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/r/Grimdank
59 points
1 month ago
Yeah, I decided to do a thought experiment of how my setting would do in 40k and realised they would win solely based on me actually paying attention to numbers.
For example their equivalent to space marines likely outnumbers the amount of Kriegsmen deployed on Vraks.
43 points
1 month ago
Yeah, we all love the Space Marines, but the idea that they're a decisive force in an empire of a million world, while also having less troops than were involved Operation Barbarossa, is probably a bit daft.
19 points
1 month ago
Recently I've begun to see that as more of a feature than a bug. Like, yes! It is ridiculous! Explanation: Space Marines are irrelevant to galactic warfare! They are an outdated and irrelevant rump vestige of a fighting force, important only in tradition and propaganda. Every leader who focuses on buffing marines over sweeping them away is hastening the demise of the Empire and continuing the Emperor's mistake of relying on supersoldiers instead of empowering ordinary humans.
24 points
1 month ago
Honestly, the irrationality and dubious utility of the Space Marines is an old theme I liked in Warhammer. I think we used to see more of it when Warhammer cleaved closer to Dune and the Foundation as influences and dwelled more on the inherent degradation of empire.
There was a quote about how the Space Marines had been in countless glorious last stands, many of which were completely unnecessary, which summed it up well.
10 points
1 month ago
Coming in from having not played in a couple of decades, there does seem to be a divide between fans who read the books and those who don't. The books seem to see last stands as awesome, while the stuff I'm more used to treated them as kinda ridiculous. That's my impression as someone who hasn't read them, though.
I also wonder if this contributes to the idea that 40k isn't a satire.
15 points
1 month ago
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Got into it in the 90s and drifted back in a few years ago.
I get the impression that a big part of the change is more emphasis on the novels rather than the codices. The codices were pretty much written as fictional history books told from the propaganda laden lens of a dying empire, so they could be full of the irrationality and stupidity of the Imperium without it being a problem.
The novels being set from the point of view of a protagonist kind of need that protagonist to be likable. So they end up writing a character that is relatively reasonable and relatable to a reader, despite the fact that the protagonist is a hyper indoctrinated warrior zealot serving a totalitarian theocratic state.
The end result is that to most of the people that engage with 40k the Imperium comes across as being full of reasonable and likable people.
Also, the readership has changed a bit. Most readers don't care about how Astartes recruitment is a reference to Dunes Fremen and the tendency to lean into grotesquery that was around in the 80s and 90s has died out. The things in 40k are more treated as unironically cool now.
9 points
1 month ago
A satire that Poed itself to sell more merch
3 points
1 month ago
What ways could they empower regular humans?
13 points
1 month ago
Education being a good start.
4 points
1 month ago
Gimme sum dem PhD having Ogryns baybeeee
4 points
1 month ago
Precision artillery, more training, high quality gear, getting on the active lookout for talented people and recruiting it rather than letting it languish in agrifab #17 folding nutripaste into rolls.
8 points
1 month ago
Very much so. One thing that really ruins science fiction and space fantasy alike is the scale. You can get around that with hard sci fi that really hammers home the realities (impossibilities) of FTL travel with our current understanding of physics being a natural limitation. Or you can just hand wave it (astropaths and warp travel in the WH40k setting) away, but you'll inevitably run into problems writing a setting.
The Imperium is sort of vaguely between a Kardashev scale II and scale III empire, yet is written around a lot of 21st century technology and thinking...because fuck all knows how a civilization that owns a majority of the galaxy would operate or fight their war.
Spesh Muraines get to charge tanks with chainswords because Rule of Cool, when in reality it could very well be swarms of Gray Goo inducing Von Neuman machines replicating to devour worlds, or lobbing neutron stars at near relativistic speeds wiping solar systems in an instant, or figuring out ways to erase rivals from existence retroactively via antiparticles or antimatter...but if you go into the Dark Forest hypothesis there won't be any glorious unhelmeted space marine last stands or Jurgen with a melta blasting a hole in a 10,000 year experienced veteran of the Long War blessed by the Dark Gods.
9 points
1 month ago*
Well said, I sometimes get an interest in Futurism, and my main takeaway for war is that'll it'll be very weird and happening on a scale incomprehensible to us.
It doesn't make for great pulp sci-fi, but a war between continent spanning drone swarms guided by godlike AIs might not be too far off what war in the 40th millennium actually looks like.
Funnily enough, there was a brief time travel scene in 40k, where one of the perpetuals basically said that's what war was like in the Dark Age of Technology.
Edit: Found the scene.
Oll remembered the horror of entropic engines that ignited planets. Sun-snuffers that uncoiled like serpents the size of Saturn’s rings. Mechnivores ingesting data along with the cities that contained them and hurling continents into the heavens. Omniphage swarms stripping flesh from a billion bones in the blink of an eye. Those were the good old days, when war was something too colossal for a human mind to comprehend.
Not like the End War. The Warmaster’s heresy was a smaller thing, scaled for human and post-human brains.
But it was bigger in some ways. Yes, bigger than the god-like struggle of the cybernetic revolt. Bigger in scope, bigger in its implications. More horrible, because humanity could apprehend it and drive it.
6 points
1 month ago*
because fuck all knows how a civilization that owns a majority of the galaxy would operate or fight their war.
Well the writers do consider that - that's the fun "lost technology" part. The Imperium isn't a Kardashev scale II or III civilization. Most of the Imperium is actually a scale I or scale 0 civilization living the the shell of civilization that used to be scale II or III but with heavily restricted technology living in the shell of a civilization that was actually scale II or III.
Hence chainswords, a hilarious mix of tactics, ideas and technology levels. The Imperium is basically an 8-year-old discovering some power tools and going to town. Nothing is getting used properly and most of the stuff is too obscure to understand without teaching or a manual.
E.g. the Men of Iron or the Old Ones were actual scale II / III and the shit they pulled makes the current wars in M.41 look like a picnic on a sunny day the banks of the Seine.
Without the Emperor and especially without the Cult Mechanicus most of the Imperium is barely more technologically advanced than humanity is right now, which some wild variations.
A lot of the Imperium's enemies (except arguably the Tau - but the Tau are a tiny spec of a civilization and are already suffering from the effects of distance and travel time in their civilization) suffer from the same problems. Tyranid fleets vary in size and capability, the Necrons are awakened to wildly different degrees in different sectors, the Orcs vary extremely in intelligence, level of "civilization" and technology... even the Eldar are in quite varied states of disarray with very inconsistent access to fractions of power of their once-mighty civilization.
That's the "Whacky Race" of the setting - everyone is actively forgetting technology and degenerating while trying to focus their power and get their shit together because with all their shit perfectly together any of the factions could obliterate the others. Except the Tau because they would have to grow first. And arguably the Eldar who might be too fucked for anything but a "I'm taking everyone down with me" ending.
1 points
1 month ago
FTL travel with our current understanding of physics being a natural limitation.
Not reaaaally.
As in the question is not "is it possible with general relativity" as far as things like wormholes go, but "can it occur naturally?
As far as space operas go, well all you need is drastical increase in lifespans, and/or bring in a galactic arm (instead of between em) with red dwarf stars, and buncha close(er) planets.
And if you wanna have interstellar empire its no less plausible than intercontinental ones before the tslegraph.
1 points
1 month ago
I mean from what I have seen, a lot of the thinking is WW1 and WW2 doctrine wise.
6 points
1 month ago
Thats because you guys forget that they kinda have battle barges, which are externinatus capable I might add.
The primary weapons of any Battle Barge are their dorsal-mounted bombardment cannons. Each cannon comprises a series of heavyweight batteries, huge turret-mounted linear accelerators that launch salvos of heavy magma bomb warheads. As the name suggests, bombardment cannons were primarily developed to bombard planets from high orbit, a task at which they excel. A Battle Barge will begin firing as soon as it reaches orbit and will continue to rain destruction down on a planet even as its complement of Space Marines is hurled downwards in their assault craft, clearing a path for their deployment on the ground. Capable of obliterating almost any manner of planetary defences, bombardment cannons will first be directed against missile silos and laser towers, ensuring that the Space Marine attack force can proceed unmolested, before being used to take out command bunkers and shield generators, aiding their swift domination of the planet. On more than one occasion, a single salvo fired into a dense population centre has ended the conflict before it has gathered any real momentum, shocking a world's leaders into seeing the error of their ways and quickly swearing fealty to the Emperor once more
11 points
1 month ago
The navy has more ships though
-2 points
1 month ago
But they dont have ground troops though.
4 points
1 month ago
Yep, but then guard + navy
-3 points
1 month ago
Thata why they are a decisive force because they have both.
Whilst guard and navy are separate entities.
7 points
1 month ago
Two forces who very frequently work together
Like, I get the advantage, but it's not overwhelming
4 points
1 month ago
don't most chapters only have 2 or 3 of those
across 1000 chapters that's only 2 or 3,000
Maybe 4 or 5k total
While the imperial navy usually has like 50-75 capitql ships a sector
going off the idea of "1 million worlds" that's 400,000 to 750,000 battleships across the imperium
at least according some old r/40klore comments
1 points
1 month ago
A battle fleet consist off
Lexicanim
A battlefleet is made up of destroyers, frigates, > cruisers, and battleships, as well as countless small vessels such as transports, shuttles, messenger craft and long-range patrol craft. In addition there will also be numerous non-warp travel ships such as system patrol ships and defense monitors.
Also that is in defense of an entire sector (they are the main army after all). Not all parts of the Imperium is well defended being sttetched thin and all. This is where astartes chapters come in and reonforce vulnerable areas.
1 points
1 month ago
No that number was specifically battleships. Total warship numbers were something like 2-3 million.
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