Hypothetical future Primaris Fire Support Squads

[Beta galactosidase]

1 hour ago, jaxom said:

One can even look at it like an in-universe translation issue:

 

 

 

 

There is technically no cap on the number of Vanguard squads because there is no size cap on the 10th Company. Yay rules-lawyering?

 

The examples he gives of this are that battle companies can also be called companies of the van or companies of the first line, and Reserve Companies are called companies of the rear or of the second line.

 

I don't think that chapters have any interest in scout companies as some kind of end-around.

 

 

The number of scouts in a company is under 100, according to a later white dwarf (312). it's also consistent with the appendix in Codex Space Marines 1998. Like your quote says, they aren't required to meet a quota of squads, and instead the number of scouts is regulated by the limited number of qualified recruits they can find.   

 

The codexes since codex: Vanguard say that the tenth is supposed to provide 100 Vanguard Marines, and that the number of neophyte scouts continues to vary with the recruitment pipeline.

 

Like the example of the Exorcists chapter, if there are much more than 100 scouts they are formed into an.additonal company.  In all companies, the company apothecary is a primary care doctor overseeing the ongoing care of marines' implants amd he has a case load of 100.  The same is true of company chaplains and captains.  If there are 150 marines, that means two captains, two apothecaries, two chaplains.  Codex Ultramarines and Armies of the Imperium say that adding one or more temporary companies is completely routine.

 

Definitely space marines are highly indoctrinated servants of the emperor and they're not interested in a hack for unlimited scouts.  If they want more units they tag in a brother chapter for a big campaign, or with longer notice they add an extra company without controversy.

 

They're also very limited by the number of competent scout sergeants.

 

This is that section from wd 312:

 

>The Codex Astartes places no limit on the number of Scout squads that may comprise the 10th Company, although in practice few Chapters will ever have more than 10 at any one time. Most will have significantly fewer, depending on the suitability of aspirants and casualty levels. 

 

IMO the standard squad of scouts is five like in Tyranid Attack and Space Crusade so it'd be routine to have ~14 squads of 5-10 while still having under 100 total

[jaxom]

Sure, that's probably the reality of Scouts. I always still figured  every Chapter tries to have as many Scouts as they possible can, because you never know when 1) a squad of Scouts will die, 2) a Scout will reject the Black Carapace or die during implantation, 3) an entire Company or two needs to be replaced. But the rarity of appropriate recruits keeps the numbers lower.

 

The Scout bit is incidental to the main point: Primaris squad types fit neatly into previous descriptions of the Codex Astartes by replacing Tactical with Battleline, Assault with Close Support, and Devastator with Fire Support. This gives us, as @Orange Knight put it, "a revised chapter organisation chart that is much more loose and flexible." It's simple to postulate the original Codex used the more generic terms, but as specific Legion squad types were phased out, the Codex translations became more homodox with the surviving squad types. Hell, it's basically what happens when a single thing achieves market saturation and its name becomes the Thing; like "I need a Band-aid" or "Google it" where Band-aid and Google are brands.

[Karhedron]

I agree that Scouts are normally capped by the availability of suitable recruits and geneseed more than any other factor.

[Dr. Clock]

24 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

normally capped by the availability

Always the rub!

 

I can't resist the aside that at one point my DIY justification for an Infiltrating True Grit marine chapter was that their geneseed was flawed, causing much longer maturation timelines for aspirants. As a result the only thing that kept them from extinction was the lack of restriction of Scout Company numbers, and they did push selection criteria down somewhat to increase the front end of the pipeline. It went... not so well. The Chapter fell to the temptations of Khorne after accepting a cache of tainted weapons in a brutal fight against Tzeentchian Sorcerors.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[AutumnEffect]

16 hours ago, jaxom said:

There is technically no cap on the number of Vanguard squads because there is no size cap on the 10th Company. Yay rules-lawyering?

 

Technically there isn't a cap on any company in a "codex compliant" chapter.

 

Page 10 of Insignum Astartes says that explicitly at the start of the second or third paragraph.

[jaxom]

2 hours ago, AutumnEffect said:

 

Technically there isn't a cap on any company in a "codex compliant" chapter.

 

Page 10 of Insignum Astartes says that explicitly at the start of the second or third paragraph.

Yeah, in my original post in the other thread I talked about the Iron Snakes and Salamanders as an example of that; where the main thing to keep the Inquisition off one's back is the Chapter size of 1000.

Edited May 2 by jaxom

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Just want to chime in on the number of viable recruits limiting the number of scouts.

 

if the chapter really wanted to more scouts they’d quite simply expand their range of recruitment, after all some how legions managed to be 10-100x the size of the modern chapter which means they were able to find 10-100x more viable recruits. Also if number of available viable recruits was so limited it would take thousands of years for decimated chapters to rebeuild. The only logical explanations are 1. Legions had lower recruiting standards/when chapters are desperate for recruits they lower standards or 2. Chapters intentionally limit themselves and the number or recruits in order to not exceed a specific level of scouts.

[jaxom]

Or they’re not poaching recruits. Ultramarines don’t recruit from the 500 worlds anymore, their successor chapters do.

[Beta galactosidase]

 What chapters don't have is the enormous resources of the adeptus Terra that recruited for the legions during the crusade and the Ultima founding.

 

Two characters from the first founding, Sigismund and Torghun, are initially recruited for other legions than they end up in.  The main character of Avenging Son is recruited as part of the 27th founding by a massive operation working for magos Cawl, although he goes to the Ultramarines instead of an Ultima chapter.  The adeptus Terra perform all the foundings of new chapters and they clearly need to use the same bulk recruitment strategy for foundings 2 - 26, then sort the aspirants among the new chapters.

 

 

Once the chapters are left to their own devices, they typically have only seven recruiting sergeants searching for recruits. this one  In Angels of Darkness it's just a small group of marines with the ordinary serfs on a frigate, not a massive staff of humans on a survey mission with dedicated ships like the adeptus Terra use.

 

 

 

 

 

The 500 worlds cant be important since 17 of the 18  legions do not have this kind of empire

[Karhedron]

On 5/3/2024 at 12:25 AM, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

if the chapter really wanted to more scouts they’d quite simply expand their range of recruitment, after all some how legions managed to be 10-100x the size of the modern chapter which means they were able to find 10-100x more viable recruits.

 

The impression I get from the HH novels is that Legions did not just recruit from their homeworld. They set up recruitment bases on any favourable worlds they conquered and thus grew exponentially as the Crusade spread out from Terra. Many of these worlds probably went on to become homeworlds of the 2nd founding Chapters.

[jaxom]

14 hours ago, Beta galactosidase said:

 The 500 worlds cant be important since 17 of the 18  legions do not have this kind of empire

 

The 13th legion quickly grew to surpass the largest legions once they had access to the 500 Worlds. They regained their strength after taking ridiculous losses with a span of years. However, that's not important. My point was that the Ultramarines Chapter does not have the recruiting resources of the Ultramarines Legion because many of the 500 Worlds became homeworlds and recruitment areas for Ultramarine Legion Success Chapters. So even if the Ultramarines Chapter wanted to expand their recruitment, the closest worlds with suitable candidates are all claimed by other Chapters.

 

3 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

The impression I get from the HH novels is that Legions did not just recruit from their homeworld. They set up recruitment bases on any favourable worlds they conquered and thus grew exponentially as the Crusade spread out from Terra. Many of these worlds probably went on to become homeworlds of the 2nd founding Chapters.

Correct. It was a rarity for a Legion to to recruit from a single world. Some had distributed secondary recruitment from planets they peacefully brought into compliance, recruiting rights for certain areas of Terra, secondary fiefdoms, and would sometimes take a flesh-tithe from conquered populations.

[ChapterMasterGodfrey]

On 3/14/2024 at 12:22 AM, ThaneOfTas said:

My theory is that we have another couple of Gravis armoured squads coming, one for Grav Cannons, and one for Lascannons. I think they'll be in Gravis because both Weapons seem potent enough to not necessarily want in 5-10 squad sizes, plus it would keep the Eradicators from standing out so much.

I think the effective range of the weapon, crossed with the weapons strength will dictate the armour mark of the unit. The shorter the range, the heavy the armour needed, hence Eradicators in Gravis with Meltas. Lascannons have a long range but I think their high strength means they'll be weilded by Tacticus marines. I think they'll be limited to 5 man squads. 

 

Grav Cannons on Gravis Marines makes sense though.

 

Note: I havent read this whole thread so apologies if i'm treading old water.

[jaxom]

On 8/7/2024 at 9:36 AM, ChapterMasterGodfrey said:

The shorter the range, the heavy the armour

Hopefully Heavy Intercessors are the only exception.

[ChapterMasterGodfrey]

16 hours ago, jaxom said:

Hopefully Heavy Intercessors are the only exception

They should have been the all Heavy Bolter squad in my opinion.

[apologist]

On 5/2/2024 at 2:16 PM, Karhedron said:

I agree that Scouts are normally capped by the availability of suitable recruits and geneseed more than any other factor.

 

Agreed. As an aside, I'd also note the 'decaying technology' trope. The Legions could scale up not only because of greater access to recruits, but also because they had a greater understanding of the technical and medical capabilities, and easier access to better quality geneseed, than their 41st Millennium counterparts, who shuffle around in the dark.

 

It's an element of the background that has been sidelined a bit, but it was implied that apothecaries in the 41st Millennium were far more ritual-led. Together with degraded material and technology, plus less access to both, it makes perfect sense that Scouts die on the operating table a great deal more often than during the Great Crusade.

 

I'm not sure how that tallies up with the post 41st Millennium Imperium, but there's a definite sense of rejuvenation, renewal and capability. It's taken a step back from 'the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable', where we are told to 'Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding'.

[MoriyaSchism]

 

Agreed. As an aside, I'd also note the 'decaying technology' trope. The Legions could scale up not only because of greater access to recruits, but also because they had a greater understanding of the technical and medical capabilities, and easier access to better quality geneseed, than their 41st Millennium counterparts, who shuffle around in the dark.

 

It's an element of the background that has been sidelined a bit, but it was implied that apothecaries in the 41st Millennium were far more ritual-led. Together with degraded material and technology, plus less access to both, it makes perfect sense that Scouts die on the operating table a great deal more often than during the Great Crusade.

This is a bit off topic but I'm curious are there any numbers for aspirant survival or success rates for the Legions before the Heresy? Book 1 of the Forge World Horus Heresy series goes over what takes to make a Legionary quite fast and it doesn't really mention aspirant survival rates. It also implies that the techniques used to speed up the creation of a Legionary and shorten the whole process of making a battle ready Marine for the Legions to a single year resulted in the psychological instability that became apparent in some of the Traitor Legions.

I'm of the belief that the current Apothecaries have almost the same knowledge as their Legion counterparts back in the day, they just know that the making of a Space Marine is not something that should be rushed. In fact I would argue that a Legiones Astartes created using accelerated gene-seed cultivation and rapid psycho-indoctrination is actually inferior to their later Imperial Space Marine counterparts. I believe that the technology stagnated and that there is no advancement which results in inefficient and slow recruitment, rather than saying that Apothecaries in the M41 for example don't know what they are doing. I would also imagine that the technology is something that's heavily regulated and any changes to it would have to be done with the express approval of the people at the top of the Imperium's command structure like in the case of the 21st Founding. The office of the Apothecary might come with some ritual significance attached to it, but the presence of it in almost all Space Marine chapters shows that it's a standardized practice which implies that the knowledge of this field is preserved and standardized in some way. The Apothecarion has standardized technology (the narthecium being one example) that's present in almost all Space Marine chapters with some exceptions such as the Space Wolves who prefer that gene-seed recovery be done with a knife by some guy who carries a bag of herbs with him.

 

Edit: In short I believe it's a bit hard to forget something that's so crucial to the Imperium's survival and that's constantly in use. The attrition rate of aspirants in some cases might be a result of compatibility issues that arise later in the process that weren't spotted in selection and the degraded quality of recruits. Only case I would imagine such degradation would come to fruition is through widespread death of the practitioners and destruction of records by outside factors which happens often in the Imperium, but even then you'd have fragmented records from many of the Imperium's bodies and thousands of other Chapters.

Edited August 10 by MoriyaSchism

[Paladin777]

It's not hard to forgot how a technology works when the only people using it for the last couple generations are only operators. 
 

not saying that's for sure the case, but just kinda playing devil's advocate. 

[Karhedron]

I think that the ritualisation of things like this are actually part of the reason Chapters have lasted as long as they have. It does not require someone to understand the process, simply learn the ritual. And if something goes wrong and no one knows how to fix it, there are still 999 other Chapters out there.