Morte Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Whilst I'm still powering my way through Mechanicum (slower paced than the other novels, probably because of a lack of Power Armour, but still a great read) there are lots of things that bug me First and foremost on the list: SCALE I'm wondering whether anybody else has picked up on a few problems here. -How big are Titans, really? Because McNeill in both False Gods and Mechanicum has tended to state Warlord titans to be under 50 meters tall. Models for Warlord titans, scale comparisons to Warhound titans (which there are actually models for) in Apocalypse all suggest that Warlords are MUCH bigger - hell a Warhound titan itself, in comparison to a Space Marine model (which most people agree to be somewhat undersized) is at least 20 meters tall, if not more. Most art and traditional interpretations of Warlords are much bigger, suggesting that they're big enough for planes to fly around and large enough to step on and crush Warhounds. On a somewhat unrelated note, how big are battleships? Battlefleet Gothic used to describe the base around a battleship as being "no more than a few hundred thousand kilometers" whilst battleships themselves are supposed to be dozens of kilometers long. So which is it? -Also, Graham McNeill quite clearly used wikipedia as a source on his descriptions of Mars; you can compare the maps of Mars to the one included in the book (in fact, the map in the book covers exactly the terrain in the picture of Mars hosted on wikipedia). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tharsis In addition, he's just about plagarized the heck out of Wikipedia definitions, or wikipedia has survived long enough to be accessed in the far future compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis_Labyrinthus Noctis Labyrinthus, "the labyrinth of the night", is a region of Mars between the Valles Marineris and the Tharsis upland. The region is notable for its maze-like system of deep, steep-walled valleys. The valleys and canyons of this region formed by faulting and many show classic features of grabens, with the upland plain surface preserved on the valley floor. and Mechanicum page 210 The Noctis Labyrinthus is a broken region of land between the Tharsis uplands and the Valles Marineris... Notable for its maze-like system of deep, sheer-walled valleys, it is thought to have been formed by faulting in a previous age (irony: weasel words in a Mechanicum that invented an entire language to avoid ambiguity) Also, many of the canyons display typical features of grabens, with the upland plain surface clearly preserved on the valley floor. -Finally, and most glaringly, how can a factory complex that's on an area of land we can clearly see from existing photographs cover "hundreds of thousands of square kilometers"? Mars is smaller than Earth! Even something in the tens of thousands of kilometers would be a sizeable chunk of the planet. The entire circumference of mars itself is only about 21 thousand kilometers! How is that even possible? Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brother Captain Andrecus Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 -Finally, and most glaringly, how can a factory complex that's on an area of land we can clearly see from existing photographs cover "hundreds of thousands of square kilometers"? Mars is smaller than Earth! Even something in the tens of thousands of kilometers would be a sizeable chunk of the planet. The entire circumference of mars itself is only about 21 thousand kilometers! How is that even possible? How? I'll tell you how. Graham Mcneill is only human, that's how. He's subject to mistakes. It's still pretty funny though, lol... Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/#findComment-1839408 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taz Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 When truly thinking of 40k fluff, my rule of thumb is to toss exact measurements out the window, imagine everything to be as big as possible, then double that. Why? Because shut up. Why does that make sense? Because it's the Imperium. So McNeill messed up the measurements, as long as you can form a decent image in your mind it shouldn't matter. Just remember with the Imperium, everything is BIG. How do we know if it's more powerful/important? Because it's bigger. Warhounds are huge, despite being scout titans, in Storm of Iron, also by McNeill, he lists Reavers to be roughly twice the size of warhounds, making them about 40 meters, so now you can make the choice to either have the Reavers be almost as big as Warlords, or, since the in the Imperium the watchword is "BIGGER!" (Next in line of course to "HERESY," and "OH GOD I'VE JUST BEEN MAIMED BY SOMETHING."), you could simply toss out the measurements and imagine the towering beasts that Warlords really are, and then Emperor/Imperator class titans, I tend to think of something along the lines of putting guns the size of the empire state building on the Andes mountains then put them on legs and tell them that the enemy thinks that it's stupid. Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/#findComment-1839431 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morte Posted January 12, 2009 Author Share Posted January 12, 2009 It's just minor gripes in an otherwise admittedly excellent novel. And this is from a formerly ferocious McNeill hater such as myself. Fulgrim and Mechanicum are both excellent books, and McNeill both benefits greatly from, and adds substantially to the setting and the source material that he's given. Books are allowed to be outrageous, and Sci-Fi books even more so, and 40k books are allowed to be in a realm of their own where outrageous and impossible are catchwords in the design philosophy.. but it really bugs me when they lack internal consistency. I'd be able to accept a hundred thousand square kilometer factory complex on.. an impossibly big unnamed planet. I'd be able to accept it if McNeill had written that terraforming (marsforming?) on Mars had enlarged the red planet to a ridiculous size. But when he copies from easily available maps of the red planet and then vastly exaggerates the scale between recognisable landmarks, and names one factory to be hundreds of thousands of square kilometers whilst the Olympus Mons forge is only thousands of square kilometers.. Hell I'd even be able to accept that when he wrote hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, he meant to convey the total size of the factory (which might cover a thousand square kilometers but have a hundred different levels) rather than the coverage of land. But McNeill is a horrible offender of scale! His planets are too big, his titans are too small, and his Ulthwé craftworld from Fulgrim is only a few kilometers long, rather than being the planet-sized Death Star-esque ship that they're supposed to be (which, by inference, make Imperial ships much smaller than they're purported to be as well, if they're dwarfed by an Eldar ship that's only a few kilometers long). I have no problem with ridiculously huge, but is it really that hard to get a few figures right? McNeill is a tier 1 black library writer! He's not even a random guy contributing a short story! He's written codexes! Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/#findComment-1839483 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyrox Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Don't forget a hundred thousand SQUARE km does not mean 100,000 in length :sweat: Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/#findComment-1839595 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amit Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Graham McNeill quite clearly used wikipedia as a source on his descriptions of Mars; you can compare the maps of Mars to the one included in the book (in fact, the map in the book covers exactly the terrain in the picture of Mars hosted on wikipedia). Compare: Noctis Labyrinthus, "the labyrinth of the night", is a region of Mars between the Valles Marineris and the Tharsis upland. The region is notable for its maze-like system of deep, steep-walled valleys. The valleys and canyons of this region formed by faulting and many show classic features of grabens, with the upland plain surface preserved on the valley floor. and Mechanicum page 210 : The Noctis Labyrinthus is a broken region of land between the Tharsis uplands and the Valles Marineris... Notable for its maze-like system of deep, sheer-walled valleys, it is thought to have been formed by faulting in a previous age (irony: weasel words in a Mechanicum that invented an entire language to avoid ambiguity) Also, many of the canyons display typical features of grabens, with the upland plain surface clearly preserved on the valley floor. Give the man a break, at least he went for some 'accuracy'. You make it sound like he is the first person ever to have plaigarised/or got their information source from Wikipaedia. Finally, and most glaringly, how can a factory complex that's on an area of land we can clearly see from existing photographs cover "hundreds of thousands of square kilometers"? Mars is smaller than Earth! Even something in the tens of thousands of kilometers would be a sizeable chunk of the planet. The entire circumference of mars itself is only about 21 thousand kilometers! How is that even possible? So... the Circumference © of Mars is 21,000 Km Therefore .... Diameter D = C/Pi ... Diameter of Mars is 6683.6 Km it follows that the Radius is 3341.8 Km Surface Area of a sphere is given by 4 xPi x R2 which is 4 x 3.142 x (3341.8)2 = 140,354,739.15 Km2 All of a sudden factory complexes hundreds of thousands of square kilometers in size seem possible (especially in the realm of 40K). As for the book itself, IMHO is the one of the best HH Novels so far. Amit Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/#findComment-1839650 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morte Posted January 12, 2009 Author Share Posted January 12, 2009 Which is a great point, Amit, only that the book lacks internal consistency because of the diagrams included at the start, which show the sizes of the various forge complexes, and on top of a recognisable map of the surface of Mars. That, and he then refers to the bigger Olympus Mons forge as only covering thousands of square kilometers. He also gives relative distances between the various landmarks as being in the thousands of kilometers. Whilst a factory in the hundreds of thousands of square kilometers might be possible, it wouldn't be as small as reflected in the map. Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/#findComment-1839938 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amit Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 I do agree with you on the point with regards to the map. It could be inconsistent because he is trying to illustrate what is essentially a 3D map in 2D (in the book) and get as much info on that map given restricted space/page size. But I am happy to overlook these inconsistencies in return what is otherwise a great story. As I said one of the better ones in HH series. Amit Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/#findComment-1840023 Share on other sites More sharing options...
lee265 Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 it takes place in 28000 years maybe they enlarged the planet according to other books the forge masters once leveled a continent also titans Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/#findComment-1840526 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grand Master Tyrak Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 The history of Mars in 40k explains that it was once terraformed, but reduced back to its original state during the Age of Strife by conflict. Maybe this explains the map problems? ;) Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/#findComment-1840578 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giant Fossil Penguin Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 I think he might mean up and down as well as ground covered. It would be one thing if it were all just a single-level sprawl, but it (the Olympus Mons forge) covers the flanks of the mountains and has multi-level worker habs. I think if you added in all of the floors, on all of the levels , you would get hundreds of thousands of kilometres, if not millions. For the average reader I reckon it would slow the story down to start talking of volumes and cubic coverage. Hundreds of thousands of kilometres puts a BIG picture into your head, and then allows you to move on. It might cause problems later on when yuou start to think about it (or you are and Areographer), but it is the immediate flow and picture that is important. At least that's what I think! GFP Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/#findComment-1841036 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taz Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 WARGHLBARGHLBARGHL! THIS DISCUSSION REEKS OF HERESY! LOGIC CONTRADICTS FAITH! TO QUESTION IS TO DOUBT! DOUBT IS HERESY! FIT THAT IN YOUR MAP!!!! /cruiscontrolforcool Otherwise great discussion. Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/#findComment-1841086 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyrox Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 Who cares dudes Its on Mars, its about the Heresy, its good to read. So some of the scale is a bit out - big deal ...... will it adversely change your life?? Nope ;) As you were Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/157261-problems-with-mechanicum/#findComment-1841098 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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