'Enlisting' Servitors

[Frater Cornelius]

Let's look at the usual casualties of my army.

 

Hidden Content

Out of 2 officers, both usually survive, as does their bodyguard

Out of 30 mechanized infantry, there is usually 5-10 dead

Out of 30 light infantry, usually 15-20 dead

Out of four Chimeras 1-3 wrecked

Out of two LR, 0-1 wrecked by Grav or melee (crew and vital parts can usually be covered without problems)

Out of three Wyvern, usually all make it

The BB variant always made it thus far

 

Those are the average number of casualties when whiping out an entire SM Battle Company, Chaos Incursions, SW elite shock troops.

As you can see, the armour damage is held in check and casualties usually happen due to glancing hits, so crew and vehicle can be recovered and re-used. The light infantry on the other hand suffers every game.

 

The question is whether it would be cost-effective and prudent to use Servitors as front-line light infantry instead? They do not need many provisions, maintenance is easy given that there are Enginseers tending to tanks anyway, and they do not cost precious human life. Ancient ties to the AdMech makes the production of Servitors trivial.

 

While less heroic, it seems more pragmatic. But, it also feels dehumanising. Vat growing Servitor to serve on the front lines is everything else than inspiring and if you ask me, kind of appalling. Using criminals and prisoners to make them and giving them a chance to redeem themselves does not seem honest. Redemption must come from a conscious mind.

 

And yet, I would not need to send loyal soldiers into frontal assault.

 

Thoughts?

[WarriorFish]

Servitors require supervision and instruction in order to function, and at that stage you may as well vat grow enhanced human soldiers. Life is cheap in 40k, there are countless billions upon billions of humans that can be pressed into war.

[Frater Cornelius]

Well, given that it isn't a regular regiment, but an order that functions outside of Imperial hierarchy and prides itself with very well trained combatants. Almost like the Solar Auxilia. I doubt a Commander of an army like that is happy to send half-naked people into a frontal assault against the enemy, nor would they receive human tithes to get some Cannon fodder. He would have a little bit more pride than that. Imagine a Templar army and compare it to the Saracen armies at the time. Mine would be the former and I want to avoid the latter.

[CoffeeGrunt]

The thing with Servitors is that the vat growing and augmetics probably cost far more than shoving a lasgun and flak armour - if they're lucky - into some teenage kid's arms then sending them out to go hold off some Orks before they realise they weren't issued power packs. As 'Fish said, life is very cheap in the IoM. Arguably the meat grinder approach is a population control measure as much as anything, otherwise the already overpopulated Hive Cities would be starved even more than they are now.

[spafe]

The other side to realize is that from a fluff point of view I would imagine wiping out a battle company of marines is a 'once in a lifetime' type of engagement, so the higher than average casulities from those engagements might be 10-15 years apart in the regiments history, giving plenty of time to recoup and rebuild. They might not be, but at that case you arnt really having veterans in the entire army, a lot of those light infantry will be fresh recruits to fill numbers, meaning a higher casualty rate is expected.

 

Just a different way to view it...

[Inso]

Although this doesn't really answer the original question... I have often thought that an Engineseer with 2 gun servitors would make a good little shock unit for an Astra Militarum army... and you can have three of them so that is a nice amount of heavy bolters/multi meltas. It almost makes them worth having, even if you don't have vehicles

[Frater Cornelius]

The other side to realize is that from a fluff point of view I would imagine wiping out a battle company of marines is a 'once in a lifetime' type of engagement, so the higher than average casulities from those engagements might be 10-15 years apart in the regiments history, giving plenty of time to recoup and rebuild. They might not be, but at that case you arnt really having veterans in the entire army, a lot of those light infantry will be fresh recruits to fill numbers, meaning a higher casualty rate is expected.

 

Just a different way to view it...

That is a solid point. A game on the table top is basically as close as it gets to a balanced fight. I suppose losing half your light infantry and have a few tanks wrecked and recovered is an amazingly small price to pay when stopping a full-fledged incursion or destroying a Battle Company. The casualties were not high. They were less than the SM had.

 

And once you have survived a few engagements like that, you will be introduced into the Vet squad. So yeah, it makes sense to few such battles as quite a few years apart and those that are in between are no where near ae balanced and do not have high casualty rates.

 

Thanks for the comment ;)

[Cap'm Heckus]

There are countless worlds in the 40k universe. It's not outside the realm of possibility that one of them had the idea. Cost and maintenance aside, it could be a low population planet that has to recycle its wounded fast. It could be used by twisted mechanika off shoots who do it for the pleasure of experimenting their subjects. It could be a manufactory world where the majority of able bodied men are already upgraded (4th edition had a doctrine for it).

 

Vet squads with carapace armor could easily be explained as combat servitors. There's lots of stuff that could fit the bill. Drone sentinels, servitors heavy weapon team, ogryn heavy lifting servitors, etc...