Probably not, most sources are discussing the line troopers, not supporting marines, crews, officers, command sqauds, etc.
Warhammer Warhammer General discussion thread: Now with 100% more Space Marines
- Thread starter Battlegrinder
- Start date
Probably not, most sources are discussing the line troopers, not supporting marines, crews, officers, command sqauds, etc.
IIRC from deathwatch, it's actually some massive, multivolume thing that fills most of a library.
The fact that the SOP for the Astartes was 100k pages long tells you all you need to know about the stupidity of it.
Until you remember that the Astartes are actually more than mere muscle bound idiots who always forget their helmets.
Canonically, EVERY Astartes has an eidetic memory, a mind operating at far beyond merely superhuman speeds, and a level of control over their own minds that would make the best monks look like rank amateurs.
Canonically, every Astartes remembers (and is able to effectively relive) every single moment of their life since their Ascension. They also get to relive the experiences of other Space Marines via what is basically VR/ The Matrix.
Remembering a hundred thousand page book is simply a matter of receiving the information in the first place. And even ignoring everything related to neural interfacing, their eyes are operating at a frame rate so absurd that even modern high speed cameras would basically be freeze frame. So they sit there and get those pages flashed on their eyes at a rate of, potentially, thousands per second.
Then, once every Astartes has the Codex memorized and they all agree to follow its dictates, every one of them becomes able to effectively perfectly predict what every other Astartes on the battlefield is going to do based on a given situation.
More, they are all able to (in the heat of battle) "scroll through" the Codex to find whatever it says about their current set of circumstances and then do that. Considering that the Codex is the product of a Primarch's mind written at the end of the Great Crusade (i.e. with the maximal amount of real world experience wrt Astartes capabilities and efficacy), the Codex suggestion is highly likely to be the best possible move in that circumstance.
Personally, I really wish someone would convince David Weber to write a Space Marine book. It would never happen, but if you want some inkling of what an Astartes really should be like given their canonically abilities then go read Path of the Fury/In Fury Born by Weber.
The raid at the end of In Fury Born? That is one of the best Space Marine combats ever written.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
Well, this part necessitates Durasnow defenses to be that extreme, fully-fledged bullet-timer Astartes brick the impact of baselines too hard and raise questions about the bikes. But they do meet the demands of combing a large reference library of strategies in the middle of a battle, even if not quite the heat of combat, and this allows for a very considerable amount of thought experiment war game behavior with very little communication to cite advanced strategy without spending time on detailed explanations.
This would also fit with it being intended that it would receive additions by Astartes over time, where the cases of novel threats demanding novel strategies would then be generalized and added to the reference library to extend the benefits to as many cases as possible, while also allowing for redactions when the realities have rendered advice inapplicable due to decline in auxiliary forces or loss of supply of advanced hardware.
BF110C4
Well-known member
The perfect example of that was the Ultramarines adapting to the process of fighting Tyranids after their failed defense of Prandium, in that occasion the Codex was inadecuate to fight an enemy that by happenstance counter the traditional tactics described there. By the time the Tyranids arrived at Macragge they had adopted static defenses to deal with the swarms, and after the First Tyranid War the Master of Sanctity of the Ultramarines created squads specifically trained and armed to deal with Tyranids, and while the creation of such squads had doctrinal opposition from Ultramarine captains it ultimately was approved.
Typhonis
Well-known member
You can probably get a custom stamp for only a little bit more, and just make your own wax seals with it.
Exactly. And honestly, those look rather cheap looking.
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
I still think this is the dumbest thing ever created.
There's been worse, but yeah, those were pretty terrible.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
Emperor agrees
To be fair the basic idea makes some sense.
Well at least as much sense as the entire concept of mecha makes.
Daemons can be quite large and sometimes you simply need to operate on the same scale to be effective. So create a large exoskeleton of the appropriate size, arm it proportionally, and then put the Grey Knight inside of it. Designing it so that they can keep wearing their power armor and so that they can rapidly exit the platform at need isn't really a bad idea either.
The Black Carapace is a full blown neural interface superior to basically anything else shown in 40k, and knights are supposedly effective.
Now don't get me wrong, I think the Dreadknights look phenomenally stupid, but as a concept they aren't a bad idea.
Honestly, one question I have is why there aren't any specialized Astartes Knights. Either the Knight platform is an effective, viable, weapons platform or it isn't. If it is, then why isn't the group most inherently compatible with it not using it and if it isn't viable then why are the knightly houses so respected?
Build a knight around a Dreadnought Sarcophagus and you would get a damn potent weapon, if one of somewhat limited deployability.
Well at least as much sense as the entire concept of mecha makes.
Daemons can be quite large and sometimes you simply need to operate on the same scale to be effective. So create a large exoskeleton of the appropriate size, arm it proportionally, and then put the Grey Knight inside of it. Designing it so that they can keep wearing their power armor and so that they can rapidly exit the platform at need isn't really a bad idea either.
The Black Carapace is a full blown neural interface superior to basically anything else shown in 40k, and knights are supposedly effective.
Now don't get me wrong, I think the Dreadknights look phenomenally stupid, but as a concept they aren't a bad idea.
Honestly, one question I have is why there aren't any specialized Astartes Knights. Either the Knight platform is an effective, viable, weapons platform or it isn't. If it is, then why isn't the group most inherently compatible with it not using it and if it isn't viable then why are the knightly houses so respected?
Build a knight around a Dreadnought Sarcophagus and you would get a damn potent weapon, if one of somewhat limited deployability.
For one AdMech are not big fans of hacking together different machine interfaces even if technically it is doable, and if they do, it takes a very long time for some rather unorthodox named plot character like Cawl.
Secondly, are they even making new Knights? They are considered quite high tech, almost on part with Titans, so the production is either non existent, or whatever they manage to put together out of some rare salvaged or artisanally made parts, barely enough for replacements - hence, even if they could add Knight detachments to Astartes, that would mean abolishing half the Knight Houses to get the machines for it.
Last but not least, logistics. Can a Knight be deployed by a Thunderhawk Transport? The heaviest vehicles Astartes have can...
If not, they have a problem, because that means getting the Astertes some kind of bigger lander, and then finding room in the hangars of their ships for such a big, fat transport.
There could be logistical reasons why Knights are mostly used in defensive operations, or in support of even more logistically intensive Titans.
Yes, but that was a great deal less of a problem back in the Great Crusade.
Yes, Mars is still making Knights (and Titans).
No clue. But Astartes, and 40k in general, logistics are basically a "who the hell knows?" situation anyways as canon seems to change literally every time and at least two thirds of the time they make zero goddamm sense.
I mean this is a setting who can't even decide what the rules for FTL travel actually are, or treat them remotely consistently. Or even how space battles work.
Hell, half the time it seems they can't even decide whether or not Auspex are light speed limited or not.
And then there are Astropaths. If they were really as pointless and unreliable as a lot of canon portrays them then they are essentially worthless for actually coordinating anything. And then you have the times where they are basically sending typed messages across the stars without a problem.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
Probably because Knight Engines already have neural interfaces that allow for the full agility of the hardware, so sticking an Astartes in one is mostly pointless as you can only get so much more from reaction time, so you'd need to redo a lot of systems to USE the pilot's enhanced abilities.
I think the most useful Knight "baseline" is the Armiger Moirax. Small enough to not have questions about deployment, has the power supply for large-scale weaponry and greatly improved motive systems, and being used by Astartes means you can cheap out on radiation shielding as everyone has two layers of NBC.
Ultimately, the purpose of such in 40k proper would be accessing siege weaponry in a format actually useful for Astartes at rates far above what the Castraferrum ever could, between their logistical issues and the demand for mobility.
Edit: Basically, an Astartes Knight should be a "breaching walker" to get into fortifications, alongside the occasional superheavy.
Constantly, the entire point of the things is cheap garrison duty, between ready replacement components and such trivial maintenance requirements that Mudcore Feudal Worlds can keep them going for centuries.
But in the Great Crusade the Legions were operating with much better organized and equipped than current Imperial military forces - they had their role to perform, and if they needed superheavy walker support, the AdMech support with Titans was bound to be nearby.
It's the "modern" 40k where Astartes have far more need for self-sufficiency in rare support forces like that, because it's never guaranteed that they will arrive timely if needed, if at all.
Yeah, but are they making enough? How able are they to expand production? For one founding of new Knight Worlds (wikis say there are few hundred of those left) and Titan Legions is something pretty much unheard of, compared to new IG regiments being common and even occasional founding of new Astartes chapters, or even design and building of new large warship classes.
It indicates that the few major forge worlds who can supply those barely manage to provide replacements for the existing ones.
OTOH in feudal worlds where the most common threat for them to deal with is wildlife they obviously have far lower maintenance needs than in full scale combat against peer opponents. Imperial equipment in general is relatively low maintenance, still doesn't mean it's cheap to build though - if it was, Baneblades would be everywhere, and those are still less technologically complex than Knights.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
This is the biggest bit of wonk: Baneblades are, in fact, drastically more technologically complex than Knights. Most obviously the fusion-based power supply that allows for mounting a select few Battle Titan weapons like the Volcano Cannon, but the commonality of true plasma weapons versus Knights tending towards massive-size Chainblades and las-weapons further accentuates the point. The only part of a Knight that's TRULY technologically complex for 40k is the Throne Mechanicus user-interface, being a walker that size is quite trivial.