|
HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:Remember that Space Marines don't have to sleep and hive cities are densely populated. It's highly believable that hive cities can be purged by a small force of Marines, they'll just take a while. Nuh uh. Close quarters, house to house stuff is the most exhausting, time-intensive combat there is. Imagine a group of 100 people, even 100 Space Marines, having to go through every single building in Manhattan.
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2016 20:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 23:10 |
|
|
Guy Goodbody posted:Nuh uh. Close quarters, house to house stuff is the most exhausting, time-intensive combat there is. Imagine a group of 100 people, even 100 Space Marines, having to go through every single building in Manhattan. They wouldn't. SMs are surgeons, and will take out power stations and other infrastructure, along with the leaders, allowing the natural panic of the populace to do their work for them. The fiction almost always portrays SMs incorrectly as doing poo poo like starting at the bottom of a hive and working their way up to the planetary governor. That would never happen (barring some sort of massive intelligence/equipment failure.) Think of any special forces unit today - you don't get the SEALS or Delta Force going house to house, except in very rare situations.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2016 21:30
|
|
|
Guy Goodbody posted:Nuh uh. Close quarters, house to house stuff is the most exhausting, time-intensive combat there is. Imagine a group of 100 people, even 100 Space Marines, having to go through every single building in Manhattan.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2016 22:29
|
|
|
Guy Goodbody posted:Nuh uh. Close quarters, house to house stuff is the most exhausting, time-intensive combat there is. Imagine a group of 100 people, even 100 Space Marines, having to go through every single building in Manhattan. Manhattan is a suburb of a single level of a hive city. A billion people is a small one as well. Canonically 10 Billion plus for a single hive isn't unknown.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2016 23:44
|
|
|
I've accumulated 43 WH40k books on an Amazon wish list. I need to do some organizing and start knocking these things out! By the time I'm done the HH series might have reached Terra. Might.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 00:38
|
|
|
Dick Trauma posted:I've accumulated 43 WH40k books on an Amazon wish list. I need to do some organizing and start knocking these things out! By the time I'm done the HH series might have reached Terra. Is Black Library still doing that stupid thing where they refused to put their Ebooks on Amazon?
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 00:42
|
|
|
Well Ghostmaker just kind of ends, doesn't it? I was worried for Milo for a minute there. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 00:57
|
|
|
Xae posted:Is Black Library still doing that stupid thing where they refused to put their Ebooks on Amazon? Over the years of reading this thread when I see a recommendation I toss it in that Amazon list, even if it says it's unavailable. When I found that Amazon had changed the lists so that they sometimes purge items completely I had to make a backup spreadsheet. That's where I track things like the order books are supposed to be read (ex: HH) or if something I added is part of an omnibus. I track the books I've read because sometimes I get the titles mixed up in my head. So until I actually decide to read a specific title I don't even know what the source will be. Dick Trauma fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Oct 5, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 01:43
|
|
|
Ive always heard one space marine is enough to take a world from like...idk books and discussions and poo poo..no?
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 02:12
|
|
|
Waroduce posted:Ive always heard one space marine is enough to take a world from like...idk books and discussions and poo poo..no? Theoretically, all Space Marines are also master strategists. It doesn't get reflected in the fluff very often
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 02:52
|
|
|
bango skank posted:Well Ghostmaker just kind of ends, doesn't it? I was worried for Milo for a minute there. You will find that a lot of gaunts ghosts novels just end. Ghostmaker isn't even the worst ending. That honor goes to honor guard. He has a really bad habit of rapidly ending his novels without resolving plot elements. The only time I felt it really works is in straight silver.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 02:59
|
|
|
Guy Goodbody posted:Theoretically, all Space Marines are also master strategists. It doesn't get reflected in the fluff very often I've always thought about this as everyone being on the same playing field more or less. Like, yeah you are a master strategist as a space marine, so is everyone else. Only truly exceptional talents stand out.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 03:04
|
|
|
I would say space marines are master tacticians rather than strategists. It's hard to develop strategies on the fly, but on moment to moment tactics marines should be unparalleled.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 03:09
|
|
|
Arcsquad12 posted:You will find that a lot of gaunts ghosts novels just end. Ghostmaker isn't even the worst ending. That honor goes to honor guard. He has a really bad habit of rapidly ending his novels without resolving plot elements. The only time I felt it really works is in straight silver. Having caught up with them a couple months ago when this whole 40K book kick started, I'm still kind of annoyed at His Last Command. Wilder is shown as a competent, level-headed commander and then turns into a petulant shitbaby in the last two chapters cause oh poo poo, Gaunt needs command back uhhhhh, kill him? Heroically?  That was definitely the one that stuck out the most, but you're not wrong that most of them just kind of spiral off into the next adventure without a ton of wrap up or warning. I think someone said it just a couple pages ago but I'd actually hand worst wrap up to Sabbat Martyr over Honor Guard. Dreadnought chumped, Cobec and Cuu, Fin. Orv fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Oct 5, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 04:35
|
|
|
TBH I don't think you find many people IRL or in the regiment who gave a poo poo what happened to the planet after Corbec and Cuu 
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 05:15
|
|
|
Well no, but that whole shebang wraps up in what, fifteen, twenty pages from the end of fighting outside the hive to the barest, briefest descriptions of what was probably some of the ugliest fighting the Ghosts saw up until maybe Gereon 2.0? And that's basically all the Ghost books. They're like a Brandon Sanderson book, it all very suddenly goes "Oh poo poo right this book has to end" and it's always a little jarring.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 05:43
|
|
|
Honestly never bothered me, but I can see how it would.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 06:32
|
|
|
Orv posted:Having caught up with them a couple months ago when this whole 40K book kick started, I'm still kind of annoyed at His Last Command. Wilder is shown as a competent, level-headed commander and then turns into a petulant shitbaby in the last two chapters cause oh poo poo, Gaunt needs command back uhhhhh, kill him? Heroically? That was actually me who mentioned Sabbat Martyr pages back. Honour Guard has a worse ending (Secret underground anti chaos brain bomb ex machina}, but Sabbat Martyr is just overall the worst book in the whole series by a wide margin. As for Wilder, I saw him losing his composure through the whole book, until everything came crashing down at the end. The moment the Gereon team returned to the Ghosts, he basically feels like his authority starts to erode as old loyalties flare up again. Again, Abnett endings are often crap, but I still feel the majority of His Last Command is really really good.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 07:39
|
|
|
Arcsquad12 posted:If you were going to invade a planet the size of contemporary earth with simultaneous attacks across the globe, you are looking at hundreds of millions of guardsmen at the bare minimum, and you can forget about those numbers if it is a hive world. Not every 40k planet is an all-encroaching sprawling hive populated by billions though. If you're dropping on a world where virtually the entire surface is given over to food production with a few maintenance workers keeping everything ticking over, or there's no atmosphere and the whole population lives in one or two sealed structures, or the hives are all reliant on a single geothermal power source at the pole, or heck, just the economics of the local space mean that the planet is a backwater and colonisation never really expanded beyond a small proto-hive at the original landing site, you can absolutely take control with a few thousand guardsmen and an orbital bombardment or two in the right locations. That, and there's the more practical explanation that the proles at the bottom of the ladder don't know or care anything about what goes on beyond their little corner of their planet and so when a load of Guard roll into town in Chimeras they aren't going to fight a brutal resistance to the death, they'll shrug and point and say 'governors palace is 20 clicks that way, now gently caress off and leave me and my cattle alone' Roller Coast Guard fucked around with this message at 12:33 on Oct 5, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 12:22
|
|
|
I think you hit it pretty well. Good authors kind of make these things easier to swallow. Abnett has done a good job showing the guard being used in a modern sense by intelligent commanders and wasted in wars of attrition by poor ones. It also largely seems to be based off of the manpower available to the commanders. Yeah, the Sabbot Crusade might of begun with 2 million guardsmen but who knows what the reinforcement numbers are or how many guys you plan on conscripting from conquered worlds. Lets say our Earth was attacked by a military force much like the Imperium tomorrow, it wouldn't take hundreds of millions to win. Once the world wide communications network was destroyed in orbit it would only take localized invasions to make all the world nations beg for peace. Sure there would be holdouts but nothing an orbital bombardment couldn't persuade. The same principle applies to Space Marines. I assume any large build up of forces becomes target for orbital guns, and once the enemy disperses or digs in to avoid this here comes a deadly and highly mobile strike force to butt gently caress your command structure.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 15:24
|
|
|
Yeah, I don't think the Guard/Marines need to murder every person on the planet, they just need to take out the military and government. I feel like with how nightmarish the 41st millennium is, most people are relieved to just be left alone.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 15:29
|
|
|
So I was just about to start on Praetorian of Dorn, when I noticed the volume number and checked. Turns out I somehow entirely missed that the previous book Angels of Caliban had been released. So like I said I'm done with buying new stuff to the story moves on, but I feel compelled to check. Does anything interesting or particulary compelling happen in it? Is anything in it significant to the story of Praetorian of Dorn? Otherwise I'll skip it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 22:28
|
|
|
Haven't read Angels of Caliban but as far as I know, it involves Johnson being a dick in the Imperium Secundus and Erebus doing his thing with the dark angels garrisoned in Caliban to prepare the future Dark Angels schism. The previous Dark Angels novels were garbage, so I assume this one might not be much better. So, I think is pretty safe to skip it. As a rule of thumb, I would ignore anything written by Gav Thorpe, by the way.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2016 22:37
|
|
|
I've seen a bunch of people say they were really fond of it, but I think a lot of them were the diehard, unhealthily-invested kind of Warhammer spergs, so several bags of salt and all that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2016 07:24
|
|
|
Orv posted:diehard, unhealthily-invested kind of Warhammer spergs. Ha Ha. Well that certainly doesn't describe me. *Shuffles feet* * Won't make eye contact*
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2016 09:50
|
|
|
Look as long as you're not the equivalent of someone who will proudly wear Horde/Alliance shirts in public and poo poo like that, whatever. I've read something like a couple million words about 40K in the last couple months, I'm not exactly guilt free of being a giant nerd. If you can admit Warhammer is dumb and it's great because it's dumb you're already better than 80% of its fans.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2016 10:09
|
|
|
SRM posted:Yeah, I don't think the Guard/Marines need to murder every person on the planet, they just need to take out the military and government. I feel like with how nightmarish the 41st millennium is, most people are relieved to just be left alone. There are ways to get rid of the entire populace if the need arises. Don't even need a single Space Marine to do it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2016 11:16
|
|
|
Just introduce tabletop games and watch the birthrate drop
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2016 13:51
|
|
|
Angry Lobster posted:Haven't read Angels of Caliban but as far as I know, it involves Johnson being a dick in the Imperium Secundus and Erebus doing his thing with the dark angels garrisoned in Caliban to prepare the future Dark Angels schism. The previous Dark Angels novels were garbage, so I assume this one might not be much better. Orv posted:I've seen a bunch of people say they were really fond of it, but I think a lot of them were the diehard, unhealthily-invested kind of Warhammer spergs, so several bags of salt and all that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2016 00:25
|
|
|
Dan "When All You Have Is Architecture, Everything Looks Like Ouslite" Abnett.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 00:24
|
|
|
I'm reading Priests of Mars right now and couldn't help but note that there are two characters who seem to be named after metal bands. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 05:35
|
|
|
MMAgCh posted:I'm reading Priests of Mars right now and couldn't help but note that there are two characters who seem to be named after metal bands. I don't remember exactly where it was, but one of the books in the trilogy directly references FM-2030. Now, how likely is this person to be remembered in the year 40k-something? Kopijeger fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Oct 12, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 09:31
|
|
|
I have finished the Flight of the Eisenstein. Musings: - Garro is the baddest fuckin dude. Qruze, too. He went from Nathanial to Nathaniel, though. Whoops! - I really like seeing how the cult of the Emperor formed. - I'm digging the disease and corruption allegory. - OMG the Emperor's Children are the worst - Chapter trait for the Imperial Fists: "we are all mean for no goddamned reason" Can anyone tell me why Mortarion fell to chaos? Is it just that he and Horus were bros? He seemed like a pretty well-balanced dude. Which brings me to Fulgrim, a novel full of people I hate. I'm on like page 50. So far: - What kind of space wizard book doesn't start with a fancy concert? The lovely ones, for sure. - Holy smokes the EC captains are annoying. - Is it Laer or Lear, because it's printed with both?! - Snake people, huh? SOUNDS FAMILIAR - Fulgrim is such a dick. Here's what I'm hoping for in Fulgrim: All of the EC's die in some really embarrassing fashion, a la David Carradine.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 17:41
|
|
|
Oh I forgot my favorite line from Eisenstein: "...men of an inquisitive nature." HMMMMMMMMMM
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 18:01
|
|
|
The Sex Cannon posted:
Constantly huffing your own farts will do that to you A shameful primarch
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 18:10
|
|
|
The Sex Cannon posted:Can anyone tell me why Mortarion fell to chaos? Is it just that he and Horus were bros? He seemed like a pretty well-balanced dude. He got along poorly with most of the other Primarchs and had no particular loyalty to the Emperor. He's a pragmatic guy so when his bro was like "this is going down," he was just like "yeah this is fine." I assume Horus promised him access to chaos void farts, the likes of which Mortarion had never huffed before.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 18:11
|
|
|
The Sex Cannon posted:Can anyone tell me why Mortarion fell to chaos? Is it just that he and Horus were bros? He seemed like a pretty well-balanced dude.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 18:15
|
|
|
There's a particularly silly story where he is so loving angry about spooky magic he learns a load of spooky magic to kill a daemon or something and then just goes 'gently caress it' and becomes a spooky magician
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 18:16
|
|
|
Iron warriors still have the best petty reasons for turning.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 18:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 23:10 |
|
|
Jenk is a hell of a drug.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 18:35
|
|
