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[Knit tie]

We seem to misunderstand each other. I was not talking about the peak performance at all, I was talking about the fact that there are more physically exceptional men than there are physically exceptional women, which means that male-specced geneseed will allow you to have more space marines and recruit them faster than female-specced geneseed. It's not a question of whether or not a female space marine would perform significantly worse than a male space marine (most likely not), it's a question of whether or not it's more efficient to recruit space marines from men than from women. And the answer to that question is, as we can see, yes.

Now, as for why the big E didn't recruit space marines from both men and women, it's just bog standard cost-benefit analysis - there would be enough space marines it he were to make them from men only, so why go through the complex, long, expensive and most likely dangerously warp-dependent procedure of creating another batch of female primarchs if the results of this are going to be superfluous?

[Rolepgeek]

I think really the question is why he didn't make it capable of applying to either gender just as easily. Only one chromosome. In fact, since men have the X chromosome, if he'd designed it for women first, seems like it would've been pretty simple to make it work for men with minimal changes. Plus, there's the twin factors of physical exceptionality not necessarily being an equal distribution range between male and female (if you look at male/female masculinity/femininity of faces, for example, as something that doesn't follow perfectly between the two), and women making up a slightly higher proportion of the population. Before getting into long term planning and the fact that no war is ever fought with a sufficient number of soldiers. Minimal on their own, sure, but really, he could have made geneseed gender non-specific if he cared to. Make it use the appendix instead of the testicles, for example. there are no water organs within a space marine's body.

[GiglameshDespair]

Because making space marines is hard enough already.

If Empsman could just do whatever, he probably wouldn't have made space marines at all: the Thunder Warriors were each more powerful than space marines, but unstable long term. So if the Emp could just fix that sort of thing, presumably he would have just made the Thunder Warriors more viable for long term.

It seems pretty likely that the more stable and wide-reaching the geneseed or whatever is, the less powerful it is. The Emp wasn't perfect - perhaps it was more difficult, less powerful, or both.

When you've got effectively unlimited population of both men and women, only using men isn't all that ineffective.


...and it also makes the factions between Sisters and Space marines more distinct and yadda yadda.

[LordBaal]

Perhaps the whole process is simply made for men. The geneseed, the implants and all that, and putting them on a woman would be like trying to graft an amputated penis in a girl private parts, perhaps it won't outright die but it wouldn't work either.

Or perhaps it doesn't but who's to prove the Emperor wrong and alter the process? It would be among the highest heresy levels I think.

But I'm mostly certain it has something to do with male testes and the fact the Emperor himself was male and it was made from his DNA and chromosomes too.

On the meta side, it would be rather pointless to have another faction of SM only female. One could say, well, have both male and female marines on the same chapter, but then it would not fit the medieval knightly orders (fighting monks) upon which they are based, which historically had 0 amount of woman warriors among them.

As for Taros, is a shame they didn't got some numbers right then. I seem to recall the average of 10K men per regiment somewhere around the book but I'm to lazy to look.

[Sheb]

Anyway, I don't think a gene modded super soldier in power armor would look much different if it was female. They could make sense. Or maybe the Emperor is simply an old sexist fart.

[Kot]

Anyway, I don't think a gene modded super soldier in power armor would look much different if it was female.

Love is a battlefield indeed.

BY THE WAY
There is one canon Female Space Marine...ish person. Imperial Guard Captain got enslaved by some Chaos warband guy to polish his guns and armor (quite literally, actually), but the armour was heretical and daemonically infused. She wore it for kicks, it made her fit inside and whatnot and she proceeded to kick major ass (including the ass of previous owner of the armour). After that she apparently went on to assault the Imperial Fortress and some time later gave back the armor and weapons to Bloodthrister chained in core of Honsou crib. Then she exploded the living fuck out of that place. Or something.

EDIT: Of course Ultramarines arrived and hogged all the glory for themselves.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Well, crunchwise, a squad is only ever 10, and a platoon is 50 men plus support troops and/or conscripts.
So a regiment of 250000 would have to be a lot of very large companies.

Nah, they'd just organized the regiment into multiple battalions.

[Tack]

I didn't think IG had battalions.


How about just GW is sexist and nobody cares.
It's great that they've worked the fluff around it. But even for guard regiments which don't descriminate on whether any specific gender can hold a lasgun, pull the trigger and bleed, they still isn't any female models.

No sweat off my back. Makes mod-jobs more fun.

[Grim Portent]

Every human miniature range they do is sadly lacking in women. I'd like to see some female cultist minis running around, but all 40k really has for human women is sisters of battle and one or two inquisitors.

Similar story with Fantasy Empire, Bretonnia and Chaos. Despite having units that are basically rabble gathered from the masses no one seems to use women as anything other spellcasters.



Plenty of women in the Elf/Eldar ranges though. Might be because they're newer than most of the Guard range.

[Loud Whispers]

GW fluff is written by Matt Ward

[Kot]

Every human miniature range they do is sadly lacking in women. I'd like to see some female cultist minis running around, but all 40k really has for human women is sisters of battle and one or two inquisitors.

They also had those two horrendous captured Sisters Of Battle in underwear. People covnerted them to don't have underwear.
Slannesh approved.

Similar story with Fantasy Empire, Bretonnia and Chaos. Despite having units that are basically rabble gathered from the masses no one seems to use women as anything other spellcasters.

Considering that it's WHFB, the women in common rabble army would be raped very quickly.

[Tack]

GW fluff is written by Matt Ward

2/10 terrible bait.

Every human miniature range they do is sadly lacking in women. I'd like to see some female cultist minis running around, but all 40k really has for human women is sisters of battle and one or two inquisitors.

They also had those two horrendous captured Sisters Of Battle in underwear.
-snip-

1. If you're talking about the Dais, those are generic slaves. Not even sure they're human.
2. 40k may be grimdark, but GW also keeps it pretty clean. I would see zero mention of rape anywhere in it and pretty much feel uncomfortable just by You saying it.

[Grim Portent]

1. If you're talking about the Dais, those are generic slaves. Not even sure they're human.
2. 40k may be grimdark, but GW also keeps it pretty clean. I would see zero mention of rape anywhere in it and pretty much feel uncomfortable just by You saying it.

They are human, just not specific to any faction since they're for fantasy and 40k. Same hairstyle as Sisters though, I think GW just wasn't good at feminine hair at the time, they're a really old sculpt.

And yeah, they do try to keep sex in general out of the setting. Even in Fantasy, which is often darker than 40k they only implied it in the Chaos Warriors and Beastmen books, while all the others just avoid it entirely.

[LordBaal]

But you, me, and all of us know that it happens, A LOT. I mean, it's bound to happen so often that is good they leave it aside, otherwise it would be an deeply disturbing erotic series instead of being sci-fi & fanstasy.

The only mention of "rape" I can recall is what those disorder vacuum seamen did to some woman in order to them to give birth to more disorder vacuum seaman, and I think it wasn't even rape perse, but they basically became mutated living wombs or something, I don't know how they got pregnant and do not want to find out either.

[Tack]

No pregnancy involved. They placed adolescent humans inside and then they later came out as Space Marines.
The demonculaba or whatever it was called. Kinda messed up.