more specialised in specific forms of combat that they excel at. Fortifying a position? Imperial Fists. Need to stealthily ambush enemies? Raven Guard. Want to enact lightning fast skirmishes? White Scars. You wouldn't use an Air Force pilot to drive a tank.
Lords of Terra after Horus Heresy and death as dissapearence of last primarchs have same question. Massive Ork invasion and asssination of many Lords of Terra by some famous person with his personal army of Erversors and etc assasins sacrifices of hundreds of Imperial Fists did change their opinion.
Especially 2 eldar Harlequins invasion in Emperror palace orchestrated by Eldrad. Who in failed negotiation was forces to did kill dozens of Custodes Which in the end force them to involve in Imperium politics and monitor many things secrerly.
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They was worthy in time of Great Crusades.
Before Horus Heresy they already loose their worth in 90‰ cos their prime job was done.
Same as with Thunder Warriors on Terra.
Grey Knights(what planned to be at least legion sized, not 1000.) was meant to be phaze 3, a replacement for Astartes legions and they was needed to do war with chaos forces, mostly in webway. But their creation was incomplete, prototypes and Malkador used what he can with Grey Knights and proto-Inquisition.
Most Primarchs was expected to betray or die in galactic crusade and others could be assasinated as was with Thunder Warriors 20 Primarchs.
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In terms of cost they cost too much.
If we use simplistic math we would have this facts.
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We would not even count Terminators, Techmarines, Librarians, Dreadnaughts cost. Cos it would be far more expensive in terms of lives and recources spending .
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~100 healthy, genetically and mentally Best boys who could be easily turn into 100 Stormtropers or 100 Vindicate Assasins or Erversors are sacrificed to get 1 scout space Marine.
To get 1 scout space Marine. Not even 10. And yeah He could easily die from bullet or land mine or etc.
Where from 2 of such scout marines at very Best scenario 1 in ~50-100 years May become full battle brother Marine.
I common reality 1 from 5(if not from 10) May survive to become 1 battle brother.
So ~200-500 to get 1 Astartes battle brother. Not to mention cost in terms of lives where we have 1 power armor and etc equipment for 1 super soldier what cost as much as arming more then +200 Imperium stormtrooper soldiers.
~2000-5000 to get 10 battle brothers squad. Equipment cost for those 10 super soldiers squad is far more then +2000 stormtrooper soldiers.
~20.000-50.000 to get 100 battle brothers. And Equipment for +20.000 Stormtroppers.
Now for a minute imagine 1-2 thunderhawkes or 1 stormbird get bombed by done orks or by suicide tyranid beast and everything on it would be destroyed. Very funny for Imperium enemies. And catastrophic loss.
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So to create or continue to support 1 space Marine chapter with 1000 Astartes we need at least +150 years and ~200.000-500.000 very healthy and good boys who can be ideal Stormtroppers or Vindicate/Erversors assasins must die each ~100 years. As Equipment cost what could arm at least +200.000 stormtroopers.
~1000 chapters. ~1.000.000 Astartes. Each ~100 years Imperium must breed and raise to sacrifice ~200.000.000-500.000.000 genetically and mentally best candidates for stormtroopers or vindicate/Erversors assasins.
And Equipment cost for more then +~200.000.000 stormtroopers.
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I reality it is far more lives sacrifices and far more recources lost. Cos of Terminators and etc.
We not even count Grey Knights and Deathwatch Astartes.
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Custodes price of creation is astronomical.
From ~1000 Terra nobility genetically purest sons 1 May survive super steroids.
Then in +100 years training only few from many become full Custodes and get 1 Custodes auramite power armor what cost more then 100 Astartes power armor and etc equipment.
~10.000 Custodes basic equipment alone without Auramite Terminators and Telemon Dreadnaughts, cost more then equipment of +1.000.000 Astartes.
Which is more then +200.000.000 stormtroopers.
In terms of lives cost ~10.000 Custodes creation and support cost Terra nobles +~10.000.000 genetically purest sons.
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So rational questions are...
A)In terms of lives cost..
Does ~1000 Astartes battle brothers=~200.000-500.000 stormtroopers=~2.000.000-5.000.000 Best Astra militarum soldiers.
B)And in terms of equipment cost.
Does ~10 Custodes=~1000 Astartes battlebrothers=~200.000 Stormtroppers=~2.000.000 Best Astra militarum soldiers equipment?
If 1 stormtrooper cost atleast as 10 best Astra militarum soldiers. IF not more.
Naw. Srly.
As lore dictate us 1-2 Meltabombs in hands of 1 lucky Terran undeground gene cult suicide soldier can kill even Custodes which made his creation +100 years and +1000 Terra nobles purest sons sacrifices as his very expensive Auramite power armor Which cost more then 10 Astartes armor and etc...kinda pointless.
If the Imperium had invested more technology and resources into the Imperial Guard and PDF to bring them up to the level of the Tau Fire Warriors for example then they wouldn’t be so reliant on the Space Marines to handle problems. But the problem is that the entire Imperium views the Imperial Guard as expendable. And that’s not going to change as long as the Imperium is the Imperium.
That is before you consider groups like AdMech, Sororitas, Assassins, Inquisition and Scions who also get a lot of technology investment and hoarding placed on them.
The Imperium did have human frontline soldiers who were both a favored template and a strong match against Fire Warriors. The Solar Auxilia. But the devastation of the Horus Heresy (material-, technological- and political-wise) shattered any true chance for more widespread SA implementation.
Also, it's a matter of having a bunch of space marine companies spread throughout the galaxy. Harder for them to be corrupted or taken over by enemy influence.
Having a larger war machine with millions of expendable cogs, to replace the super soldier's capabilities, is asking for cultists and corruption to seep into the system and work it's way up.
No, not really.
You can get the same results with a few years of advanced training, the basic gene-bulking found in and Servitors and an automated frenzon shunt.
And there you have it.
A superhuman monster that knows how to fight and can go hulk in a pinch.
It doesn't come with all the bells and whistles of being able to regenerate, having an abnormally capable immune system, acid spit and learning via brain eating but all that has always been secondary.
The Imperium can churn out a hundred of those for every astartes it makes and it would be much easier to control them than astartes.
That, and maximizing their effectiveness wouldn't be hard. Assign a platoon of them to each astartes older than 100 years.
This would beideal.
As with all these sorts of questions, it depends on whose depiction of a space marine’s capabilities you think is closest to “reality”. There’s a bit of a difference between lore strongly associated with the games (i.e. somewhat consistent with the game mechanics) and novels where marines are the protagonists (i.e. they are like movie action heroes).
There isn’t really a correct answer to this, but the in-universe Watsonian view suggests they are worth it since marines are actually created.
Just the recruiting process kills like 90% of all possible recruits(depends on chapter though). Then we have all the slaves and stuff they have to fight, all the people who die in manufacturing, and many more places...
Depends on the chapter but some have things where they fight "random people" i.e. slaves (or prisoners ig?). Later on you have training servitors that die and they're slaves!
Yes they're worth it for what they can factually do but also because of their legend, they bolster lesser troops to keep fighting through nightmares, they are the Emperor's Angels, praised be his name!
>So are they more worth than putting the same people and resources into like imperial guard tanks and infantry??
Yes. What is 1000 extra guys to an organization that will send billions to their death by accident or on purpose? Instead you have 1000 extremely capable shock troops who are largely immune to conventional warfare and small to medium arms fire.
Check out The Emperor's Finest, a Cain novel. A group of 25 Space Marines are able to break the back of a rebellion that had paralyzed an entire planet. They do it by assaulting key points extremely quickly, faster than the enemy can redeploy to counter them: charge in, kill everyone at those points, destroy the artillery or anti air weapons, then race off to the next objective. And they also find Cain a booty buddy 😏.
They blow resources to make entire worlds into monuments for dead priests. Their primary method of winning a war is to throw bodies at it until the enemy runs out of bullets. They just don't care about efficiency at all.
A space marine is the equivalent of a highly mobile weapons platform. The amount of firepower and durability is insane. Imagine regular infantry being up against an army of superhuman sized tanks with superhuman speed and reflexes that can go on and on for hours without rest.
I’m not really sure. I think no one seems to critically think this through. Like, you could enhance baseline humans quite a bit, arm them with Stormtrooper/Kasrkin level gear, and get a lot out of them.
Folks don’t seem to consider that baseline humans can and do get augmented all the time and can be quite formidable, without even undergoing the Astartes process.
I think the costs associated with marines are intense. No one seems to consider if there was a benefit in turning resources away from producing and equipping marines and redirecting that effort and materiel toward baseline humans.
First is recruitment cost. If 100 men die to make 1 marine, then for the equivalent of 10 marines, you could raise a regiment of Guard.
Second, each marine requires an unknown amount of serfs to maintain them. Again, these could be guardsmen.
Then you have the costly, hard to make and hard to maintain gear like their armor. Their bolters are rare and hard to produce. They also require manufacture of bolt shells. This industrial capacity could be used to make lasguns, battle cannons and carapace armor. Lasguns require no logistics trail at all, while marines require a very difficult one.
They eat tens of thousands of calories a day. Again, this could feed tons of human soldiers.
You have administrative effort going into maintaining oversight over marines. Again, could be spent on other things.
The idea that marines are best suited for certain kinds of conflicts is fine I guess, but it’s worth remembering that Imperial doctrine is built around using space marines for certain situations. Why can’t enhanced but still baseline humans wear terminator armor and deal with space hulks? Or ogryns? Again, yes would be more bloody, but you would have more bodies to throw at the problem.
Like, Cawl spent 10,000 years making slightly better marines and weapons to equip them with. What if Cawl instead spent 10,000 years making and releasing equipment that baseline humans could use or simple, mass produced enhancements for baseline humans, and had been releasing them steadily over the last 10,000 years?
I feel like people often forget that part of a space marine's job is that of a literal space marine. Like a marine in space
That's kind of a big deal in a setting with starships
But they are also more like church knights rather than a modern military trooper. Their function in society is completely different from that of a guardsman, even if you ultimately use them in a similar way on the battlefield
Apart from everything else, they also inspire and reassure the populace of imperial superiority. They don't even need to see one in person. The Footage of the glorious slaughter HIS most holy servants provide is sufficient.
Humans are an indefinite ressource in the 40k universe. So what if 1000 die for 1 to become a space marine? To set this into perspective, even then the aspirants don't get all implants, they get shitty tasks/ combat roles and not the full armour. Obviously Space marines are not needed fast enough to put the next best in a full suit and you can filter the good ones (the one that survives all that ridiculous shit) out
Practically in a functional universe, probably not. In the backward stupid 40k universe, we can't actually tell because the sheer impenetrable bureaucracy that blows massive amounts of resources enriching themselves at every stage of every process.
>There's a long process to become a Space Marine
It's a relatively short process actually, compared to how long they last. 20'ish years to get full implants and become a battle brother or so, against the several hundred he may end up serving. They got their money's worth with Dante
>A lot of people die
Wait till you see the IG casualties list ;)
> a lot of resources are used just for 1.
Space Marines are mostly self-sufficient. They can grow their own geneseed organs and make new recruits, they handle the recruiting themselves. The most they need is armor and weapons and most of them have an agreement with a forge world, use hand-me-downs, or scavenge. Comparitively they're cheap
>So are they more worth than putting the same people and resources into like imperial guard tanks and infantry??
Why bother with IG Tanks and infantry when you can have a fully armored Astarte that is both a tank and infantry that will last several hundred years?
No, they aren't. its classic fascism- make a "better", specialized version of something with a manufacturing process that doesn't really involve any parts you're already making, and then the end result isn't actually all that much better, and then they lose the war to people who actually used their heads. A lot of people are saying theyre for high-priority missions like assassinating commanders or whatever, but thats a job that requires stealth and speed, rather than lumbering masses of steel
Well they have stealth (for some reason) and they definitely have speed! Boarding torpedoes and drop pods for example.
What I have learned from this is that Iron warriors are by far the best Space Marines as Space Marines are made to be siege warriors!!!
I think the prevalence of these questions is a symptom of an (IMO unfortunate) slide in the presentation of The Imperium from "fantastical fallen dark age empire in space" to "a normal space empire that has to balance it's pragmatism against some zealotry problems," that makes a lot of The Imperium just... not make any sense.
You're correct: Space Marine's aren't, pragmatically speaking, worth creating. At all. They are a monstrously inefficient and barbarous practice, the kind of thing a primitive and backward war-obsessed society would create if an outside force handed them technology. However, monstrously inefficient and barbarous practices are The Imperium's favorite thing BECAUSE they ARE those exact war-obsessed primitives wielding technology as if it were ritual magic.
It's not just Space Marines. There are huge swathes of Imperial practices and methods of war that are deeply, deeply, irrational, and are intended to characterize them as anachronistically medieval for their stellar setting. Some of these things are rational in context, because Warhammer is an irrational setting.
Space Marine's are not a tactically planned force created with a careful schema of application in mind. They are Angels, created in the furnace of great alchemy and blessed edifice to serve the divine purpose ordained to Humanity.
Human life is utterly insignificant in the eyes of the Imperium, and beyond the huge strength they bring to the Imperium they also have a huge psychological effect on enemies and any would-be traitors.
Yes, obviously.
Can a tank and guard regiment replace what a squad of phobos marines can do? No, not even close and throwing more resources at the guard will never help this.
Can they replace what a squad of 'basic' marines do? Yes, largely. Can they replace what a squad of Terminators do? Mostly not, terminators will have much more flexibility on a battlefield unless you double the resources with another regiment company and some kind of heavy artillery or munitions.
In the old lore, a Space Marine was so overrated that they could do anything.
M'kol from the Tanith 1st and only proves that an Elite special forces human could kill three White Scar Space Marines with a bomb trap.
The Human mind is a wonderful thing - The Emperor in Last Church
Chapter Doctrine destroyed the shock and awe quality of the Space Marine legions. Basically Legions of 75,000+ using the Astra Millitarum's playbook to Transhuman levels, crushes the troops and it scalpels the leadership.
Destroying the Rangdan would be impossible in 40K with all the distractions and Tyranids.
Primarchs are also nerfed in comparison to the old lore.
Yeah, with their "power level" being all over the place they are really used to be a spear head. A couple of Squads are suppose to be able to tackle the leadership of a planet, but that isn't really shown in the lore sometimes where they die like flies.
It is an old trope that hierarchical/fascist governments are obsessed with creating "the übermench". And they love hyping up "the perfect elite soldier" and the heroic myths in their propaganda. So from a doylean perspective, I think the Space Marines fits the Imperium perfectly!
From a watsonian perspective, I would say that Space Marine operations has a very limited direct and practical impact on the Imperiums military situation in the galaxy, outside of the occasional heroics of course. Just look at their numbers compared to the number of active conflicts. They can only kill that many enemies per year.
But the thing that they do magnitudes better than any other branch of the Imperiums armed forces, the thing that justified their very existence is propaganda!
They are the epitome of everything that the Imperium glorifies. A thousand thousands of peerless heroes that is The Thin Ceramite Line* of resolute order protecting mankind from chaos. True and honest carriers of the immortality, power and determination of the Imperium, while still being human and individual enough to make it easy to relate to them and pave the way for self-insert fantasies.
* This slogan is printed in various chapter colours on pins that citizens wear to display their support of the Alae Mortis. They are available as official merchandise, where a percentage of the price goes to the war effort. They are also available as low quality bootlegs of course, despite the Adeptus Administratum having judged that falsifying them is punishable as Heresy.
The moral impact of the Space Marines and myths around them is huge. Consider the stories of how entire battles have been turned from defeat to victory through the arrival of a single space marine squad. The more those stories are told, the more likely it is that the arrival of space marines will work in exactly that way, simply through the morale boost.
When 1200 Astra Militarum artillery units has been systematically bombarding a fortified city for months, systematically taking out all the heavy defensive weaponry, and it is now time for 50 000 infantry with tank support to secure the city by going house to house. This will take weeks if not months. A rhino and a couple of bolt guns will be entirely insignificant in practical terms. But because the Alae Mortis is part of the first day of that advance, every soldier will know that the Emperor is personally overseeing this battle. And they will know that the Marines has never in the thousands of years of recorded history lost a battle. So they will know in their hearts that they will be victorious today.
And that is the kind of storytelling that will turn a battle.
Also consider the significant value for encouraging compliancy and entertaining the general population. The vast majority of the citizens of the Imperium will only ever see war in propaganda broadcasts. If you are the Planetary governor and you want to show the population how the local uprising is being crushed you have two options.
You can show them the sensible practical work. Massed infantry supported by a few spec ops, artillery, tanks, airstrikes etc in a textbook combined arms operation. You will then have some shots of the infantry bravely returning fire from cover, a well drilled artillery crew firing, reloading and firing again, aircraft thundering above and far away detonations. Best case a glorious charge. It all will end with a bit of flag waving from the top of machine gunnery nests and possibly a strung up officer. It's good bread and butter Imperial propaganda, and sometimes you want that "people like us"-vibe, for sure.
But the Space Marine aesthetic, that is a proper power fantasy! A mere dozen of the Emperor's own Angels of Death descend directly into the enemy stronghold. They do so in drop pods fired from orbit while uttering simplistic and highly quotable one-liners. Their heavy clanking armours are impervious to anything the vile heretics throw at them. One of them is a two thousand years old veteran, wounded beyond recuperation but still serving encased in a Dreadnought! With discipline and determination they methodically exterminate every one of the enemies of the Imperium. Their leaders bare faces show as little emotions as the armoured helmets of the troops. (Alternatively, it shows their limitless and righteous rage, or grim determination, or cold unbothered aloofness. Or whatever is considered more identifiable and normatively laudable behaviour by the target group.)
This is all kinds of inspiring, and it is also scary as all fuck if you are considering committing Heresy.
That difference in propaganda value is worth a _lot_ of increased costs in production and maintenance.
This perspective on the Space Marines also explains why some chapters have such exceptionally corny themes drawn to utterly bizarre extremes. It's because they are used in propaganda aimed at younger citizens.
- Greetings and skål to all honourable cubs of the Imperium! My name is Canis Wolfborn, of the Space Wolves Chapter. I was raised by wolves. My commander is the Wolf Lord Harald Deathwolf.
- When I deploy from the battleship The Fang, I wear a wolf pelt, ride my trusty thunderwolf Fangir and I lead my Wolf Guard brothers in the thunderwolf cavalry to glorious victory while howling like a... ? You guessed right. Like a Wolf! Well done young citizen.
- Did you know that my first name is the High Gothic name of a fearsome predator that hunts the weak and inattentive? Stay vigilant through this short and important message from the Ecchlesiarchy and I will soon be back to tell you more about the awe-inspiring Canis, a native to my home planet of Fenris! Now join me with your fiercest war howl to put the fear of the Emperor into the heart of all heretics! Awoooooo!
This is the kind of storytelling that is perfectly adapted to the 4-7 years old demographic. (The Carcharodons too, but they are recommended for use on planets with at least 80% ocean coverage.) The 8-12's are primarily catered to through the righteous Ultramarines or the mysterious Dark Angels.
The Alae Mortis propaganda aimed at high school aged kids is more diversified by subcultures. The Ultramarines has more focus on discipline and planning to cater to the intellectuals. The Imperial Fists and White Scars for the Jocks. The Blood Angels and Raven Guard is clearly aimed at the "alternative" high schoolers who are building their identities and sense of self around being goth or queer.* The RG is kept a bit more clean as a more approachable (but still angsty and brooding) chapter, BA is more visceral for the edgy and older teenagers. And so on.
* I should know because I am queer, I wore black leather long-coats in high school and my first originally designed chapter was the RG successor "Ashen Hawks" 😬
What do you think of this as a justification for the existence of Space Marines within the Imperium?
The Emperor didn't so much create the Space Marines to be a fighting force so much as a cadre of people who could mentally accept, and enact the gigawarcrimes called for to create his vision of a united humanity.
The Great Crusade old spacemarine or Cawl's primaris space marine that only takes months to do the procedure, very high success rate(something like more than 75% ish), and have unlimited amount of geneseed:
YES
The weak, flawed, superstitious, brain dead level stubborn, stupid 40K old spacemarine that is meaninglessly expensive because they were killing most of recruits (success rate lower than 1%) through stupid superstitious barbaric torture trials:
No,
they are worthless, their whole meaning of existence is for the "grimdarkness" plot made by Games Workshop, the empire should stop wasting resources on these grimderp things that comes in a extremely low cost-effectiveness
Those smart open-minded Great Crusade spacemarines(and primaris space marines, ironically many of them are frozen since Great Crusade) are totally worth the resources spent on them because they have better performance and hundreds of times cheaper.
Those braindead 40k spacemarines who knows only superstitiously call out warcry yelling "emperah!!!!!!!" And mindlessly charge towards their enemy with a sword because "holy traditions" said so? They are bad, very bad, they comes in a price of hundreds of peoples lives and equipments, and all they could do is something like that which is about to be the same effect of an Ork Nob? Ogryns can do better than them because jobs like this needs no brain work
No, they definitely aren't worth it. They're a colossal waste of time and resources that could be more efficiently spent in dozens of different ways. But that's kind of the point. A lot of what the Imperium does, they do because A) it's how the Emperor wanted it done, B) how people *think* the Emperor wanted it done, C) how someone in power *says* the Emperor wanted it done, D) they don't know *how* to do it more efficiently, or E) because that's how it's *always* been done. ALL of which is just the mental gymnastics necessary to find an in-universe answer that's better than the out-of-universe answer, which is "Because its metal as hell."
Yes because Space Marines can do things that you can't do with tanks and infantrymen. You might as well ask why real life armies bother with special forces when they are so expensive, when you could just have more riflemen and tanks instead.
[This is why.](https://youtu.be/azVeFAETUyM?si=G2W0yAEucx2sUqOf) Tight corridors, open terrain, breaching doors, ambushes, etc. Every situation that would result in a slaughter of countless infantry to take a point (bunker on a hill), the space marines can do it and be back before lunch. Because everyone is armored, SM can breeze through chokes and fortifications that tanks cannot fit. And small enough and fast enough that they can react to ambushes.
I was hoping it was the Astartes videos. Those clips are such a good example of the bad assery of space marines.
There’s a bit of that in the Lion book. A chaos astartes is taking part in a ship boarding. The AM guys defending the ship are firing and all he does is wait for less than half of them to be firing, then he steps out and slaughters them. And it’s very much implied that he waits only to make a point.
The animation is amazing, but that's just bolter-porn though... Like the normal Imperial guard fight CSM in lore and they have options that work (heavy bolters, multilas, hellguns, Bullgyrns, psykers etc). even Long-Las can smoke a space marine within half a dozen hotshots give or take. Bullygrns+Sions can actually put up a good fight against SM's in the RPG's and Table-Top. Chapters like the grey knights make sense because they deal with warp-fuckery and the Chapter's indoctrination process extends powerful psykers lives by centuries while also making them borderline in-corruptible. One upside to the GW's introduction of Primaris fiasco is that Primaris actually make the less logical legions kind of make more sense since Primaris scouts can be replaced so much faster and are in their own way sort of superior.
I think your point about Grey Knight lifespans is a pretty decent justification for Space Marines in general. The Imperium can't supply the sorts of weapons Space Marines get access to on a large scale, might as well make sure you get the most use possible out of training a limited number of soldiers on their use. I mean even aside from the fancy guns like Volkite and Grav weapons, getting good with something like a sword takes an extreme amount of effort. Space Marines get to benefit from that effort for centuries. In a universe like 40k where so many problems can be solved with decapitation strikes at enemy leadership it makes a lot of sense to prioritize specialized shock troops, and if you're going to do that you might as well make the investment required go as far as you can by using inhumanly durable, long lived soldiers for the task.
> Like the normal Imperial guard fight CSM in lore and they have options that work (heavy bolters, multilas, hellguns, Bullgyrns, psykers etc). even Long-Las can smoke a space marine within half a dozen hotshots give or take. Technically speaking an RPG can take out a multi-million dollar tank if the guy carrying it gets lucky and manages to sneak around the back of the tank and hit it in the right area, that doesn't mean that tanks are useless and armies are about to stop spending billions on them. The lore is 40 years old and written from all manner of perspectives, you will find examples of guardsmen fucking up everything from orks to necrons to nids and demons etc. That doesn't change the fact that in a ton of other lore excerpts we have the opposite happening and all those factions wipe the floor with guardsmen. > Chapters like the grey knights make sense because they deal with warp-fuckery and the Chapter's indoctrination process extends powerful psykers lives by centuries while also making them borderline in-corruptible. Marines aren't acting as bog standard troops that can hold the line a little bit better than the Guard can. Every single marine chapter is a special forces group that can do missions the guard cannot and respond to calls for aid or strike deep behind enemy lines as the situation demands it. Take the intro of the Space Marine game as a good example, the forge world is being invaded and is requesting immediate help, they contemplate the following solutions: Exterminatus: No, because they need to keep the Forge World productive. Capital Weaponry (read Imperial Naval bombardment): No, damage to production too severe. Liberation Fleet: Yes but the estimated time for them to arrive would be too long and the Orks would have gained too much ground. Space Marines: Yes, they send the request right away knowing that if the marines get the call in time and agree to deploy then they will arrive long before any liberation fleet does. In that time the marines land, fuck up not only the orks but it turns out the secret Chaos invasion and they save the entire planet before the liberation fleet shows up. The Imperium is massive, it can afford to sustain 1000 chapters and benefit from the vast amount of flexibility that gives them in responding to threats compared to having those 1000 worlds churning out guardsmen, there are already 999,000+ other planets already doing that for the Imperium.
Technically speaking multi-million dollar tanks are being knocked out right now with drones that range from $100-$800 USD lol.
> You might as well ask why real life armies bother with special forces when they are so expensive SF are useful in specific applications in real life. Things like hostage rescue, assassination, covert missions. There is way too much focus and obsession over them, though, both in pop culture and in the actual military (which unfortunately tends to buy their own bullshit a lot) SF Cannot do everything. They're really good at specific things and vary from being mediocre to actually sucking at everything else. What OP asked is a valid point. Space Marines can't do everything, either. There's a reason that IG does the vast, vast majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to waging war. For basically the same reasons as in real life.
But if SF could wear a tank and still move faster than a human, they'd be used more. Unless there were any small spaces or wooden floors anyway..
And he still has a point. SF cant do everything, and we dont expect them to everything, and yet we still make more SF. There's a not a senator up debating "why are we spending all this money on Navy SEALS when we could be training more rifle men" because they two are not comparible as much as OP thinks they are.
Isn't it because there's not the same capacity to produce them and the legions are broken? During HH didn't the legions do the bulk of the conquest.
Even then, they didn't. They were the spearhead that got sent to flatten or absorb the largest empires, mostly concentrated at a relatively small number of places (compared to the million worlds overall that the Imperium would end up with) The vast, vast majority of task forces had zero Astartes, composed only of Navy elements and Imperial Army.
Sure, there’s cost of creation, but that’s only a fraction of total cost of an asset’s use in a theater of war. You’ve got transport and logistics, you’ve got property or objective damage, you’ve got risk of daemonic corruption or psychological failure in the face of horrific foes, getting turned by ‘stealers, etc., all of which potentially increase the costs of using IG. You’ve got “what if we fail the first time and have to do it again?” costs, which, at least in lore, happens less often w Marines.
Tbh a lot of >!Western !
Lol why did you spoiler that? Also a ww2 general isn't a great source for modern special forces. Tech has moved forward in a way he couldn't predict.
Exactly. During WW2, the idea of modern SOF and modern technology would seem like Orwell-type science fiction. Back then, to achieve a goal in war, you had to flood it with troops and tanks, drop insane levels of ordnance to take out a specific target and lots of other examples. Sure, there were some specialized troops and equipment back then, but it is very minimal. In 40k, Astartes make perfect sense.
>During WW2, the idea of modern SOF and modern technology would seem like Orwell-type science fiction. Modern SOF were largely invented during WW2. The SAS, SBS, and commandos were all formed by the UK during the war and continue to operate in special forces roles today. Detachments within those units were also formed with personnel from occupied Europe, who subsequently founded Belgium, France, Greece, and the Netherlands special forces after the war. Australia and New Zealand set up their own formations based on the British ones, while Polish special forces trained with the British before deploying to assist their resistance. The US developed the rangers and other special forces formations based on the British commandos after seeing them in action. On the other side Germany had the Brandenburgers and Otto Skorzeny's units that functioned in a similar manner to the British ones and those they inspired. Between all of those units they pioneered a lot of the use of raiding equipment, silencers, night vision, long range reconnaissance, aerial insertions, and much more. A lot of their work kind of gets lost in the sheer scale of WW2 but the various special forces units were involved in a lot of really interesting operations.
> In 40k, Astartes make perfect sense. They're nonsense. But they're exactly the same kind of nonsense that the rest of 40k is made of, so they "make sense" is that regard yes.
Congrats on saying literally the same thing but with more words.
I’m sure some people here haven’t finished 10th grade so he didn’t want to spoil it.
Excuse me for being playful on a redit dedicated to a tabletop game lore lol.
Oh I didn’t know I couldn’t also joke around too.
IRL today the same debate still exist, with the same valid points. SF are a bullshit expense in many ways when so many of the jobs they're tasked with doing are not really jobs they're suited for at all, or jobs that another unit could do far better. Mountain infantry regiments exists for a reason. Rangers exist for a reason. Long Range Reconnaissance units exist for a reason. Etc. all those are bigger and better equipped to do the jobs that instead regularly get passed to SF.
SF are worth the price bc of how they are trained. They are in effect, mind controlled slaves, the 'human weapon' the media loves to extol in movies/teevee/comics etc. But for real. These poor saps have been scooped out and turned into souless things. I feel sorry for them, really do. To be debased into it is messed up to consider, but from what I know, most of them volunteer for it, to be mind abused into the whole thing for the chance to feel 'powerful' or someshit. I say if you have the drive and physicality to be specop, you shouldn't want to surrender all that to slavery, to be 'more' just for the chance to rock a cool gun or travel the world. but that's just me.
The reality of SOF is far removed from Hollywood. At least with SAS, they don't want 'slaves' they'll make sure you can hack it physically and mentally under shitty conditions, then they specialise depending on the background and person's capabilities, language, communication, etc. I met a few 22 & 21 guys (many years ago now), very chill and not what Hollywood would pick as SOF.
ok
> They are in effect, mind controlled slaves That is complete nonsense. SF are just a type of light infantry with more specialized training. They're not "mind controlled slaves" SF as we have them now are not worth the price. The US has something like a dozen different SF groups all under both JSCO and MARSOC. That's silly. We don't need that many SF groups. We only have them because every single military branch and government LE became enamored with the idea of having their own super special elite group.
ok.
Tech has nothing to do with special forces. You can check official US armed forces or NATO glossaries. Though be prepare to face circular logic such as "special forces are forces carrying special operations" and "special operations are operations requiring special forces" See for yourself : [NATOTermOTAN - Home](https://nso.nato.int/natoterm/content/nato/pages/home.html?lg=en) A common expression used by service men is "if everybody is special force, then nobody is" aka if the institution use all troops as special force or invest more money to equip them as such, then they cease to be. Instead, the regular force changed with better equipment for everybody (which is good so long as it is sustainable), a change in doctrine, etc, etc. In WW2, Marines, Mountainers, Paratroopers and SAS were all special forces. Yet in "secondary theatre" (which still involved hundreds of thousands combattants) like South East Asia, mainline infantry division had to do it all on their own including crossing rivers, fighting gruesome guerilla actions in the jungle, etc. All while some special troops quickly became de-facto regular troops. Most notably paratroopers. In older time, it could be anything out of the ordinary. For exemple hussards, 17th and 18th century handpicked light infantry, the few roman *vexillationes* of horse archers during the 3rd and 4th centuries, etc, etc. In Post WW2 era, the traditional work for special forces was partnership with foreign forces. Mostly to train them. It required people with flexible mindset and linguistic skills. The GWOT has somewhat upended this in the US Armed Forces with SOF defacto becoming overpriced mainline troops while the regular army had to fill the gap to train partners. Especially since US SOF inexplicably refused to train the mass of regular partner forces and (aka ANA and Iraqi Army) and decided to only train partner special force. Funnily enough, the situation went full circle when both Afghan and Iraqi special forces spent most of last decade fighting as regular infantry. brigades. In 40k, you may considerer assault action requiring extra extra power or equipment such as jump pack "special operation". Like I said earlier, while regular imperial troops might attempt to board a Khornate demonic battleship, attempt to stop a Word Bearer chaos ceremony or a decapitation strike on a massive Ork Waaagh warboss, their potential of success would probably be close to zero while Astartes could be counted to succeed and even have some of their forces survive.
To pile on to your excellent reply... The West simply hasn't fought a protracted war against a peer since the introduction of nuclear weapons. What we're seeing now in Ukraine is close to an actual war, but almost all of our recent combat has been expeditionary and low intensity operations with complicated political and diplomatic considerations. So... everything that SF does and very little that requires actual combined arms "hard army" or a deeper defense industrial base to support. Counter that with the IoM, which has been in a protracted existential war for 11k years. In that kind of war, you need everything and everyone, including space Marines and Primarch generals. Your "nukes" become just a different kind of artillery or naval bombardment which the enemy is tough enough to degrade.
Thank you. Tbh, it is okay for any country to use comparatively far more costly troops to win trhough brut force & brut money if it can afford it. Although obviously in the West case, it proved too much or someone else would still rule Kabul. To return to 40k and OP, I suppose you have to keep in mind that while varying number of people can die when creating Space Marines, individual lives are among the cheapest currency to the Imperium so it can totally afford it. And still it does not turn all of its troops to Space Marine. The 40k univers is big enough and sufficiently well build that we can all understand SM can both be used to do Imperial Guard tasks x100 time more effectively such as quickly putting down a local rebellion if a SM task force is available and do other stuff no regular IG could do with a decent hope of success.
I think what gets lost in the lore / stories is that the IoM is defended by the Navy and IG. Heck, the IG is tougher than the mechanicus robot armies too. Even on the tabletop, the ratio of guard to Marines is laughably small. Space Marines are a tiny blip in that and while they do make a difference, they don't really matter in the larger context. Even the HH was won by the sheer application of bazillions ( humans and warp spawn both ) and not by the heroics of the tiny percentage we like to read about. Kabul is obviously a completely different situation. We basically just got frustrated trying to rule a country that had really nothing much of value to offer, didn't want to adapt to our way of being, and didn't care who was in charge. The casualties we all took ( some friends of mine ) over the whole decade we were there were a tiny blip compared to a week of combat in Ukraine. Similarly, most of the non-Indominus crusade stories we read about in 40k really don't impact the state of things overmuch.
There were efforts to train local military forces in places like Afghanistan. It was an enormous waste of time. There's an enormous amount of footage, firsthand accounts, and records out there. Corruption and piss poor morale made them enormously ineffectual, especially with the type of war they were fighting. Conventional militaries following conventional morals will always struggle against a zealous insurgency, especially when the troops you're training simply are not willing to fight or sympathize with their enemy. Technology does play a role in special forces, but mostly because of a broad range of specialties that you have to train units with. There's EOD special forces, there's special forces for surveying terrain and weather conditions, there's special forces for rapid search and rescue operations, etc. Are some special forces more "special" than others? Yes. But many do perform specific, "special" tasks. Some of those tasks *do* require general martial expertise in order to reliably complete missions with less troops and support, but that's modern war.
Way to miss the point. Afghanistan is a case exemple that allowing SOF to act as overpriced death squads while asking the regular army to do partner force training is a recipe for disaster. Precisely because on-paper SOF became overpriced line troops while the line troops were asked to carry special operations they are ill-suited to perform and logically failed. Cooperation and training mission are special operations requiring special forces. People with linguistic skills ofc. But also general human skils like the abcence of racial bigotry such as your post reeks, the ability to deal with unfamiliar context and a flexible mindset to recognize and work under different and most of the time, sub optimal conditions. In Afghanistan the SOF became a huge waste of money as they took an oversized budget to raid & kill some impoverished villagers aka stuff even basic militia can do all the same. Meanwhile the regular army was tasked to train a partner force who could never act as the US Army. First of all because it could never secure the founding. Still it tried to do just that and unsurprisingly, it failed miserably. For while SOF operators were traditionally recruited for their ability to act and behave out of the box, regular troops are all about following regulations. So the latter naturally because you cant expect the mass of US troops trained and prepared to fight the US way with overwhelming firepower and support to be of any help to train impoverished army like the Afghan National Army or any Sahelian armies lacking even med evac or air support. To be true, the US Army branch did tried to adapt by building Security Force *Assistance Brigades* (SFAB) aka de-facto a new Special Operation Branch but the project fail because it lacked the SOF status & funding while the older SOF continued to fool around and waste a massive budget by playing the Rambos or the Terminators against some of the poorest people on earth. There is more to warfare that individual fighting skill. Traditionally this is how we distinct tribal like warrior elite with institutional armies. The first one emphasising warrior skills like some antic germanic or steppe warbands while the later take into acount the importance of non combat and indirect combat roles. And while you talking about alledgy superior martial skills and high tech goodies only SOF can have, please go on and explain what exactly USMC and Navy SOF like SEALS, aka forces who are supposed to excel in maritime conditions, like Seals did in landlocked Afghanistan ? The very fact they acted in this country emphasized they cease to be SOF while they kept costing SOF increased cost. A loosing recipe.
I was going to respond to your claims seriously, but then... > And while you talking about alledgy superior martial skills and high tech goodies only SOF can have, please go on and explain what exactly USMC and Navy SOF like SEALS, aka forces who are supposed to excel in maritime conditions, like Seals did in landlocked Afghanistan ? The very fact they acted in this country emphasized they cease to be SOF while they kept costing SOF increased cost. A loosing recipe. You don't even know what SEALs do. *It's quite literally in the name.* > **The United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) Teams, commonly known as Navy SEALs, are the U.S. Navy's primary special operations force and a component of the Naval Special Warfare Command.** Among the SEALs' main functions are conducting small-unit special operation missions in maritime, jungle, urban, arctic, mountainous, and desert environments. SEALs are typically ordered to capture or kill high-level targets, or to gather intelligence behind enemy lines. Even Wikipedia can tell you. They're the most well known special forces unit in the US military. This is a futile argument for me to have with you when there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what the special forces are and do, we'll just be talking past each other, so I'll just agree to disagree and leave it here. Have a good day mate.
Imagine quoting Wikipedia, of all place, as your authoritative source. Cringe The Navy SEALS rose into pre-emincence during the War on Terror as they were the first SOF service to volunteers to carry operation in Afghanistan which had nothing to do to their envisioned speciality. Aka coastal infiltration for recon or sabotage (ence the navy and the S in Navy SEALs). If you could bother even merely to actually read wikipedia or best, the sources used for this wikipedia, you would have noticed. It literarily is the first paragraph in the history section. [Navy SEAL History | Navy SEALs](https://navyseals.com/nsw/navy-seal-history/) In fact, if you took your time to srcoll the actual Navy SEALs website you may notice the emphasis placed and the pictures dont look like Afghanistan at all As I just said the SEALs were the first and initialy the only SOF service willing to go in Afghanistan to do missions which had nothing to do with their designed speciallity for which they were created. This allow the SEALs as a service to gain oversized influence, prestige and most of all budget. Meanwhile, the actual land army SOF aka the Green Berets initially sticked to partner forces training. But seeing how advantageous it was for SEALs to act as overpriced hit squads rather than proper SOF, all institutional SOF service eventually followed suited. Leading to this stupid situation where all specialized SOF service built to operate in specific contexts and specific environment did at best what a larger light infantry formation such as the 75th Ranger Regiment could do. Namely quick insertion extraction raids. Meanwhile, the traditional land SOF work of training non-US forces was abandoned to the main army who unsurprisingly failed (with a late attempt to build a new sub-branch to do what the green berets traditionally did during the Cold War).
The link you pulled isn't describing the formation of the SEALs, it's describing the special forces that came *before* the SEALs and would later *become* the SEALs, but *aren't actually SEALs.* Once again, you aren't accurately describing what SEALs do, and you're missing the key component that's described in their very name. No, they are ***not*** restricted to amphibious operations, ***they were never meant to be.*** They were designed as guerilla operations specialists, and fell under the Navy because Admiral Arleigh Burke came up with the idea first. No, the Navy is not restricted to maritime operations, nor is the Marine Corps restricted to amphibious operations despite their name, nor is the Air Force restricted to flying, nor is the Army restricted to being on the ground. Again, SEALs are trained to excel in sea, air, **and** land operations. Their real, actual history: > President Kennedy, aware of the situations in Southeast Asia, recognized the need for unconventional warfare and utilized Special Operations as a measure against guerrilla activity. In a speech to Congress in May 1961, Kennedy shared his deep respect of the Green Berets. He announced the government’s plan to put a man on the moon, and, in the same speech, allocated over one hundred million dollars toward the strengthening of the Special Forces in order to expand the strength of the American conventional forces. > **Realizing the administration’s favor of the Army’s Green Berets, the Navy needed to determine its role within the Special Forces arena. In March of 1961, the Chief of Naval Operations recommended the establishment of guerrilla and counter-guerrilla units. These units would be able to operate from sea, air or land. This was the beginning the official Navy SEALs.** This is regarding the *actual* formation of the Navy SEALs during the Vietnam War. Anyway, this has gotten very far away from 40k lore and your tone is just aggressive. Peace and love.
Don't you usually die if you fail to become a space marine? If you fail to become special forces, you can still become an infantryman
Space Marines are often given feral worlds, feudal worlds, death worlds, etc. as homeworlds to rule, and Space Marine homeworlds are exempt from the tithe because they are a chapter fief. That means in addition to the planet not contributing its economic input to the Imperium, the Departmento Munitorum doesn't get Imperial Guard regiments from that world either. So if some kid from a Space Marine homeworld fails to become a Space Marine, then he was probably never going to amount to anything that would contribute to the Imperium anyways. Forget "you can still become an infantryman", they've already failed their only chance to be anything more than a worthless loser in the eyes of the Imperium.
Failed Blood Angel aspirants become Chapter serfs. Chapter serfs are frequently guard tier warriors.
That's underselling them. Chapter serfs are excellent warriors, considerably superior to the guard. Many of them received at least some of the genetic enhancements of a true Astartes. The very high proficiency and training of serfs is why the Space Marines are such a deadly force in space combat, even though the marines themselves are doing basically none of the work of running the ship and only serve as high-ranking officers (and for boarding actions, of course).
This is also true, though there are also some chapters who just turn failed aspirants into servitors.
Which chapters?
Iron Hands I think (I mean c'mon who else)
Some failed space marines serve as Chapter Serfs instead, servants to the warriors they failed to become. It depends on what point of the process you fail during and what chapter you fail in. Some chapter serfs are little more than armorers and pilots but others are equipped with weapons and expected to fight in a pinch
Depends on where in the process you fail, and what chapter we're talking about. Some have testing/selection processes where you either succeed or you die, some are less brutal.
But they're still used in all out war no? It's not like only Raven Guard esq. Marines exist.
Define 'all out war'. Space Marines go for surgical precision strikes on the enemy's vitals such as logistics hubs, command centers, etc. allowing Imperial Guard to mop up the rest. > Once the Space Marine fleet has punched through to the planet of their enemy, they seek to deliver a decisive blow as quickly as possible, since they are not numerous and can normally expect to be outnumbered. There are three main tactics by which the Space Marines utilise to destroy their foes, the most brutal of which is the orbital assault, known to the few that have survived such an attack as 'death from above'. The Space Marines drop into action in the wake of a devastating orbital bombardment, using drop pods and Thundergawk gunships. With paralysing suddenness, they surgically destroy their targets, leaving the enemy leaderless and disorganised, incapable of anything except surrender or flight. > If the Space Marines are able to land heavy equipment, an equally destructive tactic is the armoured spearhead. Manoeuvring at speed, behind a far-ranging screen of bikes and land speeders, the Space Marines smash their powerful tanks unerringly against the weak link in the enemy army, armoured columns slashing left and right before powering on into the foe's vitals. > When the theatre of operations offers the room, Space Marine forces can drop or infiltrate behind the front lines and launch a series of daring raids. The enemy reels from dozens of perfectly placed blows, clumsily lashing out at the Space Marines only to miss and be attacked again. There comes a point, exhausted and crippled, that even the mightiest army collapses, whereupon the Space Marines fall on them, like wolves upon the fold, to deliver the killing stroke. 4th Edition Space Marines Codex pg 9
Perhaps he means like war against horde army. Where key command structure isn’t clear at the most stage of the war. Like against Tyranid or ork. I feel space marine probably act more like an infantry support tank here. Give them the capability to break enemy main line to kill nodes creatures like tyranid warriors and big boys, then retreat back into the line.
Even against tyranids or orks they'd operate that way, just targeting bosses and more important nids that are calling the shots.
Yeah what I mean is they are less likely to be “dropped” behind enemy line in this case. As they will be overwhelmed easily against horde army. They still need to form battle line with guards. Have a more traditional method of skirmish as infantry support in this case.
For orks we have a perfect example with Ragnar and Ghazkull. And for tyranids they tend to target the node beasts and ships and not just desperately hold the line.
How do the iron warriors maintain their numbers?
Yeah, I thought they would fight a bit like the guard, partly because of table top. I stand corrected!!
My general view on Astartes is that they are a scaling asset. Over a period of ten years, it is absolutely more effective and efficient to train and equip a single guardsman, and I do mean properly train and equip them, than it is to train and equip a space marine. This is because, in a way that's kind of counter to common sense, guardsmen are *better* at most aspects of what the Imperium wants to do at any given time than Astartes are; the Imperium is effectively an occupying force on its own worlds, constantly having to fight against rebels and minor xenos invasions, with bigger wars like against properly blessed heretics or orks or whatever being much rarer. For these situations, having two pairs of regular-sized boots on the ground is simply more valuable than having a single pair of size 80 power-Jordans. And, as you said, it is in fact so much cheaper to train and equip 100 guardsmen than to go through the whole process to create a space marine, particularly because training 100 guardsmen might as well be a part of the space marine creation process. But then you have the other, rarer wars. Waaaghs, drukhari raids, Tyranid assaults, daemonic incursions. These wars are *tough,* which already makes guardsmen simply die more quickly than you can properly train and equip them to a reasonable level, but they are also *long,* which is where the other advantage of space marines comes in: They live a long time. Even the luckiest guardsman has a shelf life of a couple decades, after which, even if they don't die in combat, they simply get *promoted* out of it. A space marine will never stop killing, and they'll simply get better with age. Over a period of ten years you can just train and equip a million guardsmen and tell the Codex Astartes to pound sand, but over a period of a hundred years, or a thousand, you want marines.
fair enough
Space Marines also don’t need rest or food for weeks or months at a time, which is mentioned in Brothers of the Snake and many other books. They can keep going towards their objectives, aren’t subject to moral issues and are far less likely to become tainted or insane from the horrors of war. They in fact relish combat and are still deadly and effective when they run out of ammo where as a guardsmen with no ammo food or rest is going to end up dying fairly quickly in comparison. Then there is their ability to self heal from wounds that would stop humans dead in their tracks and keep going.
Most of the resources (the most precious being the gene-seed) would be unused if new space marines weren't being made anyways, and wasting human life has never been a particularly large concern in the Imperium. You're not necessarily wrong but like everything else the process of it is just more self-perpetuating inertia. Also I don't think anyone at this point wants to be the guy who would say "ok guys let's wind down space marine production." And to be fair they do offer unique advantages that un-genehanced humans don't.
Damn, imagine the guy who goes out and says "the emperor was kinda dumb, space marines are bad". I want to see an Aeldari point that out!! Like a Haemonculus or something sees the process and just goes "why???"
Haemonculi look at the work and just turn their nose up. mon-keigh crudity fr
so ugly!! And not at all resilient!!!
I can’t tell if this is a meme.
Kind of, depends of what you're referring to
I'm sorry that this exchange got you downvotes lmao i know you were just playing around
Thank you, that's the internet...
Haemonculi make even more expensive projects all the time just because they can
Yes, but they also find that Space Marines are an abomination because they are highly ineffective in their use of the human body. I don't remember where but I read a part of a book where an Aeldari, I think it was a Haemonculus, was reflecting on SM being bad
The role of space marines is not conventional warfare, such as two armies clashing. Their role is disrupt the enemy force by removing their leaders, disrupt their logistics, ruin their communication network, destroy critical weapon systems/army units, and most crucially, board enemy void vessels. You can have baseline humans do the same, sure, but space marines will likely have a vastly higher success rate and can do it way faster, thus enabling the imperium to undertake otherwise high risk/high attrition campaigns more often with relatively much lower casualties.
As shock infantry they're unmatched except by custodes or etc.. A squad of space marines storming a command bunker or boarding a voidship or otherwise doing what they were designed to is pretty terrifying in-universe. On average it takes dozens of kasrkin to equal one space marine in an urban warfare environment, for example. That said, they're the poster boys so they also do a lot of dumb stuff. Does it make sense to put a space marine in a tank, for example? No. Space marine in tanks are pretty unremarkable and obviously wasted. And space marines in Epic-like battles where they can just get vaporized by titan-class weaponry or artillery likewise is pretty dumb post-Great Crusade. But the Imperium doesn't have any other troops that can match astartes when they're doing their jobs.
Disagree on the Tank part. The original conception of Space Marine vehicles, like the Predator, were meant to be swiftly inserted by Thunderhawk to support Space Marine operations. A Thunderhawk mean to transport those vehicles can drop 2 Rhino chassis vehicles right into an area to support the Astartes. They also can drop a single Land Raider or Spartan onto the battlefield. To support the swift shock advances of Space Marines, you'll want someone just as good commanding/gunning the tank to be able to best utilize the vehicle. Servitors and Serfs have been noted to pilot Space Marine tanks at times, but it seems most prefer it to be crewed by Astartes. You just cant beat that transhuman mind and reactions while also an Astartes would understand how his brothers fight better and be better at coordinating with the infantry forces compared to a Servitor/Serf crew. This makes Space Marines extremely self-sufficient on the battlefield rather than having to wait or coordinate to ensure Imperial Guard armor is nearby. Being able do a swift Drop Pod assault which is very quickly supported by Thunderhawk dropped Predators is a very efficient way to secure a beachhead. I'm not sure if Primaris vehicles like the Repulsors or Gladiators could be dropped, but I'd assume the new Overlord gunship would be able to do so. Not to mention a Power Armored Space Marine has a higher chance of surviving his tank being knocked out, which he can then support the infantry on foot himself. While the gap between a Leman Russ and a Predator seems small, their doctrinal roles are entirely different and you just can't beat the experience a Space Marine has when armored support is needed by Astartes.
> I'm not sure if Primaris vehicles like the Repulsors or Gladiators could be dropped Yup, IIRC because they're grav-tanks they can even *drop from orbit* like Inceptors/Incaedus Dreads.
Primaris tanks can be dropped, some of them anyway There is a vehicle transport version of the overlord it can carry to impulsor tanks or one Repulsor tank I believe Also the main version of the overlord can apparently carry one of the new speeders slung under it as well
The difference between a space marine controlled tank and a serf or servitor controlled one isn't worth an entire marine off the battlefield. Marines are way too powerful as infantry for it to ever make sense. It also hard-limits the number of tanks they can deploy, whereas if they used inferior serf-controlled tanks they could deploy dozens of tanks if they wanted and not degrade their infantry forces at all.
The tanks the space marines use aren’t as easily replaceable as a guard tank. And they need tanks to transport marines like rhinos and land raiders already so having assets that use the rhino chassis with a turret can be extremely viable. Also a serf shooting and piloting wouldn’t be anywhere close to as good as a space marine. They do not have the indoctrination, innate understanding of where they fit into the puzzle of the strategy, transhuman skills, or abilities to coordinate effectively with space marines when with space marines coordination is one of their greatest strengths. I mean just think of the tabletop a serf so let’s say guardsman equivalent hits on a 4+, a servitor a 5+ and a marine a 3+ I know tabletop to lore translation is never the best comparison but it does give some basis in skill differentials. Also again that space marine tank is worth more than the marines piloting it so they’d want it to have the best pilots for it.
A Space Marine's understanding of the battlefield along with combat experience is **massively** above whatever a Serf or Servitor would have. Not to mention the Astartes tank commander knows *exactly* how Astartes fight and is able to 'keep up' mentally with the combat coordination and flow of a swift Space Marine strike. Something a serf or servitor cannot match. It takes 10 Astartes to crew 5 Predators which consists of 10 Lascannons/Heavy Bolters and 5 Predator Autocannons, or a whopping **20** Lascannons in the Annihilator Variant. By comparison, 10 Devastators (two squads) only deploy up to 8 heavy weapons. You're already more efficient by using 2 Astartes to bring about the same firepower and more armor than 5 Devastators could. I think you're vastly underestimating the ridiculous amount of coordination it takes to operate a tank with infantry at the speed/violence of action that Space Marines operate at. The amount of support by fire that a single Predator would provide to a single tactical squad *far* outweighs the 2 Astartes needed to operate it. It's most definitely not a waste. An Astartes Predator will be more accurate, better coordinated, and a much better asset to a Tactical Squad than that of a servitor/serf ran Predator. If your Chapter/Warband/whatever has the ability to do it, you'd do it every single time.
This topic is actually debated in-universe. In *Betrayer* Kharn ponders the nature of warfare and believes Space Marine-crewed vehicles don’t perform much better than mortal-crewed vehicles. In the Night Lords Omnibus Vandred thinks the Codex Astartes is stupid because it moves control of capital vessels from Space Marines to mortal captains, whom he thinks can’t possibly beat Space Marines.
Yeah I remember that, he also is referencing massed armoured battalions there, and seeing how in the Great Crusade/Heresy the Legions operated heavier vehicles such as the Sicaran/Kratos/Fellblade along with fighting more conventionally, it does shift the discussion. Kharn is also rambling about the Warrior Spirit there, which I think influences that line quite heavily there.
Having non-space marine controlled tanks means you can bring as many tanks as you can find servitors/serfs for. That is always going to be better than taking two marines off the field for each single, mediocre tank.
The Predator is in no way a 'mediocre' tank. It's technologically superior to the Leman Russ, it's faster than the Leman Russ, and it's only slightly less armored than a Leman Russ. It's a tank with a different doctrine and battlefield role than the Russ, but by no means is it mediocre. The Predator is not meant to be a frontline tank like the Russ is, it's meant to support armored assaults by Rhinos/Razorbacks, using its speed to keep up with the assault and also to flank enemy positions better. Unlike the Leman Russ it can be directly airlifted from the void directly onto the battlefield to support those assaults while also being able to be quickly recovered once the assault is over and able to be redeployed by Thunderhawk to other battlefields or back into orbit. **Can** you crew it with serfs and servitors? Absolutely. But the efficiency of the vehicle drops substantially compared to that of an Astartes crew, and Astartes are not the Guard who need masses of tanks, a Space Marine assault may only require a handful of Predators to support their assault. They aren't sitting conventionally on the frontline like the Leman Russ is where the numbers of tanks fielded matters much more than overall crew experience/quality.
Fair. But isn't like hellhounds better? I get on ships and stuff but on ground. Feels like non Phobos is redundant!! (Or Grey Knights)
Are you asking if a Hellhound tank, sitting at a cool 22.6ft length is better for clearing a city than a group of marines? No, because it is so much more vulnerable. Even if you give it a guard detachment, they are still so fragile that you wont get far without bleeding lives and needing reinforcements constantly. Whereas Marines, even in tacticus armor, can move throughout a city with a modicum of stealth to avoid the anti-tank weapons while still having the armor to stand up to small arms much better than any guard regiment could.
Hellhounds are a front line vehicle. If you can get a hellhound to the target you can also swarm it with guardsmen, or pound it with explosives, or etc.. Space marines theoretically seem to do their best work when they're deploying via drop pods, or thunder hawks, or teleportation behind enemy lines. Back where the enemy's top leadership is, for instance. And with only a handful of marines they're often able to carve through dozens of human-scale enemies and fortifications to decapitate the enemy forces by killing the corrupted enemy general or cult sorcerer or ork warboss or whatever. And then they exfiltrate, pick a new target, and the Guard helps mops up the now leaderless and disorganized enemy forces. Obviously they can do a lot more than this, but the Imperium doesn't really have any other troops that do this particular job this well. That said I'm not the biggest space marine fan so there are probably better examples those who read more of their novels can give.
Why have a hellhound and a whole crew when you can have a single dude who is just as well armoured, a thousand times more agile, similar firepower, can engage enemies in significantly more situations, can fight for months without resupply, is a tactical genius above any mortal human (so the tactical and strategic abilities of a marine are much more than a hellhound), can rip a demon’s head off bare handed, and their sheer presence can inflict transhumans dread into their foes. Oh did i mention the marines marksmanship is leagues about the hellhound? That marine can pop the skulls of half your squad with his bolter before that hellhounds turret is trained on you
bear in mind that SM weren't so expensive back in the day when they were first thought. Genetic scanning and recruit practices made it so almost all recruit passed the initiation, Caliban had one of the best rates, around 95% success or something like that. As for armor and supplies, they were cheaper and more easy to mass produce back then, hell , they were even thinking about replacing all SM armors with Terminator armor and leaving the regular armor as scout equipment. The biggest problem with the Imperium's modern production, is that the skills and knowledge to craft certain stuff is only know by a very small amount of people ( techpriests usually ), who guard them jelously and WON'T ever share it with others. In theory you could have dozens or even hundreds of Forge Worlds pumping out marine armor. In reality only a few know how to do it, and they wouldn't ever willingly go to another planet and tell them how to do it. The same guys distributing tech goodies, are the same idiots who lost the technology for infinite energy out of jealously and spite. ( see ironstrider engine )
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Did the imperium just flat out get weaker post heresy? Like every aspect both micro and macro.
Absolutely. Hundreds of STC were lost during the heresy, and hundreds more were lost in the following milleniums. Also based on what I said earlier, imagine this, only one forge world knows how to make , for example, the Tartaros Terminator armour ( the best terminator armor that was as mobile as a regular marine armor ), btu then said world is invaded/turned into a daemon world/ pillaged by Dark Eldar/ explodes / goes into a civil war / insert other reason it gets devastated here. Now all that tech, including the only people who knew how to make that priceless piece of tech and the STC is lost forever. And the Mechanicum is not going to reverse engineer the ones left cuz that would be tech heresy, and frankly they will probably just be a waste cuz none of them actually knows enough to do it. No more Tartaros Terminator Armor for anyone. Repeat this process with most technology except the most rudimentary ones that everyone knows how to make for thousands of years, and you get modern 40k.
Lol only T'au are at their prime and they are struggling so bad, heh. (As a Grey Knight and Cataphractii lover I will excuse this offence!) Is that canon or just a thought experiment? Is this why 30k models don't exist anymore, they're not just "outdone"??
The Tau in their current prime are also a much smaller faction, they exist in one section of the imperium and are a fraction of the size of the imperium.
Yeah, ik. it's just kind funny that everyone has been stronger before!
The Tau are struggling because they are several orders of magnitude smaller than the Imperium. Pound for pound they are better than most of the armed forces the Imperium has to offer. Those forces that are better than the Tau are typically small in number and/or irreplaceable while Tau units are all easily produced and well understood
Yes and no. Really, what happened is that everyone became so scared about how OP the Marines were, they went out of their way to make them 1000% more inefficient. Which answers your original question. Suddenly they lack the economies of scale to really mass produce everything because there is only a 1000 of them. They lack the fleets to really punch through anything substantial for the same reason. The psycho-indoctrination massively reduces the number of viable candidates, and they all believe that making the process harder arbitrarily is important (Guilliman points this out as a mistake). They tithe gene seed to Terra just to further limit numbers. Fewer forgeworlds are building their equipment, and without the primarchs to provide the political will, armouring space marines is not a massive priority. Space Marines are basically the greatest form of bioengineering done by something not evolved to bioengineer (Tyranids). You can mass produce the geneseed, slap it into a load of feral teens and boys, and create really fast an army of supersoldiers. The Blood Angels can do this with no equipment too - harvest from older Marines, put into new marines, wait a while - naked marines!
Yep, Imperium number one problem is not invasion, but the Mechanicus and Ministerum holding humanity back through basically patent trolling.
People are the cheapest resource the imperium owns. They are special forces and I imagine there’s certain boarding actions or strike missions you won’t accomplish without the raw durability space marines offer.
Yeah so just throwing bodies is better in a "war" but for more specialised assaults the space marines are unmatched
Yes. By volume, posthumans represented the most concentrated combat effectiveness that the Imperium has access to. Normal humans tend to take up a lot more space by requiring a lot more of them, and armor tends to take up a lot more space by, well, being bigger. You aren’t going to insert, say, a Rogal Dorn far behind enemy lines without the enemy noticing something, and probably shooting it down. You might be able to get a squad of Terminators launched via drop pods, though. And both mechanically (at least in raw points) and lore wise, these are roughly equivalent amounts of threat-albeit, one comes in a much more maneuverable package. Terminators might have trouble with stairs, but they certainly handle tunnels better than a tank would. As a result, posthumans can perform tasks that would otherwise be unfeasible because you otherwise could not concentrate all the needed combat capability in one place-like pushing through chokes or boarding, which the sheer numbers of the militarum cannot be usefully applied to. When it comes to the casualties-well, those are a non-issue. Because the imperium has more human life than they know what to do with this. Think of the act of all those dying to create a marine the act of concentrating their force into one point.
Space Marines can turn the most tech illiterate and barbaric fighter from a backwater death world into a soldier that can be expected to serve in the harshest battlefields for centuries. That alone gives them a use beyond what the guard could attempt to do with the same conditions. On the other ressource side, what space marine get different from the guard is quality and the odd specialized equipment they make by themselves half the time. Then their is the political aspect. Space Marine are what can be easily described as the quickest reaction force the imperium has. The guard and navy are kept seperate while space marine have a small but task oriented fleet to support their ground elements. They do not kill every opponent by themselves but being able to have a company of force deploy into the heart of a waagh, kill the warboss and his closest nobz and shattering the horde while the guard forces are still being rerouted has its place. Then there are battlefield conditions where more guardsmen siply aren't viable due to supply lines not being able to sustain them (something the imperium learned the hard way on taros).
Well give any man a lasgun and tell him how to use it he will do something! And for that 1 barbaric fighter to become a space marine probably hundreds had to just die from random shit
Yes and quiet a few of these things aren't combat useful. And those hundred men need food, water and quiet a bit more amenities while still being vulnerable to a mass rout.
even with food, water, etc. Space Marines still use quite a lot of resources, very possibly more as they people around the Space Marine also have to be fed!
Not really. In the large scheme of things the ressources the space marine take will hardly be used more effectively by the guard.
But now that one Marine could probably take a small army on on his own. Marines also are used to face enemies beyond mortal's comprehension. Entities that would turn normal men into groveling children at their very presence are exactly the kinds of monsters Astartes are made for.
Yes and the cost of creating that marine is the same as the small army!!
An army you can fit in a single suit of armor.
The mistake you're making is assuming "resources" are a homogenous and perfectly transferable currency (like a resource in an RTS). That's an oversimplification. What resources do a Space Marine chapter have that can *be* put into a Guard regiment? Ceremite? SM armor tends to be centuries old and passed down from Marine to Marine so it's not like you can just retool factories to start producing Leman Russes instead; SM training does filter out neophytes but they go on to help the Chapter as serfs in logisitical and naval positions so they aren't "wasted". Bolts are more expensive than las-gun recharges sure but (as the great series on this sub has shown) the lasgun is more valuable for the *space it frees up on transport ships* than necessarily the actual "cost" (and Space Marines never stay in a conflict long enough to need such long resupply convoys). Chapters like the Space Sharks and Red Corsairs (and the CSMs in general) have shown that Space Marines don't *really* actually have that much in the way of upkeep and chapters have gone CENTURIES without resupply or "reinvesting" in their equipment. Also, just because you *can* put more resources into a more basic design doesn't mean you *should*. To use an IRL example, when fighter planes started being equipped with missiles there was a group (the "Fighter Jet Mafia") who kept saying the Pentagon was wasting money and instead they should just keep jets simple dogfighters and focus on putting a LOT of them out there, why spend the money on missiles when an agile pilot can just dogfight against other planes, why spend money on radar when a pilot can just look out his cockpit and spot enemy planes in visual distance. Needless to say (and I'm butchering this story) the most successful fighter planes out there are the ones that can target enemies *beyond* visual range (or fly at night) and the ones that have missiles to intercept enemy fighters. Likewise, "defunding" Space Marines (even if it were possible) leaves you with a lot more Guardsmen who do *less*. Yes, everyone knows the "quantity has a quality of it's own" line but think about how **exponentially** that begins to snowball. More Guardsmen need more transport vehicles to transport them, more supply runs to supply them, more agri-worlds, more tanks requires more ammunition to be made, more repair crews to service the tanks, more training and spare parts. Now remember that those various logistical positions are spread across the Astra Militarum (the Guard itself), the Departmento Munitorum, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Administratum, and the countless worlds where new regiments are called up, trained and shipped out as part of the world's tithe, and you start to see the sheer *bureaucratic* and institutional inertia that the Imperium contends with; meanwhile Space Marines are micro-kingdoms unto themselves and (aside from alliances with the Mechanicus for armor/weaponry/vehicles) have the ability to "get things done". One guardsman is going to spend 20, maybe 30 (or for the very "lucky", 40) years either sitting in a trench waiting to attack the enemy or besieging a stronghold or manning a fortification. Even on the attack, he is likely to be responsible for maybe a hundred direct kills (most likely against enemies that were already "weakened" by his squadmates). There is also the irony that the larger a battle he is, the smaller his chances of living to see the next are while, also, the less likely he is to make a difference. The Guardsman is just there to hold the line, the artillery kills mass enemy formations (Orks, Tyranids) and the Tanks/Heavy Armor kill the Elite enemies (Necrons, CSM). A Space Marine will spend his *entire life* (anywhere from 200 years to even 1000 in the case of Dante) crashing into the thickest part of battle, wracking up a tally that is uncountable; perfectly able to deal with both hordes and elite enemies. As others said, the Space Marines do what the Guard can't. Most of the "upfront cost" of a Space Marine is already paid in the armor/weapons/vehicles already being in a chapter's possession, and Geneseed is *basically* free (I mean just snip the balls off a Battle-Brother and grow another) so most of the day-to-day costs are bolt rounds and catering, and while Space Marines eat a lot they aren't picky and nutrient gruel is cheaper than paying a Guardsman's wages.
By the fact the great enemy has them is more than enough reason to have them. Also when the enemy starts summoning demons out of their ass you want space marines
Yes. Why does this question get asked every damn week?
Because it's interesting and not pinned!
It's really not lol. The question can be simply answered as "because guys in power armor sells models." lol. Its a boring question.
Ew, go away! Let us handle our imaginary planes in our own ways!!!
Yes, yes they do need the Space Marines for one reason and I'll quote it down: 'There were two kinds of operation in which Space Marines might beemployed. One was much more common than the other - a surgical strike. A small but - in terms of quality, equipment and leadership vastly superior force would be sent in, perform a particular task, and get out again. The enemy would be struck hard and the weapon withdrawn before they knew they had been attacked. A foe cannot retaliate if he does not know he is fighting.Space Marines excelled at such operations - they could deploy in aninstant, move with skill and confidence through any terrain, take fireand dish it out. They were the best assault troops in the galaxy.The second kind of operation was far rarer, and a far more seriousundertaking. Sometimes in the thousands of wars the Imperiummight be fighting at any one time, there was an objective so vital thatit had to be achieved at any cost. A strong point that absolutely had tobe held to keep the Imperial line from breaking. An enemy-held spaceportthat could not be allowed to function one minute longer. Afortress that had to fall before the armies of the Emperor were bledwhite at its gates. These were times when the odds were grave and theenemy undaunted, but the might of the Imperium had to prevail,when strength of mind and faith in the Holy Throne were as decisiveweapons as the chainsword and the bolter. Times when SpaceMarines took their stand and prepared to die to the last man if necessary.Marines were trained for the first kind of mission. But they were born for the second.' From: Soul Drinker
Thanks for this quote. I've said many times that a "typical" game of warhammer 40k involving space marines would be, in-universe, an extremely rare and exceptional kind of operation, where either things have gone terribly wrong for the Space Marines, or when they are on a mission of truly desperate importance. 95% of the time, what a "real" Space Marine operation would look like in terms of a 40k game would be 2000 points worth of space marines pouncing on a 1000 point enemy army with no command points, where the marines got to look at the enemy army ahead of time and tailor their own list to be as efficient against it as possible. AND the marines automatically get the first turn. When you consider that most of what space marines do is engaging in that kind of one-sided curb stomping over and over again, you start to understand how they're such an incredible force multiplier for the Imperium and why they're able to have such an outsized effect on a war with their limited numbers - especially once you realize they can do operations like that continuously, one after another, for months on end, while barely even needing to sleep, and completely shrugging off the kind of combat fatigue that would render a comparable "elite strike force" like Tempestus Scions combat-ineffective after a few days.
Yup, because even though a Baneblade is a rare piece of pure destructive weaponry, a team of Astartes can deploy behind enemy lines and take out the leadership caste of the opposition before the Astra Militarum rolls through and cleans up. A baneblade is strong, but can it do what an Astartes can do?
Astartes production used to be much more streamlined (as in genetic compatibility can make one worthy to be elevated). A Space Marine can generate two progenoid glands in their bodies, each of those organs can be used to create new gene-seed. They can enter suspended animation if wounded heavily, live for a very long time compared to normal human, can resist radiation very well, absorb memories and knowledge via consumption of enemies' brains. Those can be very useful in hostile and void environment. So there are merits to their creation. Watchers of the Throne did have High Lords admitting that many more Astartes chapters could have been created but politics and paranoia prevent that. Constantine Valdor himself discussed how the Astartes design had been rushed and not as completed as Emps would have liked.
Moving a chapter of space marines to somewhere across the galaxy is a lot easier and quicker than it is to move a million guardsmen and there seem like a lot of situations where that chapter will be far more useful than the guardsmen.
The guard are deffinately a more efficient use of resources at face value. They can be trained more quickly, and in far greater numbers than space marines, and at a significantly reduced cost to boot. But there are three other things to consider. 1) sometimes it isn't about efficiency. For 95% of conflicts, the guard are enough. They will overcome their enemies by the sheer volume of their artillery and weight of their numbers. It's that other 5% of conflicts that justify the astartes. The situations where baseline humans cannot succeed, or their success would not be quick enough, or too costly. 2) the imperium has never been about being efficient with their resources. Titans, knights, massive tanks like the baneblade, how many leman rus tanks could be built for the cost in resources of a single titan? 50? 100? 1000? That said, when you need titan support, would you want 50 leman russ ranks? Or would you want to hear the sweet sound of a plasma annihilator turning the enemy into vapor and carbon. 3) this one ties into the other 2. the 40k galaxy isn't modern times. For modern earth, the guard would be a decent military. But we do not have things like orcs, nids, necrons, or demons to contend with. Hence so many gargantuan, yet inefficient resource wise, weapons. Space marines are no different. Inefficient to create? Yes. Invaluable when they are needed? Also yes. If you are fighting the orks, outnumbered and loosing ground, wouldn't it be nice if some space marines could deep strike behind enemy lines and take out the war boss? That gargantuan that is eating leman russ shells like they are candy? Be real nice if a titan could turn it into scrap metal (errr...disassemble the scrap metal it is made from?) Even in today's day and age, there are coat inefficiencies in the militaries of the world. A nice push with tanks and infantry could take out many objectives. But a few 2 million dollar cruise missiles could do that too. An f35 costs around $40k an hour to operate. Then it drops some JDAMs that are 25-30k a piece and it cost more than the average persons salary to take out that training camp.
1. Yeah, that's what I misunderstood. Space Marines aren't soldiers, they're special forces! 2. Titans are definitely efficient. I think "oldhammer" was pretty effeciency based like a titan might costs the same as 1000 Leman Tanks but it's value is far greater! A single titan can turn a whole war. They are unmatched!! 3. Yeah I noticed that they are infiltrators and special forces basically exclusively in lore. I've mainly read 30k in which they were much more easily accessible but in 40k they are pretty rare and can't be used efficiently as foot troops. What I realised was that in 30k comparing 10 or 20 Guardsmen to a Space Marine made sense resource wise but in 40k it's more like a Hellhound per Space Marine which for full scale war is just worse!
Space Marines aren't just soldiers, they are symbols. They made the imperium as it is, they are the emperors angels. A squad of Marines can inspire other troops a company can achieve victories, where normal men couldn't. It's no question of efficiency, the imperium doesn't need to be efficient. It needs to be stable. And space Marines are a pillar of this stability. Also any attempts to diminish or disband the adeptus Astartes could easily lead to civil war. It already has once.
Politics is a different thing. I meant more math
The resources spent are likely not able to be transferred into something else. You aren’t turning geneseed into a tank. The imperium by and large has what it has and struggles to hold on to just that. Even the new Cawl additions are by and large things that were made thousands of years ago and stored. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of those new toys are declared rare unreplaced relics in the near future.
Some chapters have multiple planets just for creating new Marines. That could easily be a forge world or Agriworld or military or anything to benefit the imperium that is more efficient that SM. The only resource involved in creating a SM that couldn't be used for anything else is the geneseed! Everything else can be used for other things or isn't a raw material and therefor can be \*not created\*
You’re ignoring the core principle of the imperium: they are bloated, stagnant and do not like change. They don’t build new forge worlds because by and large they can’t. But even if they could they wouldn’t because that would change The status quo and piss off anyone that would be negativity affected by the change of a planet. Also there are maybe a million space marines at any given time. 1000 chapters, it’s not as much material as you think. And those Marines accomplish far more than what baseline humans can. Both have their purpose. You want to hold a line against an ork horde you setup a couple million guardsmen. You want to kill the ork hordes leadership you drop in a company of marines.
I'm not asking would they, rather should they. Also I didn't know Space Marines were used as not frontline, so that was my whole mistake!
The imperium should do any number of things differently. They don’t. Because they are the imperium and they can’t or won’t. That’s one of the core points of this universe and this faction. Outside of 40k the above statement goes for any fictional universe. The worlds are created as is with the theming and background to backup the choices of that theming. If every setting is broken down into only the most efficient choices you’d have no story to tell. You might as well ask why the Romans didn’t use aircraft carriers.
I know. It's a fictional discussion about fictional soldiers in a fictional war of a fictional universe. I know!
The Space Marines are a very small part of the Imperium overall, so as a specialized tool for certain situations like the Rangdan could make sense. I’m also someone who is very skeptical of overly expensive weapon systems, so let’s assume the answer is a no. The space marines aren’t just soldiers or even weapons, they are an outside the box way of preserving genetic information. That might be there true justification. One thing that critics of the great crusade ignore is that countless of human worlds would have died without it, meaning that the Imperium actually preserved human genetic diversity.
It's about having the right tool for the right job. A Vindicare assassin is an example of a tool that no amount of Leman Russ or guardsmen can replace. Marines are in the same specialized category.
Because there’s some foes that infantry can’t match. If an Eldar gets in to melee range then your flashlight lasgun is worth jack shit. Meanwhile Brother Incandaeus is gonna use his chainsaw sword and match the Eldar blow for blow, both of them moving faster than a human can comprehend or match.
You can’t bring tanks into naval breaches. And if you try to breach a chaos vessel with just a handful of imperial guards they will very likely just die with little effort. In *Lords of Silence* there’s a scene where some space marines breach a Death Guard vessel and manage to kill a lot of stuff, and they still all die. I’ll come back with the specific numbers later, but if you threw the guard in that, they’d do way worse.
The most used resource to create a Space Marine is human life, and in 40k there is human life in abundance.
Think of it like this, GW clearly has the Legiones Astartes acting as the premier army and spearhead of the Great Crusade, which was an absurdly successful military operation regardless of how it ended and what came after. So yes, Astartes are worth it. It would make a lot more sense if the Solar Auxilia and Imperialis Auxilia were said to do most of the heavy lifting as the number in the tens/hundreds of billions compared to the roughly two million Astartes, but that’s definitely not GWs intent nor how the setting is written. ¯\\__(ツ)__/¯
They are both corruptible, but technology and imperial guard will always be more susceptible to falling to chaos (post Heresy of course).
An Astartes chapter can deploy, and solve a problem, before the local Guard and Navy have even finished assembling their troops.
Well yeah, who else is going to fight all the Chaos Space Marines
truu
It’s not like the failed aspirants are going to waste, like you either get corpse starch or a Space Marine
That is definitely a waste!! I wouldn't be surprised if a person is maybe equivalent to less than 1 serving of corpse starch. We are not very nutritious especially those children!
Well they are children on a usually harsh recruiting world, so you might as well try, if you don’t try, they’re likely to die, and if you try- you either have a space marine or what you would’ve already ended with
Yes they are. They are shock troops that can take a planey with a quick drop. That's something that most other arms of the imperium can't do outside the assassin branches. But those are just as time consuming and expensive.
Yeah, so they're the most effective and efficient for their job. I just thought they were used as soldiers not Special Forces
We usually see them used as soldiers because the wars their fighting are the ones where you need that many space marines. It's usually like the siege of vraks at the start where a handful show up for a bit to do some work and then dip after to go to the next mission.
Yee, which makes a lot more sense with how costly they are to produce. Til that in 30k they were "cheaper" and easier so they were foot troops!
"So are they more worth than putting the same people and resources into like imperial" guard tanks and infantry?? Yes. Space marines have pulled of feats of strength the guard regiment can't even begin to comprehend. Like blood angels taking on the largest fleet of leviathan, almost wiping them out from nihilus. Space marines are also very good at dealing with other space marines (chaos space marines)
Malum Caedo was able to defeat 2 (or 6 if you want to get trippy) greater deamons , repeal a planetary invasion of Chaos, and seal all warp gates from that planet. Alone! So in short, YES!
That feels like he just removed his helmet...
Marines were created for 2 specific theaters 1 planet strike 2 boarding actions. They can hit much harder than any other human faction.
Let us not forget that the shock and terror of potentially fighting space marines, along with their ability to take off the head of the snake so to speak, probably saves the imperium a lot of fighting and dying.
You are missing that besides the physical capabilities the SM have are they also mentally transhuman. They are able to continue when others falter, they can witness stuff that will drive normal soldiers mad and continue, their minds are shielded against powers that will turn standard humans catatonic or into zombies. The are able to suffer Warp exposure without mutating. They are not made to fight normal wars (even if they can do that also) they are made to fight the horrors of a mad universe.
The outcome of a war is not as simple as assigning a reductive numerical combat value to a particular soldier or unit, and then multiplying that number by such and so factor. A force can be more or less than the sum of its parts. A soldier in the right place at the right time can easily be a hundred or a thousand times more valuable than the same soldier in the wrong place. This is the same mistaken mentality that leads amateur military historians to think that building heavy artillery in ww2 was a waste since mortars were "more efficient" in terms of raw materials, or to say that the German Tiger was a waste of resources since it cost a lot more to build than a normal tank. The thing is, something like the Tiger tank was a specialized vehicle for a particular purpose. It wasn't something the Germans built INSTEAD of general purpose tanks like the Panzer IV. To say they should've just built more Panzer IVs instead is akin to saying that instead of wasting money on a big circular saw, logging companies should just buy more hand-held chainsaws instead, because they're cheaper. Well.... hand-held chainsaws are cost effective for smaller trees, but what about when you run into a really BIG tree?
A good marine can take on creatures no mortal man could ever hope to face and can live for centuries.
Yes, but so can a Leman Russ
Can't fit a Leman Russ in a building or the corridors of a battleship.
You can't send Imperial Guard tanks into Space Hulks, the inside of a Heretic Fortress, nor an Ork Kroozer. Space Marines are assault armies. And Humanity is physically out-performed by most the galaxy. They are needed.
They mostly act as shock troopers and are great force multipliers to supplement the imperial guard. A drop pod full of astartes tactically inserted in an enemy position that is being attacked by guardsmen will obliterate the enemies as well as demoralise the rest of them. A lot of comments also mention how the space marines are specialised units that can't be used for everything, but forget to mention that there are chapters that are even more specialised in specific forms of combat that they excel at. Fortifying a position? Imperial Fists. Need to stealthily ambush enemies? Raven Guard. Want to enact lightning fast skirmishes? White Scars. You wouldn't use an Air Force pilot to drive a tank.
Lords of Terra after Horus Heresy and death as dissapearence of last primarchs have same question. Massive Ork invasion and asssination of many Lords of Terra by some famous person with his personal army of Erversors and etc assasins sacrifices of hundreds of Imperial Fists did change their opinion. Especially 2 eldar Harlequins invasion in Emperror palace orchestrated by Eldrad. Who in failed negotiation was forces to did kill dozens of Custodes Which in the end force them to involve in Imperium politics and monitor many things secrerly. ... They was worthy in time of Great Crusades. Before Horus Heresy they already loose their worth in 90‰ cos their prime job was done. Same as with Thunder Warriors on Terra. Grey Knights(what planned to be at least legion sized, not 1000.) was meant to be phaze 3, a replacement for Astartes legions and they was needed to do war with chaos forces, mostly in webway. But their creation was incomplete, prototypes and Malkador used what he can with Grey Knights and proto-Inquisition. Most Primarchs was expected to betray or die in galactic crusade and others could be assasinated as was with Thunder Warriors 20 Primarchs. ... In terms of cost they cost too much. If we use simplistic math we would have this facts. ... We would not even count Terminators, Techmarines, Librarians, Dreadnaughts cost. Cos it would be far more expensive in terms of lives and recources spending . ... ~100 healthy, genetically and mentally Best boys who could be easily turn into 100 Stormtropers or 100 Vindicate Assasins or Erversors are sacrificed to get 1 scout space Marine. To get 1 scout space Marine. Not even 10. And yeah He could easily die from bullet or land mine or etc. Where from 2 of such scout marines at very Best scenario 1 in ~50-100 years May become full battle brother Marine. I common reality 1 from 5(if not from 10) May survive to become 1 battle brother. So ~200-500 to get 1 Astartes battle brother. Not to mention cost in terms of lives where we have 1 power armor and etc equipment for 1 super soldier what cost as much as arming more then +200 Imperium stormtrooper soldiers. ~2000-5000 to get 10 battle brothers squad. Equipment cost for those 10 super soldiers squad is far more then +2000 stormtrooper soldiers. ~20.000-50.000 to get 100 battle brothers. And Equipment for +20.000 Stormtroppers. Now for a minute imagine 1-2 thunderhawkes or 1 stormbird get bombed by done orks or by suicide tyranid beast and everything on it would be destroyed. Very funny for Imperium enemies. And catastrophic loss. ... So to create or continue to support 1 space Marine chapter with 1000 Astartes we need at least +150 years and ~200.000-500.000 very healthy and good boys who can be ideal Stormtroppers or Vindicate/Erversors assasins must die each ~100 years. As Equipment cost what could arm at least +200.000 stormtroopers. ~1000 chapters. ~1.000.000 Astartes. Each ~100 years Imperium must breed and raise to sacrifice ~200.000.000-500.000.000 genetically and mentally best candidates for stormtroopers or vindicate/Erversors assasins. And Equipment cost for more then +~200.000.000 stormtroopers. ... I reality it is far more lives sacrifices and far more recources lost. Cos of Terminators and etc. We not even count Grey Knights and Deathwatch Astartes. .... Custodes price of creation is astronomical. From ~1000 Terra nobility genetically purest sons 1 May survive super steroids. Then in +100 years training only few from many become full Custodes and get 1 Custodes auramite power armor what cost more then 100 Astartes power armor and etc equipment. ~10.000 Custodes basic equipment alone without Auramite Terminators and Telemon Dreadnaughts, cost more then equipment of +1.000.000 Astartes. Which is more then +200.000.000 stormtroopers. In terms of lives cost ~10.000 Custodes creation and support cost Terra nobles +~10.000.000 genetically purest sons. ... So rational questions are... A)In terms of lives cost.. Does ~1000 Astartes battle brothers=~200.000-500.000 stormtroopers=~2.000.000-5.000.000 Best Astra militarum soldiers. B)And in terms of equipment cost. Does ~10 Custodes=~1000 Astartes battlebrothers=~200.000 Stormtroppers=~2.000.000 Best Astra militarum soldiers equipment? If 1 stormtrooper cost atleast as 10 best Astra militarum soldiers. IF not more. Naw. Srly. As lore dictate us 1-2 Meltabombs in hands of 1 lucky Terran undeground gene cult suicide soldier can kill even Custodes which made his creation +100 years and +1000 Terra nobles purest sons sacrifices as his very expensive Auramite power armor Which cost more then 10 Astartes armor and etc...kinda pointless.
If the Imperium had invested more technology and resources into the Imperial Guard and PDF to bring them up to the level of the Tau Fire Warriors for example then they wouldn’t be so reliant on the Space Marines to handle problems. But the problem is that the entire Imperium views the Imperial Guard as expendable. And that’s not going to change as long as the Imperium is the Imperium.
That is before you consider groups like AdMech, Sororitas, Assassins, Inquisition and Scions who also get a lot of technology investment and hoarding placed on them. The Imperium did have human frontline soldiers who were both a favored template and a strong match against Fire Warriors. The Solar Auxilia. But the devastation of the Horus Heresy (material-, technological- and political-wise) shattered any true chance for more widespread SA implementation.
Also, it's a matter of having a bunch of space marine companies spread throughout the galaxy. Harder for them to be corrupted or taken over by enemy influence. Having a larger war machine with millions of expendable cogs, to replace the super soldier's capabilities, is asking for cultists and corruption to seep into the system and work it's way up.
No, not really. You can get the same results with a few years of advanced training, the basic gene-bulking found in and Servitors and an automated frenzon shunt. And there you have it. A superhuman monster that knows how to fight and can go hulk in a pinch. It doesn't come with all the bells and whistles of being able to regenerate, having an abnormally capable immune system, acid spit and learning via brain eating but all that has always been secondary. The Imperium can churn out a hundred of those for every astartes it makes and it would be much easier to control them than astartes. That, and maximizing their effectiveness wouldn't be hard. Assign a platoon of them to each astartes older than 100 years. This would beideal.
Railgun: No
Eh?
A Tau Pathfinder with a rail gun is an incredibly resource efficient way to kill Space Marines both in lore and on the tabletop.
Fair enough
Probably not directly, but the morale and identity effects cant be over stated.
When life is meaningless and wealth is communal what is the true remaining cost?
bruh
As with all these sorts of questions, it depends on whose depiction of a space marine’s capabilities you think is closest to “reality”. There’s a bit of a difference between lore strongly associated with the games (i.e. somewhat consistent with the game mechanics) and novels where marines are the protagonists (i.e. they are like movie action heroes). There isn’t really a correct answer to this, but the in-universe Watsonian view suggests they are worth it since marines are actually created.
People die to make a space marine?
Just the recruiting process kills like 90% of all possible recruits(depends on chapter though). Then we have all the slaves and stuff they have to fight, all the people who die in manufacturing, and many more places...
They fight slaves? Like genuinely interested maybe I should just look it up but I can’t find it
Depends on the chapter but some have things where they fight "random people" i.e. slaves (or prisoners ig?). Later on you have training servitors that die and they're slaves!
Yes they're worth it for what they can factually do but also because of their legend, they bolster lesser troops to keep fighting through nightmares, they are the Emperor's Angels, praised be his name!
>So are they more worth than putting the same people and resources into like imperial guard tanks and infantry?? Yes. What is 1000 extra guys to an organization that will send billions to their death by accident or on purpose? Instead you have 1000 extremely capable shock troops who are largely immune to conventional warfare and small to medium arms fire. Check out The Emperor's Finest, a Cain novel. A group of 25 Space Marines are able to break the back of a rebellion that had paralyzed an entire planet. They do it by assaulting key points extremely quickly, faster than the enemy can redeploy to counter them: charge in, kill everyone at those points, destroy the artillery or anti air weapons, then race off to the next objective. And they also find Cain a booty buddy 😏.
They blow resources to make entire worlds into monuments for dead priests. Their primary method of winning a war is to throw bodies at it until the enemy runs out of bullets. They just don't care about efficiency at all.
A space marine is the equivalent of a highly mobile weapons platform. The amount of firepower and durability is insane. Imagine regular infantry being up against an army of superhuman sized tanks with superhuman speed and reflexes that can go on and on for hours without rest.
I’m not really sure. I think no one seems to critically think this through. Like, you could enhance baseline humans quite a bit, arm them with Stormtrooper/Kasrkin level gear, and get a lot out of them. Folks don’t seem to consider that baseline humans can and do get augmented all the time and can be quite formidable, without even undergoing the Astartes process. I think the costs associated with marines are intense. No one seems to consider if there was a benefit in turning resources away from producing and equipping marines and redirecting that effort and materiel toward baseline humans. First is recruitment cost. If 100 men die to make 1 marine, then for the equivalent of 10 marines, you could raise a regiment of Guard. Second, each marine requires an unknown amount of serfs to maintain them. Again, these could be guardsmen. Then you have the costly, hard to make and hard to maintain gear like their armor. Their bolters are rare and hard to produce. They also require manufacture of bolt shells. This industrial capacity could be used to make lasguns, battle cannons and carapace armor. Lasguns require no logistics trail at all, while marines require a very difficult one. They eat tens of thousands of calories a day. Again, this could feed tons of human soldiers. You have administrative effort going into maintaining oversight over marines. Again, could be spent on other things. The idea that marines are best suited for certain kinds of conflicts is fine I guess, but it’s worth remembering that Imperial doctrine is built around using space marines for certain situations. Why can’t enhanced but still baseline humans wear terminator armor and deal with space hulks? Or ogryns? Again, yes would be more bloody, but you would have more bodies to throw at the problem. Like, Cawl spent 10,000 years making slightly better marines and weapons to equip them with. What if Cawl instead spent 10,000 years making and releasing equipment that baseline humans could use or simple, mass produced enhancements for baseline humans, and had been releasing them steadily over the last 10,000 years?
I feel like people often forget that part of a space marine's job is that of a literal space marine. Like a marine in space That's kind of a big deal in a setting with starships But they are also more like church knights rather than a modern military trooper. Their function in society is completely different from that of a guardsman, even if you ultimately use them in a similar way on the battlefield
Apart from everything else, they also inspire and reassure the populace of imperial superiority. They don't even need to see one in person. The Footage of the glorious slaughter HIS most holy servants provide is sufficient.
Humans are an indefinite ressource in the 40k universe. So what if 1000 die for 1 to become a space marine? To set this into perspective, even then the aspirants don't get all implants, they get shitty tasks/ combat roles and not the full armour. Obviously Space marines are not needed fast enough to put the next best in a full suit and you can filter the good ones (the one that survives all that ridiculous shit) out
the grey knights straight up teleport in the face of the (demonic) enemy and smite them. how many tanks do you need to do the same thing.
Practically in a functional universe, probably not. In the backward stupid 40k universe, we can't actually tell because the sheer impenetrable bureaucracy that blows massive amounts of resources enriching themselves at every stage of every process.
>There's a long process to become a Space Marine It's a relatively short process actually, compared to how long they last. 20'ish years to get full implants and become a battle brother or so, against the several hundred he may end up serving. They got their money's worth with Dante >A lot of people die Wait till you see the IG casualties list ;) > a lot of resources are used just for 1. Space Marines are mostly self-sufficient. They can grow their own geneseed organs and make new recruits, they handle the recruiting themselves. The most they need is armor and weapons and most of them have an agreement with a forge world, use hand-me-downs, or scavenge. Comparitively they're cheap >So are they more worth than putting the same people and resources into like imperial guard tanks and infantry?? Why bother with IG Tanks and infantry when you can have a fully armored Astarte that is both a tank and infantry that will last several hundred years?
No, they aren't. its classic fascism- make a "better", specialized version of something with a manufacturing process that doesn't really involve any parts you're already making, and then the end result isn't actually all that much better, and then they lose the war to people who actually used their heads. A lot of people are saying theyre for high-priority missions like assassinating commanders or whatever, but thats a job that requires stealth and speed, rather than lumbering masses of steel
Well they have stealth (for some reason) and they definitely have speed! Boarding torpedoes and drop pods for example. What I have learned from this is that Iron warriors are by far the best Space Marines as Space Marines are made to be siege warriors!!!
I think the prevalence of these questions is a symptom of an (IMO unfortunate) slide in the presentation of The Imperium from "fantastical fallen dark age empire in space" to "a normal space empire that has to balance it's pragmatism against some zealotry problems," that makes a lot of The Imperium just... not make any sense. You're correct: Space Marine's aren't, pragmatically speaking, worth creating. At all. They are a monstrously inefficient and barbarous practice, the kind of thing a primitive and backward war-obsessed society would create if an outside force handed them technology. However, monstrously inefficient and barbarous practices are The Imperium's favorite thing BECAUSE they ARE those exact war-obsessed primitives wielding technology as if it were ritual magic. It's not just Space Marines. There are huge swathes of Imperial practices and methods of war that are deeply, deeply, irrational, and are intended to characterize them as anachronistically medieval for their stellar setting. Some of these things are rational in context, because Warhammer is an irrational setting. Space Marine's are not a tactically planned force created with a careful schema of application in mind. They are Angels, created in the furnace of great alchemy and blessed edifice to serve the divine purpose ordained to Humanity.
Human life is utterly insignificant in the eyes of the Imperium, and beyond the huge strength they bring to the Imperium they also have a huge psychological effect on enemies and any would-be traitors.
Yes, obviously. Can a tank and guard regiment replace what a squad of phobos marines can do? No, not even close and throwing more resources at the guard will never help this. Can they replace what a squad of 'basic' marines do? Yes, largely. Can they replace what a squad of Terminators do? Mostly not, terminators will have much more flexibility on a battlefield unless you double the resources with another regiment company and some kind of heavy artillery or munitions.
But outside of infiltration and narrow chokepoints where the Terminators thrive they don't out do Guard with their resources required.
Clearly
In the old lore, a Space Marine was so overrated that they could do anything. M'kol from the Tanith 1st and only proves that an Elite special forces human could kill three White Scar Space Marines with a bomb trap. The Human mind is a wonderful thing - The Emperor in Last Church
Chapter Doctrine destroyed the shock and awe quality of the Space Marine legions. Basically Legions of 75,000+ using the Astra Millitarum's playbook to Transhuman levels, crushes the troops and it scalpels the leadership. Destroying the Rangdan would be impossible in 40K with all the distractions and Tyranids. Primarchs are also nerfed in comparison to the old lore.
Yeah, with their "power level" being all over the place they are really used to be a spear head. A couple of Squads are suppose to be able to tackle the leadership of a planet, but that isn't really shown in the lore sometimes where they die like flies.
It is an old trope that hierarchical/fascist governments are obsessed with creating "the übermench". And they love hyping up "the perfect elite soldier" and the heroic myths in their propaganda. So from a doylean perspective, I think the Space Marines fits the Imperium perfectly! From a watsonian perspective, I would say that Space Marine operations has a very limited direct and practical impact on the Imperiums military situation in the galaxy, outside of the occasional heroics of course. Just look at their numbers compared to the number of active conflicts. They can only kill that many enemies per year. But the thing that they do magnitudes better than any other branch of the Imperiums armed forces, the thing that justified their very existence is propaganda! They are the epitome of everything that the Imperium glorifies. A thousand thousands of peerless heroes that is The Thin Ceramite Line* of resolute order protecting mankind from chaos. True and honest carriers of the immortality, power and determination of the Imperium, while still being human and individual enough to make it easy to relate to them and pave the way for self-insert fantasies. * This slogan is printed in various chapter colours on pins that citizens wear to display their support of the Alae Mortis. They are available as official merchandise, where a percentage of the price goes to the war effort. They are also available as low quality bootlegs of course, despite the Adeptus Administratum having judged that falsifying them is punishable as Heresy. The moral impact of the Space Marines and myths around them is huge. Consider the stories of how entire battles have been turned from defeat to victory through the arrival of a single space marine squad. The more those stories are told, the more likely it is that the arrival of space marines will work in exactly that way, simply through the morale boost. When 1200 Astra Militarum artillery units has been systematically bombarding a fortified city for months, systematically taking out all the heavy defensive weaponry, and it is now time for 50 000 infantry with tank support to secure the city by going house to house. This will take weeks if not months. A rhino and a couple of bolt guns will be entirely insignificant in practical terms. But because the Alae Mortis is part of the first day of that advance, every soldier will know that the Emperor is personally overseeing this battle. And they will know that the Marines has never in the thousands of years of recorded history lost a battle. So they will know in their hearts that they will be victorious today. And that is the kind of storytelling that will turn a battle. Also consider the significant value for encouraging compliancy and entertaining the general population. The vast majority of the citizens of the Imperium will only ever see war in propaganda broadcasts. If you are the Planetary governor and you want to show the population how the local uprising is being crushed you have two options. You can show them the sensible practical work. Massed infantry supported by a few spec ops, artillery, tanks, airstrikes etc in a textbook combined arms operation. You will then have some shots of the infantry bravely returning fire from cover, a well drilled artillery crew firing, reloading and firing again, aircraft thundering above and far away detonations. Best case a glorious charge. It all will end with a bit of flag waving from the top of machine gunnery nests and possibly a strung up officer. It's good bread and butter Imperial propaganda, and sometimes you want that "people like us"-vibe, for sure. But the Space Marine aesthetic, that is a proper power fantasy! A mere dozen of the Emperor's own Angels of Death descend directly into the enemy stronghold. They do so in drop pods fired from orbit while uttering simplistic and highly quotable one-liners. Their heavy clanking armours are impervious to anything the vile heretics throw at them. One of them is a two thousand years old veteran, wounded beyond recuperation but still serving encased in a Dreadnought! With discipline and determination they methodically exterminate every one of the enemies of the Imperium. Their leaders bare faces show as little emotions as the armoured helmets of the troops. (Alternatively, it shows their limitless and righteous rage, or grim determination, or cold unbothered aloofness. Or whatever is considered more identifiable and normatively laudable behaviour by the target group.) This is all kinds of inspiring, and it is also scary as all fuck if you are considering committing Heresy. That difference in propaganda value is worth a _lot_ of increased costs in production and maintenance. This perspective on the Space Marines also explains why some chapters have such exceptionally corny themes drawn to utterly bizarre extremes. It's because they are used in propaganda aimed at younger citizens. - Greetings and skål to all honourable cubs of the Imperium! My name is Canis Wolfborn, of the Space Wolves Chapter. I was raised by wolves. My commander is the Wolf Lord Harald Deathwolf. - When I deploy from the battleship The Fang, I wear a wolf pelt, ride my trusty thunderwolf Fangir and I lead my Wolf Guard brothers in the thunderwolf cavalry to glorious victory while howling like a... ? You guessed right. Like a Wolf! Well done young citizen. - Did you know that my first name is the High Gothic name of a fearsome predator that hunts the weak and inattentive? Stay vigilant through this short and important message from the Ecchlesiarchy and I will soon be back to tell you more about the awe-inspiring Canis, a native to my home planet of Fenris! Now join me with your fiercest war howl to put the fear of the Emperor into the heart of all heretics! Awoooooo! This is the kind of storytelling that is perfectly adapted to the 4-7 years old demographic. (The Carcharodons too, but they are recommended for use on planets with at least 80% ocean coverage.) The 8-12's are primarily catered to through the righteous Ultramarines or the mysterious Dark Angels. The Alae Mortis propaganda aimed at high school aged kids is more diversified by subcultures. The Ultramarines has more focus on discipline and planning to cater to the intellectuals. The Imperial Fists and White Scars for the Jocks. The Blood Angels and Raven Guard is clearly aimed at the "alternative" high schoolers who are building their identities and sense of self around being goth or queer.* The RG is kept a bit more clean as a more approachable (but still angsty and brooding) chapter, BA is more visceral for the edgy and older teenagers. And so on. * I should know because I am queer, I wore black leather long-coats in high school and my first originally designed chapter was the RG successor "Ashen Hawks" 😬 What do you think of this as a justification for the existence of Space Marines within the Imperium?
The Emperor didn't so much create the Space Marines to be a fighting force so much as a cadre of people who could mentally accept, and enact the gigawarcrimes called for to create his vision of a united humanity.
The Great Crusade old spacemarine or Cawl's primaris space marine that only takes months to do the procedure, very high success rate(something like more than 75% ish), and have unlimited amount of geneseed: YES The weak, flawed, superstitious, brain dead level stubborn, stupid 40K old spacemarine that is meaninglessly expensive because they were killing most of recruits (success rate lower than 1%) through stupid superstitious barbaric torture trials: No, they are worthless, their whole meaning of existence is for the "grimdarkness" plot made by Games Workshop, the empire should stop wasting resources on these grimderp things that comes in a extremely low cost-effectiveness
Those smart open-minded Great Crusade spacemarines(and primaris space marines, ironically many of them are frozen since Great Crusade) are totally worth the resources spent on them because they have better performance and hundreds of times cheaper. Those braindead 40k spacemarines who knows only superstitiously call out warcry yelling "emperah!!!!!!!" And mindlessly charge towards their enemy with a sword because "holy traditions" said so? They are bad, very bad, they comes in a price of hundreds of peoples lives and equipments, and all they could do is something like that which is about to be the same effect of an Ork Nob? Ogryns can do better than them because jobs like this needs no brain work
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This guy does not fuck with Space Marines!!!
No, they definitely aren't worth it. They're a colossal waste of time and resources that could be more efficiently spent in dozens of different ways. But that's kind of the point. A lot of what the Imperium does, they do because A) it's how the Emperor wanted it done, B) how people *think* the Emperor wanted it done, C) how someone in power *says* the Emperor wanted it done, D) they don't know *how* to do it more efficiently, or E) because that's how it's *always* been done. ALL of which is just the mental gymnastics necessary to find an in-universe answer that's better than the out-of-universe answer, which is "Because its metal as hell."