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[LordBaal]

Realistically most of the time orbital bombardment would take care of most things with marines only to clean up, unless you want the objective in a single piece or orbital bombardment is not an option for whatever reasons (no time, planetary shields, plot armor) in which case special strikes to get that objective. This is how they are used on Taros.

Their endurance also allow them to become extremely heavy and effective shock/assault troops in cases were you have a more conventional battle underway, but also being the expensiest dudes around you don't want to deplete them or trow them against enemies that could actually repel them or are prepared for them, like say a line of tau rail guns or the like, which again, the Taros campaign demonstrates in a brilliant way.

For their solo exploits, each marine is obviously very heavy infantry capable of holding the ground where complete squads of regular human would not. Also able to lay fire with far more power and precision, the problem lays with numbers. Where they also excel is mobility which could balance their numbers, but realistically you cannot expect to conquer or wage war in a whole planet with only 1000 dudes, less with 100, no matter how awesome they are. I mean, you could in theory, but would take quite some time and be something very, very precise and fine tune with possibly a miriad of hit and runs, which again is something they could do.

I think they cover something of that on the ultramar tyranid invasion mentioning militias or figthing serf or something.

Dunno if other chapters make use of such things.

[Egan_BW]

Hm. Realistically, you'd probably expect most wars to end without any fighting on the ground at all, with the invading force either being blown apart in orbit by macrocannons, or all ground defenses being blown apart by orbital macrocannons. Anything that's not a ship or crazy massive planetary defenses won't really hold up well to getting struck by shells the size of skyscrapers.

But space battles aren't what SM are built for, so we need to find middle ground scenarios. Somewhere where >1000 really strong dudes can be useful without all dying, where it wouldn't be easier to just nuke it from orbit. Or maybe just cases where there's a hole in the imperial navy's defenses and they need someone with ships to fill the gap.

Though I guess planetary shields and collateral damage are pretty good excuses. Go into the crashed spacehulk providing shielding to an ork planet so that you can turn the crust of said world into glass.

[EuchreJack]

But space battles aren't what SM are built for

...but they're Space Marines.  Yes, they are designed for space battles, in the same way that conventional marines are created for naval battles.  They're the ones that establish the beachhead that regular soldiers use to deploy.  They're the ones that board enemy vessels.

Honestly, I think the biggest fault of the fluff and tabletop is that the average Space Marine is smarter than most writers or board game setups.

That being said, when I played Space Hulk, I always wondered about how these were veterans of hundreds of years of battle, yet tended to die within minutes on a Space Hulk.

[LordBaal]

GW shoehorn them as stand alone army to sell figurines. In "reality" they would be more a terror weapon against the imperium citizens itself (well, they are) and special forces. What enables them more beyond their elite status, trainment and equipment is the fact they have both ground and space fleet forces under a single command, but lack the numbers by desing.

The mechanicum could in theory do most if not all and certainly more than the SM do, but they are too focused on their own stuff, like basically all the other armed branches of the Imperium.

[nenjin]

TLDR: Orbital bombardment isn't nearly the solution to most problems that we tend to make it out to be. It's good for softening resistance and knocking out key locations. It's not good for ensuring the complete destruction of your enemy. That's what ground assaults are for.

----

Let's note though that short of completely destroying a planet with Cyclonic Torpedoes or the Life Eater, i.e Exterminatus, orbital bombardment is good for a couple things but not everything. It's great against big stationary targets, like cities and hive towers and big altars wot have a lot of skulls. Enormous armies that cover continents.

It's not good at precision. It's not good at a displaced, spread out foe. It's not even particularly good at cleansing planets. It's for knocking out strongholds, and large concentrations of the enemy where being off by half a kilometer isn't a big deal.

But when you need the charismatic, devious and dangerous leader of an enemy force dead, you need confirmation. Unless they're dumb enough to sit in the big tower while an Imperial fleet is up in orbit. That's why you send in Space Marines. To deal with the most dangerous foes, and to eradicate the resistance already broken by orbital bombardment.

I think as 40k fans we tend to conflate orbital bombardment with Exterminatus, and the fact video games let us call in pin point lance strikes with zero risk of incinerating our hero's faces. Planets are big. Like, rrrll big. It was one thing during the Great Crusades when you had an armada of 50 ships of the line. That might make short work of a planet in just a few days. But a Strike Cruiser and a couple frigates? That might take them months of systematic bombardment to wipe an enemy from the face of the planet, and that only accounts for maybe 40% of the enemies of the Imperium that even think like that. Orks don't care, they'll just live in caves and drag burning scrap down there to eventually build surface to orbit weapons. Tyranids don't care. They'll happily continue eating a planet alive while the Imperium tediously bombards hordes of lil critters. Chaos doesn't care. They know Imperial tactics, and they're probably doing some shit somewhere that when it comes to fruition, they win. Vanilla and Chocolate Eldar will just fuck off to the webway. Granola Eldar would just scatter to the 4 corners and wait for the Imperials to leave, or be dumb enough to land. Necrons will either retaliate with a green lazor or just bewp and teleport to another Necron Tomb.

I think as video gamers we're like "the most efficient solution is obviously to sit in orbit for however long it takes and bomb them with impunity until they give up or there's nothing that left can really oppose us." Not wanting to vaporize a productive world/planet/population, atmospheric shenanigans, warp magic, sun spots, stupid edicts, these are all good plot reasons why it often doesn't go like that. And then the sheer logistics of it all comes in to play.

But at the end of the day I think the best reason orbital bombardment isn't the solution to most problems is that it's lame. It's not heroic or interesting unless you're going for that stoic "tedium of real war" or "muwhahaha the power to destroy worlds" vibe.

[E. Albright]

For their solo exploits, each marine is obviously very heavy infantry capable of holding the ground where complete squads of regular human would not. Also able to lay fire with far more power and precision, the problem lays with numbers.

Even worse: the problem lies with logistics. If their standard armament was a funky super-lasgun with supercharged batteries it'd be one thing... but they shoot rapid-fire large-bore projectiles. They're gonna need to carry A LOT of magazines to sustain themselves against significant forces in pitched battles, or even reasonably drawn-out skirmishes and hit-n-run ops. GDubs has designed and re-designed them over the years with way too much Rule of Cool holding them together to actually stand up on their own w/o being propped up with handwavium reinforcement at this point.

But space battles aren't what SM are built for, so we need to find middle ground scenarios. Somewhere where >1000 really strong dudes can be useful without all dying, where it wouldn't be easier to just nuke it from orbit.

Pre-Titan Legions Epic was good in seeing how this could work, but it was still just sorta assuming that pitched surface battles were happening. Lots of handwaving about re-taking invaded planets, orks w/o orbital weapons, Chaos forces/tyrannids wanting to "play" with the civilians, squats not being run over with a hive fleet, Eldar being arcane and inscrutable, etc.

[DeepWinter]

Space Marines are a force multiplier or surgical strike force used for missions where mass deployment of resources is either unnecessary or counterproductive. Individually they're worth far more than a single guardsman and should reflect that. The Astartes animation series (Which I have almost no doubt everyone here has watched) should be a good indicator how insane they are. They are demigods of war, and stats should reflect that.

It's a hard balance between their skill and how hard it is to replace them. I think a lot of it comes down to how does TIME work in the game, which isn't a problem I know how to deal with. But the question is how much time should it take to deal with a problem and then recover from the consequences?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR_OWN1dQ-s

Link here has about how fast they are in the novels. Ignore some of the embellished movements. Space Marines aren't tanks, they're extremely fast and hit like tanks.

[LordBaal]

You know, I thought about logistics too, because they use proyectile weapons and all that, but then, generally speaking you have them either doing precision assaults and strikes that in theory should last from a couple minutes to hours top. And if you are deploying them in a open battles, you have at least a ship in orbit. Even the smallest ships in 40k are gigantic enough to easily carry a fuckton of ammo and supplies to a relative small force.

Anyway, if you are dumping them into a battle line you sure left them with crates of the things and make constan thunderhawk runs to resupply if needed (and is possible).

As for orbital bombardement, the scale of 40k indicates it would work pretty well for most things. You dont need to carpet bomb every inch, only the places needed. And the size and power of macrocannons, left alone bombadement cannons would put some nukes to shame, without fallout to consider on top of that (unless you blow up a damn nuclear plant or something). You seem to understimate it, search rod of god on google and check it out. No cave would save you from it, unless is reaaaaally deep. Also does not need to be pinpoint accurate, that is why orbital bombardement is ridiculous on games like DoW. You do that before droping anyone to check and kill whatever is left by miracle.

[Egan_BW]

As for orbital bombardement, the scale of 40k indicates it would work pretty well for most things. You dont need to carpet bomb every inch, only the places needed.

And well, if you DO need to carpet bomb the hell out of the enemy from orbit, you're certainly not going to get anywhere by shooting at them with 1000 small arms.

[nenjin]

As for orbital bombardement, the scale of 40k indicates it would work pretty well for most things. You dont need to carpet bomb every inch, only the places needed.

Like I said. That works for human foes or foes with infrastructure they care about. You could carpet bomb an entire planet infested by orks, and you'd still have spores left over. And a lot of gits.

[DeepWinter]

I think the presence of Guard/PDF elements should be a constant unless you are trying to take back a world without Guard/Navy assistance. Or it's a relatively isolated and small establishment (like an asteroid)  Trying to conquer whole worlds is something modern Astartes just aren't capable of. The Legiones, yes, easily. But not even a whole chapter could do so reliably.

Again, I think of Astartes as a force multiplier or commando unit designed for the seizing of specific points or eliminating High Value Targets.

[EuchreJack]

So it seems that the game should probably simulate IG movements and allow the player to join in those fights.  The real challenge is knowing which fights to join and with how many SMs.

In smaller numbers, and probably not as much simulated in game, the advantage of a small group of Space Marines would be in leadership of combat forces rather than as the sole combatants.  One Space Marine leading an Imperial Guard Regiment is going to do much more than an Imperial Guard Regiment alone, especially since leading in 40K usually means leading from the front.  Three Space Marines could each lead a Regiment in a three-pronged attack, coordinated with hundreds of years of experience.  Space Marines are probably the longest lived soldiers outside of the Mechanicum or the Inquisition.  And they inspire the kind of admiration that neither of those other organizations can.  And that experience, that ability to know what needs to be done in battle...you can't represent that in a tabletop game.

As for the logistics of Space Marine operations...some of them have chainswords, power blades, and they can rip limbs off of several combatants with their bare hands.  They're also able to use more conventional weapons far better than regular soldiers.  They run out ammo for their bolters, they'll just grab a lazgun if one is in reach.  If they've been in more than one battle, they'll probably grab a lazgun before they run out ammo and conserve the bolts for when they need them.

In short, I'm going to assume that a soldier that has fought across planets that I can't even imagine for longer than I am likely to live is probably going to do a better job at fighting a tactical battle than I ever could, which is the real problem.  Even if they're not superhumans.

[nenjin]

Small point of order: SMs can only use human-sized weapons if modified. IIRC, they have to rip the trigger guard off the Lasgun for their post human fingers to even fit in there. Possibly more so when armored.

[ndkid]

So it seems that the game should probably simulate IG movements and allow the player to join in those fights.  The real challenge is knowing which fights to join and with how many SMs.

In smaller numbers, and probably not as much simulated in game, the advantage of a small group of Space Marines would be in leadership of combat forces rather than as the sole combatants.  One Space Marine leading an Imperial Guard Regiment is going to do much more than an Imperial Guard Regiment alone, especially since leading in 40K usually means leading from the front.  Three Space Marines could each lead a Regiment in a three-pronged attack, coordinated with hundreds of years of experience.  Space Marines are probably the longest lived soldiers outside of the Mechanicum or the Inquisition.  And they inspire the kind of admiration that neither of those other organizations can.  And that experience, that ability to know what needs to be done in battle...you can't represent that in a tabletop game.

As for the logistics of Space Marine operations...some of them have chainswords, power blades, and they can rip limbs off of several combatants with their bare hands.  They're also able to use more conventional weapons far better than regular soldiers.  They run out ammo for their bolters, they'll just grab a lazgun if one is in reach.  If they've been in more than one battle, they'll probably grab a lazgun before they run out ammo and conserve the bolts for when they need them.

In short, I'm going to assume that a soldier that has fought across planets that I can't even imagine for longer than I am likely to live is probably going to do a better job at fighting a tactical battle than I ever could, which is the real problem.  Even if they're not superhumans.

While just about any guardsman who has a marine look at him and say "come with me" will gulp and then follow, I don't think the Marines are empowered to take over IG forces. The closest canonical example that comes to mind (not that my knowledge of these things is encyclopedic) is good ol' Grimaldus, but even he ultimately worked with the IG command staff, rather than being in control of them. I think the book even had a bit where he had to learn to persuade because he couldn't just order them and expect humans to do what he wanted them to do.

[Egan_BW]

If there's no inquisitors about, maybe you could just brazenly take over the local IG / IN command structure. Who's gonna stop you? :p

(The interactions between the various imperial militaries always did seem a little "might makes right" to me.)