Realism in Equipment Design

[Bryan Blaire]

I must disagree, since my understanding is that Daemons etc is a horror aspect of 40k Sci-fi but my genre hair splitting is not for this topic.

Daemons and the Warp and magic are a fantasy element - they are not science, or something science is moving to explain.  So they fall outside of science fiction, which is speculative based on current understanding with progression forward.

 

Hence why the material is typically grouped for sale as “Science Fiction/Fantasy” - so much falls over the lip of science into fantasy when you progress too far down the “What If..” path.

 

Once you have incorporated an element of magic into something, it’s fantasy.  After all, the Force isn’t magic - it’s just an energy field.  Energy fields and their manipulation are science, right?  So there’s nothing in Star Wars that is fantasy either.  If 40K isn’t Science Fantasy, neither is Star Wars.  The “rules”/evaluation must apply the same, or you are being subjective to distinguish because you don’t like that the “rules” would/feel that the “rules” should categorize things the same.

 

Unrealistic design elements are no more acceptable in a science fiction environment than they are in a science fantasy environment, unless the alteration from current science or the accepted magical element is directly applicable to the design elements - that actually happens at about the same frequency between 40K and Star Wars (both use wildly advanced tech to explain the abilities of craft, etc., while 40K uses an actual magical element “the Warp” to explain FTL, while Star Wars hand-waves it with advanced tech, fuels (recently), and other elements while not using the Force to explain it).

 

As far as I can tell, the designs of the tanks for the 30K/40K Imperium has little/no interaction with the fantastical elements of the setting, so that (and whether 40K is science fiction or fantasy) has zero bearing on whether the designs have “realism” or not - about the only thing that seems to involve that is the armor being “ceramite” on some vehicles (which if we had a “scientific” explanation of what it was, we could potentially argue realism about it’s properties), and that usually isn’t an explanation for why a vehicle is designed or operates as it does, but reserved for resistance to damage types (such as when Ceramite armor upgrades lowered damage from Melta weapons).

 

When the more fantastical metallurgy would come into play would be if “unobtanium” was the reason that Tank X can have outlandish designs like bullet traps because “it deflects anything, even at poor angles” or “the structural capacity of the material is so high, that even thin cylinders of it can hold quadrillions of times it’s own weight/density up”, etc.  That doesn’t seem to be the case for the Imperium very often (at least in regards to that).  It does come into play with the anti-grav tech vs. aerodynamics, etc.  It comes into play more with the daemon engines/daemon incorporated elements of Chaos vehicles.

[The Yncarne]

Science fiction is the improbable made possible. Fantasy is the impossible made improbable. 

[Closet Skeleton]

 

I must disagree, since my understanding is that Daemons etc is a horror aspect of 40k Sci-fi but my genre hair splitting is not for this topic.

Daemons and the Warp and magic are a fantasy element - they are not science, or something science is moving to explain.  So they fall outside of science fiction, which is speculative based on current understanding with progression forward.

 

 

Historically Science Fiction was full of psychic powers and beings that were angels in all but name, there have always been voices that tried to ground the genre more but its revisionist nonsense to think there was ever an era of 'pure SF' where there was only thoughtful 'what if' stories. Para-psychology isn't 'within the realms of plausible future science' to the average novel reader today but it very much was to the average member of the New York publishing scene during the formative years of SF (in both the sociological and adventure varieties) and you can't understand core SF cultural realms like Star Trek without being aware of that. Originally there was just Weird Fiction and the concept of Speculative Fiction evolved out of that when the writers and fans who were more into the Jules Verne/H G Wells stuff rebelled at being stuck in the same magazines as horror and outright hoaxes.

 

I refuse to take seriously any definition of a genre that forces you to kick key formative works out of the genre that one is trying to define.

 

40k is literally Tolkien in space for half of its races, its way more of a direct fantasy SF mash up than Star Wars which is basically just Lensman/Flash Gordon with a New Age veneer. Science Fiction/Fantasy mash ups come in lots of different varieties, from stuff like Dragons of Pern or Lord of Light which are fantasy story told as SF one to cross overs where a space explorer lands on a fantasy world to stories that look like a mash up superficially but are actually more of a retro-weird fiction that doesn't care about genre divisions.

Edited May 12, 2022 by Closet Skeleton

[Crizza]

Chainswords bother me so much more than the unrealistic tanks. I laughed so hard when the marine stabbed through the necron torso in the back during the 9th edition cinematic while saving the damsel in distress. Would be like stabbing a baseball bat through an engine block.

 

Well, I can live with that. If you ever pushed a chainsaw tip first trough a log, you know that you have to push the blade in while moving downwards at the beginning. Considering that we have chainsaw chains which can cut through metall and concrete, I can live with a genetically engineered murdermachine pushing a chainblade through a Necron.

[Bryan Blaire]

 

 

I must disagree, since my understanding is that Daemons etc is a horror aspect of 40k Sci-fi but my genre hair splitting is not for this topic.

Daemons and the Warp and magic are a fantasy element - they are not science, or something science is moving to explain.  So they fall outside of science fiction, which is speculative based on current understanding with progression forward.

 

 

Historically Science Fiction was full of psychic powers and beings that were angels in all but name, there have always been voices that tried to ground the genre more but its revisionist nonsense to think there was ever an era of 'pure SF' where there was only thoughtful 'what if' stories. Para-psychology isn't 'within the realms of plausible future science' to the average novel reader today but it very much was to the average member of the New York publishing scene during the formative years of SF (in both the sociological and adventure varieties) and you can't understand core SF cultural realms like Star Trek without being aware of that. Originally there was just Weird Fiction and the concept of Speculative Fiction evolved out of that when the writers and fans who were more into the Jules Verne/H G Wells stuff rebelled at being stuck in the same magazines as horror and outright hoaxes.

 

I refuse to take seriously any definition of a genre that forces you to kick key formative works out of the genre that one is trying to define.

 

40k is literally Tolkien in space for half of its races, its way more of a direct fantasy SF mash up than Star Wars which is basically just Lensman/Flash Gordon with a New Age veneer. Science Fiction/Fantasy mash ups come in lots of different varieties, from stuff like Dragons of Pern or Lord of Light which are fantasy story told as SF one to cross overs where a space explorer lands on a fantasy world to stories that look like a mash up superficially but are actually more of a retro-weird fiction that doesn't care about genre divisions.

 

All of which was covered by the very next sentence that you didn’t quote.  There’s a reason the genre for publishing is just listed as “Science Fiction/Fantasy” - it’s incredibly fluid and almost impossible to pull apart, and the lines blur in various ways, etc.

 

It’s also not the topic/point of the thread, hence my constant “Here’s why it is relevant to vehicle design”… we should get back to that with our discussion of this in association with the topic, lest we get melta’d.

 

Whether it is SciFi or SciFantasy or anything else you want to place 40K in, unless the specific element of design you are objecting to on the grounds of “reality” is somehow mitigated by an internally consistent element of the setting (such as the presence of aforementioned ‘unobtanium’ being used in structural reinforcement/armor), then it’s still a potentially valid point of concern for those that want to discuss realism of the design in question.

 

So far as I can tell, there’s nothing specifically special about the metallurgy (other than we have no idea what it’s actually supposed to be, and using STCs, it was supposed to be able to be fluid on the material composition front anyway) used for the particular tanks in question that would mitigate the flat plating or bullet traps, or any of the other objections to ‘lack of realism’, so it doesn’t matter at all what genre 40K might fall in to - we could be discussing tank design of the 1920s, 1990s, 2570s, or 41st millennium, and it doesn’t matter if the unrealistic elements aren’t used to adjust the understanding of realism regarding the design of equipment.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Yo…sci-fi is fantasy y’all let’s stop arguing over semantics.

The early sci-fi authors were classified as fantasy writers, and the only real difference between the two is fairly superficial.

[Wispy]

honestly this is a setting where they sword fight with chainsaws. the whole thing falls apart when you think about it too hard. so i can't take people seriously when they're taking things too seriously. 

 

edit: and honestly, i know there's people who really care about this sort of thing. but i don't care that you care. 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Wispy

[lansalt]

honestly this is a setting where they sword fight with chainsaws. the whole thing falls apart when you think about it too hard. so i can't take people seriously when they're taking things too seriously. 

 

edit: and honestly, i know there's people who really care about this sort of thing. but i don't care that you care. 

Yet sci-fi fantasy IPs like SW or Trek have been publishing books about the tech, weapons and ships in their universes for decades. And so has 40k since those diagrams in the RT rulebook or the Imperial Armour / Black Books.

 

It's an integral part of the worldbuilding of a setting and a lot of people enjoy wondering about it.

[Bryan Blaire]

One of the things that this kind of discussion always brings to mind for me is the STCs - I mean the things had to have a minimum standard of materials they could use to make certain designs, right?  Surely there was a point where the equipment would go “You want to build a tank/transport - you have only brought me wood, it’s strong, but this will not work.  You must bring me at a minimum X amount of material with Y composition or I can’t build the plans you want.”

 

Or could some of the early interaction with them been more like a scavenger hunt, where people at a new colony just started rounding up crap that they had either found or mined on the new planet and started bringing it to the STC?

 

I would think that when they STCs were fully operational, the folks dealing with colonization with them were also probably more aware of the tech needs, and so were probably more focused - it makes me wonder if that’s not been part of the problem with the STCs themselves falling into disuse.

 

How much of these designs we view as having issues were originally dealt with due to having some kind of ‘unobtanium’ that made them non-issues, or are the issues a result themselves of the slow degradation and misunderstanding of STC based plans that have continued to erode, slipping back to “We don’t understand why these are bullet traps, but we can get them to go with what we have, so…”

[Wispy]

 

honestly this is a setting where they sword fight with chainsaws. the whole thing falls apart when you think about it too hard. so i can't take people seriously when they're taking things too seriously. 

 

edit: and honestly, i know there's people who really care about this sort of thing. but i don't care that you care. 

Yet sci-fi fantasy IPs like SW or Trek have been publishing books about the tech, weapons and ships in their universes for decades. And so has 40k since those diagrams in the RT rulebook or the Imperial Armour / Black Books.

 

It's an integral part of the worldbuilding of a setting and a lot of people enjoy wondering about it.

 

sure but we suspend our disbelief and allow the settings to function on their own internal logic. that's not happening here, people are selectively applying real world standards of realism (in an almost war historian, WW2 nut sort of way). and honestly, there's nothing wrong with liking and disliking things for these reasons but i'm just not particularly compelled by it and find it exhausting.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Wispy

[Karhedron]

Regarding STCs and limited resources, I remember a piece of fluff covering this although I can't remember where it is from. Basically the STCs were pretty smart and could run a colony through an industrial revolution at high speed. If you told it you needed a tank and gave it wood, it would scan the area for useful ores and work out the simplest way to start smelting. Then it would do the same for fuel sources and more advanced materials until a sufficient technological base had been established to manufacture the required objects.

 

What this means is that a fully functional STC system is far more than just a catalogue of templates. It is a problem solving system designed to find solutions to the problems of surviving in a wide variety of environments. I don't know if the STC had minimum requirements for a technological base or if it could really start from scratch with "OK, you have wood. Start rubbing two sticks together".

[sarabando]

for me realism is the stylings 

 

 

images like thi, the art of karl Kopinski etc yeah they are wildly ineffecient warrior monks in walking tank suits but it has a grounding in reality. 

 

What i hate is GWs and Evey metals move to a more cartoony style in the sculpts and painting the "aos-ification" of 40k/30k. i dont want a wildly impractical sword i want a sword that looks like a real weapon etc. 

 

 

but i can cater for this myself "have dremmel will travel"

[Special Officer Doofy]

 

 

Chainswords bother me so much more than the unrealistic tanks. I laughed so hard when the marine stabbed through the necron torso in the back during the 9th edition cinematic while saving the damsel in distress. Would be like stabbing a baseball bat through an engine block.

Well, I can live with that. If you ever pushed a chainsaw tip first trough a log, you know that you have to push the blade in while moving downwards at the beginning. Considering that we have chainsaw chains which can cut through metall and concrete, I can live with a genetically engineered murdermachine pushing a chainblade through a Necron.

Yeah but the chainsword has a cover. If you re watch the video it has a full back cover and the end/tip is half covered, and if I had to guess it is multiple inches wide over the chainsword. It was just an example of how silly wh40k is. And you would have to fire a metal bat with so much force to actually peirce an engine block, I highly doubt even a marine could shove a half Blunt object through millions of year old living space metal. I love it all though, I'm not one to complain about realism in the hobby. Most marine players I see have sergeants and captains without helmets on, yet almost no other known planet to us right now has the same atmosphere or pressure and temperature to sustain human life. But here they are walking around every planet perfectly fine. Again, doesn't bother me at all, I love 40k "knights in space", but none of it is even remotely real, let alone tank designs. Was trying to lighten the mood haha.

[Antarius]

My position is the same as it ever was; that a universe where gestalt-spacefaring locusts and sentient fungoid cockney football hooligans roam free, and an empire of psychic space-elves can sex, drugs and rock'n'roll a god of debauchery into existence is no place to expect or demand realism. 

 

I just find it baffling that people will argue the minutiae of gun placement on a tank while happily accepting that Ork technology works only because Orks believe that it does. 

I find myself very much in agreement with this, with the small caveat that I do think believeability for lack of a better term is important. While I definitely don’t look for realism, a design or in-setting explanation can still come off as “too silly” or otherwise mess with my suspension of disbelief. For example, Warhammer 40.000 minis definitely have oversized, unrealistic weapons and I completely, intuitively just accept that -however, dial the heroic scale up to final fantasy levels and I would immediately notice it and be put off by it, because it would break with the established “rules” of how weapons in Warhammer 40.000 are supposed to look.

 

Similarly, I accept all sorts of unrealistic fictional explanations for why the Warhammer 40.000 universe works as it does. I can still find my suspension of disbelief disrupted when Guilliman seemingly zooms to whereever he needs to be, whenever he needs to be there, even though warp travel is supposed to be unreliable and unstable and “slow” compared to many other sci-fi FTL solutions - Never mind that warp travel is completely unrealistic to begin with.

 

I guess the TL;DR is that “this is not ‘Nam, there are rules!”, even though the rules don’t really have to do with realism

Edited May 13, 2022 by Antarius

[Magos Takatus]

 

My position is the same as it ever was; that a universe where gestalt-spacefaring locusts and sentient fungoid cockney football hooligans roam free, and an empire of psychic space-elves can sex, drugs and rock'n'roll a god of debauchery into existence is no place to expect or demand realism. 

 

I just find it baffling that people will argue the minutiae of gun placement on a tank while happily accepting that Ork technology works only because Orks believe that it does. 

I find myself very much in agreement with this, with the small caveat that I do think believeability for lack of a better term is important. While I definitely don’t look for realism, a design or in-setting explanation can still come off as “too silly” or otherwise mess with my suspension of disbelief. For example, Warhammer 40.000 minis definitely have oversized, unrealistic weapons and I completely, intuitively just accept that -however, dial the heroic scale up to final fantasy levels and I would immediately notice it and be put off by it, because it would break with the established “rules” of how weapons in Warhammer 40.000 are supposed to look.

 

Similarly, I accept all sorts of unrealistic fictional explanations for why the Warhammer 40.000 universe works as it does. I can still find my suspension of disbelief disrupted when Guilliman seemingly zooms to whereever he needs to be, whenever he needs to be there, even though warp travel is supposed to be unreliable and unstable and “slow” compared to many other sci-fi FTL solution - Never mind that warp travel is completely unrealistic to begin with.

 

I guess the TL;DR is that “this is not ‘Nam, there are rules!”, even though the rules don’t really have to do with realism

 

I kinda get where you're coming from. I love a good Ork conversion as much as the next mekboy but it does sometimes rub me the wrong way when someone gives an Ork an utterly massive gun or melee weapon and the model is just swinging it around like it weighs nothing. I don't have a strict limit on how much an Ork could carry and I wouldn't particularly care if I did but like you say, when it gets to Final Fantasy or Monster Hunter scale weapons I do find myself thinking "okay, that's getting a bit silly now". I wouldn't tell someone I think their conversion is a bit over the top for my sensibilities, I'd instead talk about the parts of the model I like, but I'll be wondering to myself why this warboss is swinging a gorkanaut melee weapon around like it weighs nothing. :p

 

I think that's important. Most of the people in here that would prefer to see more believable elements holding the fabric of the setting together don't seem to be trying to impose their way of thinking onto other people, it seems to be more of a personal preference for how things are presented. As long as it's not ruining anyone else's fun then I don't see a problem. After all, Forge World tried to do it themselves in the old Imperial Armour books. The Imperial Armor books used to contain specifications for most Imperial tanks I'm not sure how "realistic" those stats were but knowing the top road speed of a Leman Russ was actually kinda fun for me. I didn't do anything with those stats but they just made the game's setting feel more believable to me.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

The dumbest example I can think of when it comes to equipment realism was the MK1 boltgun where the breach was about half a boltgun away from the magazine:

 

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS3n4ye1oXXNT9Ex3YSY_o0J7Dk5KGXmAG1Fw&usqp=CAU%22%5Dhttps://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?%5D

Edited May 13, 2022 by Brother Adelard

[Closet Skeleton]

 

 

So far as I can tell, there’s nothing specifically special about the metallurgy (other than we have no idea what it’s actually supposed to be, and using STCs, it was supposed to be able to be fluid on the material composition front anyway) used for the particular tanks in question that would mitigate the flat plating or bullet traps, or any of the other objections to ‘lack of realism’, so it doesn’t matter at all what genre 40K might fall in to - we could be discussing tank design of the 1920s, 1990s, 2570s, or 41st millennium, and it doesn’t matter if the unrealistic elements aren’t used to adjust the understanding of realism regarding the design of equipment.

 

Its been pretty clearly quoted in this thread already that the bullet traps aren't a lack of realism, they're deliberate bad design for thematic reasons.

[Bryan Blaire]

Its been pretty clearly quoted in this thread already that the bullet traps aren't a lack of realism, they're deliberate bad design for thematic reasons.

Please, please… tell me so much more about things I know!

 

Thematic or not, it’s stuff people have problems/objections to.

 

Personally, I’m down with most of the large elements of design, it’s smaller things I usually find objectionable, and more with other players than GW (who doesn’t give a fig over what my preferences are for appearance, etc.).

[Jamafore]

Science fiction is the improbable made possible. Fantasy is the impossible made improbable. 

 

 

Well said. Can I thieve this for a signature?

[Silas7]

It always confuses me that GW think you can put belted, linked rounds in a magazine housing a la chaos space marine style. I'm not aware of any weapon that can do that. Even weapons that can take both link and magazines need separate feed points. (Such as the FN Minimi)

 

I thought bolter rounds are caseless but I may be wrong or this may have been changed idk.

 

 

Its been pretty clearly quoted in this thread already that the bullet traps aren't a lack of realism, they're deliberate bad design for thematic reasons.

Please, please… tell me so much more about things I know!

 

Thematic or not, it’s stuff people have problems/objections to.

 

Personally, I’m down with most of the large elements of design, it’s smaller things I usually find objectionable, and more with other players than GW (who doesn’t give a fig over what my preferences are for appearance, etc.).

 

I'm sure people recall the FW spacewolves that didn't have trigger fingers; and the way I remember things it was almost universally panned as careless. Seems like a micro example of what people feel is fine to shrug your shoulders at and carry on or to express some form of disbelief or nonacceptance. Every universe needs ground rules by which they function and once those are established you can begin to make exceptions for the fantastically wild ideas that have no basis in our reality.

[The Yncarne]

 

Science fiction is the improbable made possible. Fantasy is the impossible made improbable. 

 

 

Well said. Can I thieve this for a signature?

 

 

of course. 

[apologist]

One of the things that this kind of discussion always brings to mind for me is the STCs - I mean the things had to have a minimum standard of materials they could use to make certain designs, right?  Surely there was a point where the equipment would go “You want to build a tank/transport - you have only brought me wood, it’s strong, but this will not work.  You must bring me at a minimum X amount of material with Y composition or I can’t build the plans you want.”

 

Or could some of the early interaction with them been more like a scavenger hunt, where people at a new colony just started rounding up crap that they had either found or mined on the new planet and started bringing it to the STC?

 

I would think that when they STCs were fully operational, the folks dealing with colonization with them were also probably more aware of the tech needs, and so were probably more focused - it makes me wonder if that’s not been part of the problem with the STCs themselves falling into disuse.

 

How much of these designs we view as having issues were originally dealt with due to having some kind of ‘unobtanium’ that made them non-issues, or are the issues a result themselves of the slow degradation and misunderstanding of STC based plans that have continued to erode, slipping back to “We don’t understand why these are bullet traps, but we can get them to go with what we have, so…”

 

Bryan Blaire raises a good point. There was an interesting B&C topic on the STC system recently (though sadly I can't find it now, sorry!) that cleared up what little we know of Standard Template Constructs. To summarise: the STC refers to both the system as a whole and the physical devices that produced STCs (of which we have very little info) and the resulting templates. To put that into context, it's like using the same term to describe a language, a library, a printer and the print-outs.  (And to be clear, this is no criticism of Bryan's post; just clearing things up afresh for further discussion).

 

+The STC system+

With that borne in mind, the 'unrealistic' designs could have come in at any point in that system. The STC system, we are told, made it possible for problems to be solved using local materials. Colonists could ask the STC device to make a (presumably very inefficient) tractor from wood, but the 'proper' use of the STC would likely be more conceptual – with the colonist instead asking 'How do we increase crop yields?', and the STC device then analysing the appropriate approach. STC results/printouts would then create the best technology or systems to resolve the query.

 

On a backwater world, you're unlikely to get a wooden tractor, but rather the most efficient harrow/plough possible from local wood, along with an almanac for when to use it. On a world with lots of resources, you might get an amazing, super-reliable and self-repairing tractor, along with a web of related technologies and systems to deploy and benefit from it.

 

As time rolled on and the understanding of the technology dwindled, colonists would forget or underestimate the capabilities of the STC – requesting wooden tractors and similarly inefficient approaches, rather than going to the root of their problem and giving it systemic requests. We're told the STC was designed to be super-simple to use, so it's unlikely to offer complex alternatives if it's given simple request. 

 

In other words, if it's told that every problem's a nail, it'll just create a series of amazing hammers appropriate to the region/world in question. 

 

+++

 

+Loss of creativity across humanity+

As a result, each world of the human diaspora ends up with a bank of local STC results/printouts, which pile up and get catalogued and distributed – and rather than making the trip to consult the STC device, people just make do with the nearest equivalent, or inherit the solution from previous generations. After all, everything the STC produces is brilliant, so any minor inefficiences are likely overlooked. One super-hammer is much like another; and if a wooden tools do things well enough, there's no need to have the self-repairing tractor. People become so ingrained into using the existing technologies that they no longer bother to ask the STC system for new solutions, even if conditions change (such as climate or disaster).

 

Spool on into Old Night, and the STC system breaks down as STC devices are lost, become irrepairably damaged, or destroyed. Each world of humanity is left with a huge amount of their STC results/printouts, which are likely fought over, traded and jealously or fearfully hidden away from generations of warfare and horror.

 

Spool further on, and the Adeptus Mechanicus have become fully developed, a priesthood dedicated to gathering STC results/printouts; their holy quest to find a functional STC device. The technology can be replicated, because the STC results/printouts give the materials and techniques necessary – but perhaps some edges need to be fudged: a device made from an STC result/printout from Ryza relies on an element plentiful there, but scanty on Triplex Phall. Lacking the conceptual framework of the STC system underlying that, there's a fundamental misunderstanding that the device must be built only with that element, leading to struggle and inefficiency.

 

We arrive in M31, and the STC system is – as far as we know – gone entirely. The Great Crusade is built on the best technology Terra and Mars can piece together from the scanty STC results/printouts. The period sees a revolution in the Adeptus Mechanicus in combining existing results/printouts – likely spearheaded by the Emperor in his role as Omnissiah. This, then, is where we start to see battle tanks being created from old high-tech tractors – such as, most famously, the Rhino.

 

The technology of the Imperium is thus not created anew, but rather agglomerated from increasing amounts of STC printouts being combined in increasingly inventive ways. 

 

Even a technological genius like Arkhan Land, or Belisarius Cawl, are rarely genuinely inventive – the ability for humanity to create has, since the Dark Age of Technology, been unnecessary. I'd argue there's a a fundamental cultural and conceptual gulf that prevent M41 humanity from genuinely creating.  Where's the pressure to discover fire from scratch when digging will reveal a safe and infinite cold-plasma heater? 

 

+++

 

+The Kratos: best it can be+

Anyway, that's by-the-by. Where does this come back to unrealistic design? I'd argue that it's birthed from that cultural block on true ex nihilo creation. It's fundamental to the tragedy of the setting. With no STC device, the STC system is reduced to existing building blocks for Magi to combine – a ghost fossil. 

 

To take the bullet traps on the Kratos tank as an example, I'd argue that they're very realistic for the setting; merely inefficient in absolute terms. Sure, there are better ways for us to profile the tank, but I'd argue the humanity of M31 onwards has a fundamental inability to express and comprehend genuine creativity. Even if some exceptional individuals still do, the cultural pressures applied on all Imperial citizens stunt the possibility. 

 

Could the Kratos be better designed in-universe? Perhaps not. The Adeptus Mechanicus can (within certain limits, both self-imposed and inherent to humanity of the period) adjust and refine, but we're seeing an STC printout/result – or, I'd argue, more likely a combination of same – that was perfect for a particular task. It's a super-screwdriver doing a good job of being a hammer.

 

To extend the thought, perhaps the Kratos originally had a slab-sided turret. As the Great Crusade rolled on, a new STC was found for ceramite sheet that could be curved and shaped more readily, but only over a domed area. After much discussion, argument and sacred unguents, it was combined with the Kratos plans (note these are distinct from STC printouts/results), giving a new curved turret. We see the Kratos at that point in history. The turret has been improved from earlier, but the potential is there for the Kratos plans to be further refined and improved in time.

 

The setting allows for super-efficient tanks. However, the nature of it also means that they're vanishingly rare; and it's the success of the STC system that has made it so, by stripping humanity of its ability to think for itself instead of through rote repetition. Almost all the pressures are against innovation and refinement.

 

+++

 

+ Out of universe +

Out of the setting, of course, I'd completely agree that it's simply down to looking cool and distinctive gets precedence over all other considerations. That's really going to come down to personal taste. For me, it's more important that a model fits the 40k aesthetic than being realistic in absolute terms (or even subjective ones based on our own technology).

 

I do, however, also agree that there should be more than a cursory nod to verisimilitude. The real classics of 40k design for me, such as the Eldar Falcon, incorporate a lot of visual language from modern day helicopter gunships. There are technologies that of course I don't understand, but the guns look somewhat like I expect guns to look like, and are in places I'd expect guns to work; there's a sense that the ribbing underneath is in some way holding up the tank; and the shape looks both armoured and aerodynamic.

 

Contrast that with (say) the Centurions, which struck me as fundamentally flawed. The missiles in the chest, the fact the rider/pilot has to be cross-armed... it chimes wrongly to me, and in a way that's counterintuitive where the Falcon's design is intuitive. I can overlook the unrealistic elements of (for example) the Falcon, because the work has been put in to make some parts believable, whereas there's more of a gap in believability for designs like the Centurion. 

[Son of Sacrifice]

Beautifully well put Apologist, you articulate things that I find myself unable to.

[Kastor Krieg]

Excellent post, but I think you've skipped a beat here, especially first sentence above. 

As it reads to me, the STC system was much simpler than you describe. What you've described is essentially an AI (analyzing query, adapting to local setting, etc) and I think this is overkill. We need to remember that the STC system was a standard template construct system, designed primarily to assist with colonization of new habitable worlds as humanity expanded into the galaxy. There's little to no point creating, fabricating in millions or billions of copies and sending to the stars "expert AI colonizer assistant systems".

In my reading what humanity took to the stars was a glorified 3D printer with "cartridges" of information on how to make a specific product, let's say the blueprints of the following useful things:
- a tractor

- a buggy

- hab block type A1

- hab block type A2

- hab block type B3

- medbay

- storage silo

- warehouse

- shovel

- hammer

- rebreather with an oxygen tank

- oxygen tank refills

- ... etc, ad nauseam, ad infinitum, hundreds of thousands of things a colonist might need.

A "complete STC system" would consist of a simple cogitator able to interpret those blueprints (probably carried in internal memory but also able to import/export them onto "drives", and utilize a connected smelting/casting/stamping facility to produce their results on a simplistic basis of "cram 30kg of iron ore into the hole, wait 3 hrs, I will produce 1x wall #031 for Habblock A1" - which the colonists will have to utilize further to build whatever they're doing. 

In this way the colonists do not need any specialist knowledge, at best they get ready-made products, at worst they need to play LEGO for a moment. 

Yes, the cogitator would be able to take tolerances into account of the blueprints, those probably being designed with those tolerances in mind - air pressure, air humidity, ground type, access to crude materials, interconnectability with other already built components etc - this is where the variety from different worlds comes from. It's not an advanced AI adjusting the blueprints, it's the engineers of old creating the blueprints with tolerances, with the forethought of the variety of habitable worlds that are to be explored.

This way, in extremis the STC system can limit the range of blueprints it will use and spit out an igloo when fed with snow and ice on Fenris or Inwit just as well as a steel habblock when fed with iron ore on Ultramar. It may thus create an illusion of "STC-knows-best" for the colonist users, giving start to the machine cult, but it does not analyze and adjust, it selects from recipes it has based on the materiel it is fed.

Ergo - I think that each forge world does already have at least one STC functional device, that's how it... well, forges. The issue is that the memory banks of each of those are incomplete. Some of the blueprints have never been collated again. Some of them lost or corrupted when the Dark Mechanicum schism happened. Some of them were corrupted and damaged by age and do not yield usable results. This is how you get the "Terminator armour cannot be made anymore, the secrets have been lost, all that is there now is all that will ever be, what is in use are millenia old relics". They can be adjusted, repaired, worked on, modified, restored - but there is no STC forge in Imperial possession that can be asked to spit out ten thousand brand spanking new TDA suits. The blueprint is not there anymore or it is incomplete, flawed, corrupted and using it does not yield acceptable results - and there's no Dark Age engineer around to try and repair the damage, adjust the code, rewrite instructions and redesign the STC blueprint so that it is complete again.

That's why Cawl is so unique - he was able to adjust the STCs and create new patterns of boltguns, making them more effective and enhancing the results. However even he cannot rebuild what's not there. Imagine an STC blueprint as having a computer folder structure, with each part of the whole being a separate printable object. Let's say, for a 30k Rhino STC the "files" are:

1) headlights
2) front plate
3) 2x side plates, mirrored
4) rear plate
5) roof plate
6) hull bottom
7) 2x round door sets, mirrored
8) pintle mounted, belt fed storm bolter

9) engine

10) smokestacks

and so on. But, then, imagine that since in 40k Mars cannot produce this pattern of Rhino anymore, the STC probably looks something like that:
 

1) headlights
2) front plate
3) <corrupted>
4) rear plate
5) <missing>
6) <missing> 
7) <corrupted>
8) pintle mounted, belt fed storm bolter

9) engine

10) <missing>

When you only have this, you cannot make a 30k Rhino even though you "have a 30k Rhino STC". You could replace those with 40k Rhino files #5 and #6, because they're compatible or even the same files. But you cannot reverse engineer the instruction to produce the round door or the side plates with round openings for the door. What you can do though is you can go "Hey! Cool! STORM BOLTERS" and slap those onto all or most of your other :cuss, from producing them separately as weapons for TDA and PA Marines, to copy/pasting them onto stuff as random as large storage containers and other vehicles clearly not designed with those in mind.

This, in turn, creates a situation where "the STC" Mechanicus are actively hunting for is everything to do with blueprints that they can carry away and apply elsewhere.

"Hey! It's #325 file for Habblock B3! We can finally build those with complete plumbing!" is an excellent find for techpriest and a high point of their career. This will get called "finding an STC". What is this an STC of? You wouldn't understand. But this will be added to the STC database of every loyal forgeworld in the Imperium.

"Hot damn, this is a complete set of blueprints of a Raider type tracked vehicle! :o" makes you famous for eternity if you're Arkhan Land. This will get called "finding a complete STC of something" and will be built across the Imperium and will be the death of its enemies. However, the find could have just as well been "a complete STC of Habblock C41". We never could build that habblock at all. It's a cool one, it has a rec dome with a pool and a gym. It also connects to Habblock C40. Colonists across the galaxy will be grateful.

The ultimate grail though is finding an actual complete STC. One that either (unimaginable!) has all the blueprints ever committed to STCs, ever - or at least one that completes the STC database that the Mechanicum already has. All missing full "recipes". All missing "ingredients". All iterations, contingencies, adaptations to crude materiel.

Uncanny. Impossible. Forever lost most likely. But a techpriest can dream.

---

The relationship the Mechanicum has with STCs reminds me (yes, I'm old) of music albums on CDs. Those can get scratched to the point music skips, screeches or the whole CD isnt' read anymore. Imagine you're a techpriest and you know that the Mechanicum collection of music has Metallica's "Master of Puppets" on database. However, track #2 is gone. Battery skips during the solo. There's inexcusable artifacting and distortion during "Orion" from the damage. You're not molesting the old CD of course, it's all been ripped to lossless FLAC, attempts have been made at clearing the audio up a bit, but nothing more can be done.

Finding an "undamaged STC" is finding a dusty mp3-player which still has a 320 kbps, undamaged copy of "Orion" on it and being able to appreciate it in whole for the first time.

Finding a "new fragment STC" is downloading a database from a space hulk cockpit and realizing it contains your missing "Track #2" and being able to listen to the glorious piece for the first time at all and then sharing it with all your metalhead friends!

Finding a "complete STC" is rummaging through the debris of some fallen human colony and a "Master of Puppets M2.99 24 Karat Gold Disc" falls into your hands, still in box, still in foil, all pristine. Your whole Forge World will be headbanging for decades! CENTURIES!

The holy grail? The actual "complete-complete" STC system? You find Spotify.

[Kastor Krieg]

The loss of creativity then comes from the fact that none of you are musicians, nobody knows how to make instruments and play them and even if you did, none of you have sacrificed tens of thousands of hours to practice and none of you are familiar with enough actual proper music to have musical ideas of your own. Those ideas are also heavily discouraged, to the point of creativy = death, because the last time you had ideas Men of Iron and rogue AI happened.

You will not create. You will only recreate and only in the framework that has already been provided.

You're no painters, in the 41st Millenium there are only colouring books.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Reclusiarch Krieg