>>98444561
Because the trillions of other guardsmen are needed against Chaos, the Nids, the Crons, the Orks, and every other much bigger threat than the Tau.

>>98444561

Weapons of mass destruction exist.

>>98444571
But with the exception of Chaos you can just drown those factions in bodies too. Necrons giving you trouble? Bam, enjoy dealing with 1 quadrillion guardsmen. Orks? Another quadrillion. Tyranid? Lmao have fun with our quadrillion guardsmen.

>>98444585
You can just brute force that too though. Need ammo for your Guardsmen? Bam, 1 quadrillion factory workers pumping out lasguns and power packs. Need food? Bam, a quadrillion farmers.

>>98444634
Now you need to defend those quadrillion factory workers and quadrillion farmers. So you draft another quadrillion guardsmen. Except now those guardsmen need food and weapons.

See the problem?

>>98444582
i think tyranids win the numbers game, sun tzu

>>98444659
Most tyranids are actually more expensive than Guardsmen on the tabletop.

>>98444561
Logistics, lorelet.

>>98444561
You can't actually think they would outnumber nids + orks, or that they have enough quality to not be mowed down in the millions by heavy enemy units

>>98444718
>to not be mowed down in the millions by heavy enemy units
Who cares? If they lose a million guardsmen to take out a single Eldar, that's a net win for the Imperium, a million Guardsmen is nothing, it's a blip, a speck of life in the vast ocean of humans the Imperium controls.

>>98444641
Except that's not how it works.

>>98444561
It is very difficult to supply and move all those people where you need them. But the real reason for these retarded numbers is retarded writers.

>>98444641
i remember back in 'nam when we had an 18 year old boy in green with an m16 standing by every wheat field in kansas

>>98444634
So. You've got a quadrillion people pumping out lasguns and power packs. Great. They need food. They need water. So now you've got your farm worlds that need to feed a quadrillion guardsmen and a quadrillion factory workers, plus the quadrillion farmers on the world itself. But hold on, you're forgetting something. These items don't pack themselves. They don't ship themselves. They don't inventory themselves. The food doesn't just process itself. Which means you're going to need more resources, and more people, and more effort. Every time you decide "just throw more bodies at it" it starts to scale poorly.

Oops. A blight hit one of your farm worlds. Not some kind of chaos-based blight, just a blight. Your food production is massively impacted. Well that's no problem, you just scale down the amount of rations everyone's getting.

Oh shit. Your planet full of factory workers snapped. Asking them to starve even more while they toil away making lasguns was too much. And remind me, what did that factory make? Right, right. Lasguns and power packs. Your gun factory has decided to unionize and militarize. Who are you going to send to fight them? Now you're stupid. You just thought "the guard, obviously."

And you're not wrong. That's who you're going to send. But you're forgetting something. That oh-so-important Tau frontline. What's it going to be, smart guy? Pull back from fighting the Tau, or let the communists on your factory planet win and start developing other kinds of crazy ideas.

And keep in mind, you've been playing on easy mode in this who hypothetical. We haven't talked about that hive fleet that's sending its tendrils out to seek out its next meal. We haven't brought up that Orks are on your farm planet, factory planet, and guard recruitment planet because Orks just show up in places.

>>98444634
>>98444921
We haven't brought up the fact that there's three different types of Eldar fucking with you - one because having one guy fall into the trigger pressing machine and shut down the machine for 8 hours while his corpse is cleaned out of the gears saves 10,000 elf lives over the course of 900 years. Or how the second group of Eldar are popping out of the webway and just taking the evening shift as slaves. Or how a third group of them are just fucking with you for fun.

And hey, we just talked about the communists doing a normal uprising. But what if it wasn't Lenin reborn talking about unionizing. What if it was someone going "hey you know, there's a god who can do way more for you than the emperor."

I can keep going. This problem is reproducing itself over and over and over all across the imperium. And this all assumes imperial competence. Sometimes, the administration just forgets shit. Someone deleted a line on a spreadsheet and oops, your factory world no longer gets fresh water. You've contacted the administratum, you've been told to wait 6-8 weeks to reply. That was 50 years ago.

You can't just throw bodies at the problem.

>>98444561
Anon, basic guards men are basically peasant milita, you know those super trained soldiers like the Sions or karsakins? Yeah those "Elite" guys, are basically just regularl basic training.

The average guards men are told top point that end of the muzzle toward the bad guys and pull this to fire.

>>98444973
Doesn’t really matter when you have more men than the enemy has bullets.

>>98444973
Read any guard codex, from any edition, and find a quote that even approximates your head canon.

>>98444561
Even with effectively infinite soldiers, the Chinese couldn't completely win the Korean War and it was effectively fought to a standstill.

>>98444991
The unfortunate reality of modern war is that it's incredibly lethal. Even 40k acknowledges this in between it's massed melee charges across open fields.

'Just brute force it lol' is the exact mentality that has caused many defeats and national collapses in the past. You need to actually be adept at using your numbers to your advantage.

>>98444729
Because this isn't actually true. The Imperium is beset at all sides and from within. Every guardsman frivously wasted is one that can't be deployed to meet the thousand other threats their segmentum is facing.

The Imperium simply does not have the numbers to drown anyone in manpower without losing on other fronts, which is why their numbers reliant strategy eventually ended with them needing to get saved by guilman and the 4000000 rando primaris marines dug out of a vault.

>>98445039
I mean it has worked for the Imperium in the past. In the Damocles Crusade the Imperium nearly wiped out the Tau once and for all after the Tau had literally ran out of bullets fighting them.

>>98445068
I mean to be fair anon, if the imperium wanted to, they could 100% steam roll the Tau and wipe them out completely. the problem is, to do that woulld pull forces from other fronts that would then collapse.
The Tau just have not become enough of a threat to warrant that response.

>>98445078
Right but the point is they can do that to any faction. Orks would run out of dakka, Necrons would run out of energy, Eldar would run out of shurikens, etc. Guardsmen aren't even needed, a mass of peasants with sharp sticks could defeat any of them.

>>98445089
No, they couldn't. If they could fully amass all their forces and target only orks, they'd win eventually, but this wouldn't be instant and in the meantime the entire rest of the galaxy would be rocking their shit, and then they'd lose because they spent too much energy and lost all the planets necessary to recuperate.

The 'erm they could actually wipe out the tau if they focused' is a cope, because they cannot focus like that. That's why they haven't done it.

>>98445078

>if the imperium wanted to, they could 100% steam roll the Tau and wipe them out completely

No. They're actually incapable of doing it. They lack the national will and efficiency.

>>98445113
>they'd win eventually,
And to be clear this is only if they aren't interfered with. Said interfence could mean they still lose anyways, because when you strip all the garrisons and reinforcements that stop Chaos from reaving all your worlds to go fight orks, they will start reaving all your worlds.

>>98445122
Well its more like the Tau are not enough of a threat to them yet.

>>98445129
No. They'd really like to kill all the Tau, but simply cannot, beacuse the Imperium is a shithole that's also facing innumerable threats to it's existence.

>>98444561
because the Imperial Guard spends the vast majority of its time supressing internal rebellions since the Imperiums rule is such a massive shitshow the only reason people stay is by force, then you have numerous cases where enemy forces can match their horde tactics such as with orks and nids, then you have enemies that are more advanced or have some war shit such as the crons for the tech side and chaos for the warp side, in other words while on paper the guard have a shtiload of bodies, due to the Imperium have multiple enemies, both due to its own incompetence and other outside factors, they have to stretch those numbers very very thinly

But like... half the factions in 40k have infinite manpower.

>>98444561
The Imperium's logistics are dogshit. It does not matter how many bajillions of retards they have if they can only send in trickles of tens of thousands of them.

>>98444561
All warfare in 40k is by nature expeditionary, meaning the bottleneck for the amount of soldiers you can deploy to any one planetary warzone is limited by the amount of lift capacity in your space fleet to take them there (plus dedicated warships to protect those ships, etc). So even if the Imperium has trillions of guardsmen, you have to actually ferry them to whatever planet is being fought over first. And that's before we get into the monstrous amount of bureaucratic overhead that has to be dealt with to get an army from one planet to another, I mean it took the Imperium like a year or two just to get the army together to go retake vraks, and that was a high level order from Terra itself.

It's sort of like asking why the US military during the guadalcanal campaign didnt just send like 100,000 troops to the island. Like yeah they had the manpower but it would've been a logistical nightmare to get them all there, keep them fed and supplied, and protected from enemy attack while in transit. Plus the opportunity cost of those troops not being available for other theaters of the war.

>>98444561
Because Nids, Orks, and Chaos also have basically infinite manpower.

>>98445089
>Orks would run out of dakka,
They would not. This isn't enen an "ork belief means they wouldn't run out of dakka" thing. Orks would be able to find or make more bullets at scale.
>Necrons would run out of energy
This shows me that you're a lorelet. genuinely, the imperium would run out of resources before the necron if it came to it.
>Eldar would run out of shurikens
Again, lorelet comment. The Eldar aren't gonna run out of bullets They're, if anything, going to run out of Eldar. But there's also several reasons why they couldn't, ranging from "you wouldn't be able to reach them" to "the eldar could kill/destroy things with precision that would cripple the imperium immediately."

Whoops! Looks like you forgot that the setting is just an excuse to sell toys, it's not actually supposed to make sense. It's an easy mistake to make, so don't be too hard on yourself.

>>98445267
>it's not actually supposed to make sense
people keep saying this likes its some huge gotcha moment, like they dont actually like playing with toys

>>98445122
>Damocles crusade
>small imperial scouting force
>tau get their collective shit kicked in, lose multiple armies and flotillas, have a nightmare of a time getting stomped
>imperial forces recalled to face tyranid threat
>blues celebrate victory after pushing back everything the Imperium had
>eventually human defectors manage to explain the truth to the blues
>that wasn't the 'might if the Imperium'
>that was a small recon task force
>tau command collectively shit themselves
And that's why the Custodian fleet project was started.

>>98445374
That was back when the Tau had 3 worlds. Needless to say now that they have a few hundred things are a little different.

>>98445374
>tau get their collective shit kicked in, lose multiple armies and flotillas, have a nightmare of a time getting stomped
the battle went pretty evenly, though

>>98445382
Hell they didn't even have battlesuits back then.

>>98444561
The Imperium can only access however many guardsmen are within however long a distance. You can't ship them across the galaxy most of the time and you can't ship them anywhere quickly.

>>98444561
The main bottleneck is Warp travel, a couple Sectors working together to pool their shipping can support a few billion Guardsmen in the field (plus or minus a few orders of magnitude depending on who is writing), which is only really enough to invade a few major planets at the same time, plus garrisoning planets you have already taken, invading minor colonies, constantly replacing casualties, etc

>>98445416
They did, the novels specifically mention them. They also had a sizeable empire of multiple systems.

>>98445388
They got utterly assraped to the point they had to rethink their entire military structure and rushed in a series of emergency programs to have a hope of surviving a similar attack, notably the super battlesuits and an entirely new navy

>>98445452
it was, like most warhammer stories, a tug of war where both sides took turns advancing and retreating and catching both victories and defeats
and the warhammer site officially calls the outcome a stalemate

>>98445452
>They did, the novels specifically mention them.
They developed them in response to the space marines but they didn't have them for most of the invasion.

>They also had a sizeable empire of multiple systems.
The Imperium was already in their core territory by the 3rd planet, they didn't have any reinforcements to throw at them, that was their last stand, they had no other planets to reinforce from.

>>98445374
Imperium cope meant to downplay the Tau victories.
An entire space marine chapter got wiped out by the Tau during the Damocles crusade.

>>98445463
That is because the twu empire was wide and narrow. The imperial forces came through the narrow flank and circumnavigated the long push through the flanks, purely by accident.

>>98445458
This implies the tau had a chance. They didn't, at the time.

>>98445465
People often overplay shit like that. Things like exterminatus or space marine chapters aren't really rare, the Imperium uses exterminatus all the time for small problems and space marine chapters are a dime a dozen.

>>98445353
The setting is static because every faction needs to continue existing. The imperium will never defeat the tau by human wave tactics nor other means

>>98445470
>That is because the twu empire was wide and narrow.
Yes but keep in mind, the Tau empire didn't even have FTL at this time. The Imperium was literally fighting a pre-FTL empire.

>>98445473
The Imperium can loose a WHOLE lotta stuff before the cease existing. If every single Imperial world on the other side of the great rift falls, there will still be an Imperium.

>>98445470
>This implies the tau had a chance. They didn't, at the time.
the entire point of the damocles campaign was that the tau were not a pushover, but in a way that didnt make the imperium look like jobbers
the tau were genuinely pushing forward against the imperium, which necessitated the imperium to drastically increase military presence in that area when it became clear they couldnt just drop space marines into the area and show them who is boss

the rapid escalation of conflict is basically an admission that it was not a one-sided tau defeat, but recognition that the tau were holding their own and that they would actually need to take them seriously

warhammer is not an overly deep franchise, but it at least recognizes that victory and defeat are slightly more complex then "absolutely curbstomped"

>>98445374
It wasn't a scouting force it was a crusade lol

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Regardless of how big the Damocles Crusade was, the current lore has the Imperium being stuck in a perpetual stalemate with the Tau on a frontline that has seen hundreds of billions of Guardsmen dead. Safe to say the Tau Empire the Imperium fought in the Damocles Crusade isn't the same Tau Empire they face now.

>>98445589
To put this into perspective, 14 million Guardsmen were killed in the Siege of Vraks, so this singular frontline has been at least 10,000 times more deadly than that famous siege.

>>98444921
>Which means you're going to need more resources, and more people, and more effort. Every time you decide "just throw more bodies at it" it starts to scale poorly.
That's why today we're all farmers living in starving hamlets that... Oh, no it doesn't work that way at all.

>Oops. A blight hit one of your farm worlds. Not some kind of chaos-based blight, just a blight. Your food production is
Down by 0.000000001%. Nothing happens.

>Oh shit. Your planet full of factory workers
Did nothing just like they do IRL.
>B-but they're gonna unionize!
No they won't lmao.
>They're gonna militarize!
No they won't lmao.

>And keep in mind, you've been playing on easy mode in this who hypothetical
The easiest thing about it is picking it apart because you have no idea how anything works. Watch less shorts and read a book sometime kid.

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>>98444561
yaaay woooooo hahaha

>>98445690
Plugging your ears and yelling LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU isn't actually a refutation.

6 year olds aren't allowed to be here anyway. Fuck off child.

>>98445767
>Plugging your ears and yelling LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU isn't actually a refutation.
Correct, thank you for conceding that you aren't able to refute me lol.
Get your own insults, kid.

>>98445690
thats because of advances in tech, which is something the Imperium struggles with, there are some worlds that are literal stone age tier that the Imperium just scoops up for recruits, additionally due to the nature of the warp and the Imperiums logistics an agri world being infected by nurgle can pretty much fuck up an entire subsector and even cripple a sector in general since outside help will be slow to come and unpredictable one when it will come (and thats assuming it does come at all) don't think of the Imperium like a current modern day centralized state where the government could respond in time to contain something swiftly, think of it more like the most pop culture example of a feudal shithole with elements of various authoritarian regimes that is slow to respond and its respond is often either incompetent or over the top brutal

>>98445840
>thats because of advances in tech
Correct.
>which is something the Imperium struggles with
Incorrect.
>there are some worlds that are literal stone age tier that the Imperium just scoops up for recruits
Feral worlds do not matter and just prove the points made.
>additionally due to the nature of the warp and the Imperiums logistics an agri world being infected by nurgle can [headcanon and more headcanon]
Cool fanfiction, go write a book about it faggot.
>don't think of the Imperium like a current modern day centralized state
This is exactly what you keep doing. Your tiny brain struggles with comprehending the sheer scale of 40k. You do not understand that the actual lore reason the Imperium even stands is because, even when it's been shooting itself in the foot 24/7 for extra grim darkedness, it's been doing so for 10,000 years without any real threat to its integrity. It has practically infinite manpower that it can and has used to deal with every problem thrown its way in that time, or absorb the losses without really being affected.

In-lore, Tau are just not relevant and nearly got wiped out by a light scouting force. But their models sell. so IRL Capitalism is the sole reason they're allowed to exist.

>>98444561
The Guard is just that pitiful. An army full of useless helpless cowards used as a meat shield to buy time until the real protagonists show up.

>>98445863
>Tau are just not relevant and nearly got wiped out by a light scouting force
As a pre-FTL civilization. That's like if the Imperium invaded 2026 Earth. It's not really comparable to the modern Tau.

>>98445881
>As a pre-FTL
Stopped right there. Technology isn't linear, child.

>>98445884
No but it's not exactly impressive to fight a civilization that has no capacity to bring reinforcements from other worlds and which barely has left their own world.

>>98445863
>, Tau are just not relevant and nearly got wiped out by a light scouting force
it was a full blown crusade
the tau were an actual threat that required a full blown mobilization
this was basically the only chance the imperiu, ever actually had to decisively destroy the tau, since their manpower is now too stretched thin to ever actually concentrate on any individual faction

>. It has practically infinite manpower
their resources, though vast, are decidedly not infinite
their armies are essentially dealing with every faction more or less all the time while also having to deal with constant rebellions and uprisings from inside

the imperium was for most of its post-emperor history, in slow but steady decline and spending all of its time slowing down its demise
its stood for so long because its massive but they cant really afford to spend enough resources to crush the tau when it would enable the orks, chaos, and tyranids elsewhere
and the tau took full advantage of that to survive the damocles campaign and consolidate their hold and make it even more unlikely they will ever be pushed out

>>98445892
>No but
Don't care when you thought tech is linear. You are not qualified to discuss this.

>>98445896
Nobody said tech is linear. That's just projection on your part.

>>98445245
>Orks would be able to find or make more bullets at scale
It takes an exceptional supply chain to make bullets at scale. The chemicals for propellant plus the fossil fuels are really hard to get, so much so that you can rather easily stop bullet production by targeting processing facilities. If these resource nodes are not already readily identified, it would take months to survey and then move/build excavation equipment.

You can look at current wars and see how one side spun up domestic weapons manufacturing and how one didn't and the result being one side not being able to walk over another side through sheer force of arms and flesh. The Orks would similarly suffer from the simple difficult logistics of war. The Orks (or Chaos) drop on a planet, okay, they got the jump on the defenders. But the moment the Imperium arrives in a year, the Orks won't have been able to manufacture anywhere near enough munitions to rearm and stop an Imperium that brings enough guns to overwhelm the Orks the same way the Orks brought enough bullets to overwhelm the original defenders. Nobody is going to leave any bullets or fuel for the Orks to scavenge so the Orks will have to build an entire bullet supply chain from nothing. It's so hard to make a barrel of gasoline, it's a hundred times as hard to throw that barrel at something miles away.

The other races are not subject to the same crippling weaknesses of the Orks you're right. The Eldar aren't going to run out of bullets because their shurikens are merely pieces of metal. The Tyranids can produce armies from any organic matter. The Necrons are all magic batteries. But the Orks (and Chaos) are exposed to supply chain issues like real life armies are and I don't think it's unrealistic to say that you can defeat the Orks by having more bullets than them.

>>98445897
Yes you did. You were wrong, you are not qualified.

>>98445884
they did have FTL, its just a primitive-form of warp travel that only does partial dives into the warp because without psykers they can only go just deep enough for where physical computers can still see the material realm
its safer and, more importantly, does not require astropaths but its also much slower over long distances

>>98445898
orks are able to use the waaagh to do plantery-scale levels of "living off the land"
they are known to assemble entire armies worth of tanks and mechs using only looted scrap

>>98445894
>it was a full blown crusade
That's what I said, retard.
>the tau were an actual threat
Lolno.
>this was basically the only chance the imperiu,
You spell as well as you argue.
>their resources, though vast, are decidedly not infinite
They practically are infinite.
>their armies are essentially dealing with every faction more or less all the time
Which does not matter because with the exception of Chaos none are threats or have ever been threats.
>the imperium was for most of its post-emperor history, in slow but steady decline
That's what I said, yes. And that decline? Zero identifiable impact. The Imperium could go on for eternity, and was probably meant to.
But yeah if you're just gonna affirm everything I've said, then sure? Thanks for agreeing that I'm right? Didn't need to be that longwinded about it.

>>98445899
Nope. Sorry anon, but tech isn't linear, you should know this by now.

>>98444582
>Tyranid? Lmao have fun with our quadrillion guardsmen.
Now you have a quadrillion nids

>>98445901
>>98445913
>they did have FTL
>they were pre-FTL
Okay so you're wrong about everything and inconsistent.

>>98445920
Oh that's why Tyranids have overrun the entire... Oh no they haven't overrun the galaxy in fact they almost exclusively lose. Well shit now you just look fucking stupid.

>>98445921
NTA. Since you're using the later lore in the setting, the Tau didn't have FTL or battlesuits at that time

>>98445907
We're trying to not include the Ork plot armour "empty guns shoot anyways" nonsense.

What's the point of talking about this if the Orks can just magic bullets into their guns and build tanks out of scrap.

>>98445929
>NTA
Inconsistent, wrong about everything, and a liar.

>>98444662
Good thing you can field 6 quadrillion points worth of guardsmen in comp

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>>98445936
Nope, but thanks for outing yourself as a liar.

>>98445898
>>98445907
also to add on orks wouldn't even really need that many bullets since their favorite tactic is to bumrush an enemy and get into melee, which is where said guardsmen would have a shit time since orks are pretty much space marine level strong

>>98445940
Hey you might be a whole lot of bad things, but at least you know how to use inspect element lol

Well that conversation didn't go the way you wanted it to, did it?

>>98445912
>That's what I said, retard.
a light scouting force is just that, a scouting force
a crusade is not a scouting force, its a massive military commitment thats only used against threats

>Lolno.
a crusade would never be launched against a non-threat

>They practically are infinite.
they are not infinite, they have to pick and choose what battles they can fight
which amounts to holding actions on all sides because they cannot commit to any specific enemy without another advancing

>Which does not matter because with the exception of Chaos none are threats or have ever been threats.
if all their enemies could easily be crushed because they didnt pose a threat, they would have
but thats not happened because the imperium simply does not have the men or material to fight every threat at once
they are stronger than each enemy individually but stretched thin by fighting them all at once

>Zero identifiable impact.
it means they will never be on the galactic crusade level of the emperor of man ever again
they peaked 10,000 years ago and they will never reach that level again

the imperium is just physically incapable of another great crusade to unite all of mankind again and all the other factions are taking advantage of that to nibble away at the empire
they cant just crush the tau like they would have been able to under the emperor because they no longer have the men or material to do that

>>98445928
That's cause the imperium fights nids tactically instead of throwing people at them

>>98445931
Not autistically ignoring the strengths of a faction.

>>98445956
>a crusade is not a scouting force
Give me a single passage from the lore saying it isn't, you have 5 minutes.
>a crusade would never be launched against a non-threat
Yes it would.
>they are not infinite
They are practically infinite though.
>if all their enemies could easily be crushed because they didnt pose a threat, they would have
You could easily be fit and have a six figure job, but you don't. Things that are possible don't always happen because people are stupid and do stupid things. And because the setting needed a reason for there to be war forever and always.
>it means they will never be on the galactic crusade level of the emperor of man
Correct, because they have infinitely more resources than Big E had when his crusade began.

>the imperium is just physically incapable of another great crusade
"So commanded Roboute Guilliman and thus, even as the Warp Storms raged and the Astronomican itself strove to pierce their ever-blackening clouds, vast armies and armadas were raised in numbers not seen since the Great Crusade that had founded the Imperium ten millennia before."

>>98445962
>That's cause the imperium
Has practically infinite resources and just grind down the tyranids every time lol. Turns out they can't adapt to "Can facetank all your hive fleets".

>>98445973
Wouldn't that make basically every crusade a scouting action by that logic? I mean if hundreds of billions of Guardsmen isn't enough for the Imperium to be taking the Tau seriously surely Vraks must've been a light patrol.

>>98445990
>Wouldn't that make basically every crusade a scouting action by that logic?
Well no because-
>hundreds of billions of Guardsmen
Anon the Guard didn't even number 1 billion They probably didn't even number 100 Million. The only thing at all that numbered in the billions were Tau dead. God, you really know nothing about anything.

>>98446003
>Anon the Guard didn't even number 1 billion
They've lost hundreds of billions fighting against the Tau in a single sector, the Guard certainly numbers far more than a billion.

>>98446005
>They've lost hundreds of billions
No they didn't? The Damocles Crusade lists attacker casualties at "millions". Not tens of millions not hundreds of millions and certainly not billions.
Can you read, at all?

>>98445941
>orks wouldn't even really need that many bullets since their favorite tactic is to bumrush an enemy and get into melee
I want you to really think about this for a moment. Do you really think that the best move for Orks or Space Marines is to run at another force and engage it in melee?

I mean you have to ignore what you see on the tabletop and all the various Space Marine media that exists and really think about how they would actually fight. The Space Marines and Orks lose sometimes, do you think by engaging in melee they improve their odds of winning? Do you think the Space Marines actually behave as infantry? Because they don't. Space Marines are dropped on objectives and kill everything there, likely dying in the process. You don't send Space Marines to kill infantry. You can say the Orks are closer to the Tyranids than the Imperium but they are still an armed force behaving under the same rules and restrictions as another armed force like the Imperium. The Orks don't and simply cannot perceive melee combat as the superior means to wage war the same way the Space Marines or the Imperium do not view melee combat as anything but the last resort.

I know you have to ignore a lot of Space Marine media to get where I'm trying to take you. But realistically Marneus Calgar doesn't take the field, ever. Apart from Horus fighting the Emperor the Primarchs almost never fought and we can be certain the only times where they actually fought was when they were Daemon Princes and had the certainty of reincarnation. The Space Marines don't fight tanks or infantry unless shit has completely gone wrong for them. Even though an Ork would defeat dozens of Guardsmen in melee combat, unlike a Tyranid they aren't going to run at the enemy to fight because that is just a careless and less efficient way to fight than shooting each other.

>>98446013
>"The war in the Canis Salient has ground to a brutal stalemate with the Imperoim unable to gain significant foothold within the greyhell Front, and the Tau forced to employ every trick and stratagem they know to fend off the Crusade’s forces. The endless conflict has seen hundreds of billions of Imperial guardsmen dead to the guns of the Tau and the paranoia of the their commanders, and morale has been slipping for years"
Hundreds of billions.

>>98446017
its funny how you tried to use marines as an example, just to ignore the part where it states orks like going into for melee, which is also reflected in the fact both in lore and tabletop they have shit accuracy really encouraging close quarters combat, there is a reason both in universe and out of universe the term ork snipers is associated with it actually being inqusitors

>>98446042
I'm sorry the world has failed to help you succeed.

>>98446018
Not the Damocles Crusade. Thank you for admitting you don't know what you're talking about.

>>98446113
I was never talking about the Damocles Crusade. But thanks for confirming that the Imperium is taking the Tau seriously.

>>98446120
Yes you were. Thanks for confirming that you lost.

>>98444780
yeah because mainland USA being totally untouchable to Vietnamese rice farmers is exactly like Warhammer 40,000(tm).
Orks, Chaos, Nids, etc. are not allowed to attack agri worlds or forge worlds if you do not consent

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>>98446268

>>98446436
Should have led with that, then

I really don't get the appeal of Astra Militarum outside of the admittedly pretty cool looking Death Korps
Cadian, Catachan both look generic and horrible, and not even generic in an interesting way, like an everyman hero sort of thing, they just look SHIT

>our numerous hordes of poorly equipped soldiers will surely defeat the enemy with sheer numbers in a great tide, as we care not for their well-being at all!
>the humble influenza

>>98446596
>0.1% mortality rate
Oh.

>>98446505
I think the appeal of the Imperial Guard is for people who don't want to side with anything other than humanity. The aliens are aliens even if the Eldar are more ethical and moral than actual humanity. The Imperial Guard also can be any historical military outfit in history. The Death Korps are themselves WW1 analogs. The Cadians are for Rambo fans. Tallarn are arabic. I don't know what the generic Guard are associated with so you can just imagine they're for the humans-only kind of people who aren't history fans. I think every Guard player I met has some kind of association or love for actual modern or historical military. I agree they look like shit but whatever, it's a game.

>>98446846
Catachan are the Rambo ones, its the Cadians who are the generic ones, who if I recall correctly are a starship troopers reference

>>98446767
That's only with our modern advanced medicine. Things like Penicillin is lost tech.

>>98446910
Post a passage from the lore with book and page # where it says "Penicillin is lost technology"

>>98446910
The Imperium puts mile-long warships into space and has them travel through demon-infested oceans for months if not years at a time and these vessels are secure enough that no minor electrical or human error occurs that would result in a shutdown of any of its critical systems, that if it happened, would let the demons in consuming every living being in the ship.

The Imperium hasn't forgotten what penicillin is. That's like saying the Imperium has forgotten what morphine is. Come on man just because they don't have AI doesn't mean they don't have computers. The Imperium is fascist, not retarded.

>>98446955
>not retarded
the lore beats you over the head with how retarded the Imperium is

>>98446973
Have you considered that the writers are shit and probably have never done any work in any field that requires understanding how to nail two pieces of materials together and that saying the Imperium is retarded is only a reflection that the writer is in fact totally retarded and doesn't understand that a retarded society can't actually build a spaceship and that putting a rivet into a piece of metal may be a religious act but it still requires doing it correctly. Once you have done a real fucking job it gets really hard to read any sort of fiction that tangentially relates to your job because you realize the writer has probably never engaged with any highly efficient business or industrial practice.

Usually the issue is stupid people writing smart people. But in the case of the Imperium you have stupid writers writing what they think are stupid people who in fact are not stupid at all.

>>98444561
How many spaceships do you have to haul those guardsmen and their equipment ?
How many guardsmen can fit in those spaceships ?
How fast are those spaceships traveling ?
How vast is the frontline you have to supply ?
How accurate and fast are communications to change where all these people are going, based on new problems popping ?

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>>98444561
>There's like, a single frontline in which the Imperial Guard is fighting the Tau of all factions where they've lost hundreds of billions of Guardsmen, but the Imperium has a population in the tens of quadrillions, so why not just send hundreds of trillions of Guardsmen instead?
>How?

The Imperium notoriously suffers from logistic issues and ontop of that is fighting a galactic war on dozens of different fronts, so their already flawed attention is further divided. From what I remember the Tau X Imperium "frontline" doesn't even make their top 10 priorities.

The Tau also have several advantages:
-They don't use the warp, so any territory they're made themselves comfortable in is going to be heavily fortified, deeply entrenched, and well supplied, and has been so for possibly hundreds of years.
-The Tau have better tech, or maybe a better word for it is they have better "consistently good" equipment. The men they typically field have good armor, good rifles, plenty of ammunition and fuel, better rations, and higher morale.
-The Tau are true "Imperial Aspirants" and their military is full of non-Tau auxiliary troops from other species they've assimilated/integrated such as the Kroot and even *Humans.
*Which is another point into itself: Humans aren't immune to Tau culture. To some extent some much of the Tau "frontline" has degraded into humans fighting other humans.

>>98446985
>uh they build space ships so they can't be dumb
they build space ships because the religious cult is pretty much following a how to build space ships for dummies book, they don't really understand the ins and outs of it, and if they ever lose the stc for said space ship then they aren't able to make anymore of them since they lost said book and don't really know how to do it, its like saying a guy who knows nothing about a certain subject is smart just because he has a guy who gives him all the right answers on a test

>>98446985
>but it still requires doing it correctly
If gave me a step by step booklet of how to assemble a spaceship and I had the necessary infrastructure to do so I could also assemble a spaceship. That doesn't mean I actually know how it works or that I could replicate it if there's a problem with the booklet or there's any sort of deviation on the fly. At that point, much like the Mechanicus often has to do, I need to guess.

The Mechanicus usually has a better grasp on said spaceship than that, but I still consider it an apt comparison, particurally when you get outside of the Mechanicus and into 'only this particular clan family knows where the emergency release valve for the pipes are'.

>>98446955
>in a shutdown of any of its critical systems, that if it happened, would let the demons in consuming every living being in the ship.
also lol what? this happens all the time. a small but noteable percentage of ships that go into the warp each and every year do not come out, ever.

>>98447076
not to mention gellar field flickers and the like that don't result in the entire ship dying but does give people nightmares or results in possession incidents or mutations or tech failures and the like.

like, the entire deal with warp travel is that it's the exact opposite of consistently safe, what? did I get baited responding to this? am I trolled?

>>98444561
40k is a barely written setting that doesn't stand up to logical scrutiny. Don't be one of the retards who tries to dissect the world building and attempt to find logic or consistency in it. Accept it's all style, no substance.

>>98447100
>Accept it's all style, no substance.
Previously, there was an excellent in-lore explanation : the narrator(s) are not reliable themselves.
History is a lie told by somebody who has an agenda and got his own sources from people with their own secret agendas, all of this is inscrutable for us since most tales are about events so old that our own IRL civilization cannot compare.
There is less time between us and the earliest known human written records that there is between the current lore of 40K and the day Horus had his teenager moment.

>>98446955
>The Imperium is fascist, not retarded.
The Imperium isn't even fascist, they're just feudal.

>>98447864
this meme again lol

>>98447900
Fascism isn't just 'when bad things happen', it's an a actual ideology that requires far more control from the heads of state than anything the Imperium has.

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If you would please consult the chart 40kid

>>98447941
I voted Vorrtham cause the chinks aren't normal and decent people

>>98447864
The Ideology of the Imperium of Man isn't applicable to current day concepts and forms of governance. It's too goddamn big and expansive to describe with the same stick you use to measure guinea train schedules.

It's not an internally consistent setting. What is your point?

>>98444571
This should have been /thread but OP is a completely retarded faggot who replied with a bunch of lorelet bullshit lmao

>>98444582
>you can just drown those factions in bodies too
Dipshit, there are explicitly more Orks in the galaxy than humans. Not more Orks than Guardsmen - more than ALL HUMANS. And every single Ork is a warrior, whereas Guardsmen are less than 1% of the human population. That faction alone already cannot be drowned in bodies.

And then you have an entire other order of magnitude with
>Tyranids
Lmfao, lol

>>98445928
>Oh that's why Tyranids have overrun the entire... Oh no they haven't overrun the galaxy in fact they almost exclusively lose
Other way around, they almost exclusively win. You wouldn't know this as a secondary lorelet, but basically every bit of lore about a major Hive Fleet finally being stopped is preceded by "first they ate dozens/hundreds/a thousand worlds, then at Planet Plot Armour we just barely managed to stop them before they tipped past the point of critical mass that would have meant we could never ever win against them ever again and it's game over for humanity." Tyranids have the highest win/loss ratio in the setting, and even the three major losses of Hive Fleets they suffered weren't total defeats because splinter segments of all those Hive Fleets are still kicking. The Imperial strategists also think that all in all there are probably more Hive Fleets than there are Imperial worlds.

As for why they haven't overrun the entire galaxy yet, remember that the majority of their forces showed up about 7 years before the Fall of Cadia in-setting. They have been around for 0.07% of the amount of time the Imperium has been at war with Chaos since the Horus Heresy and already wiped out more Imperial worlds than any other faction in 40k to such an extent that the Imperium uses Exterminatus ON THEIR OWN WORLDS more times than they have ever done in history just to slow the Tyranids down.

>>98444561
GW is great at making niche historical references but doesn't seem to actually grasp history.

>>98450047
>Other way around, they almost exclusively win
Other way around, they almost exclusively lose.
>basically every bit of lore about a major Hive Fleet finally being stopped is preceded by "first they ate dozens/hundreds/a thousand worlds
And then... They all died and there's 1 or 2 splinter fleets so people can still use that color scheme. Wow. It's almost like they aren't a real threat and haven't overrun anything.
>already wiped out more Imperial worlds than any other faction in 40k
Oh you're just a delusional sped who thinks headcanon is real. Does the name Robin Cruddace still traumatize you nerds?

>>98450171
>headcanon
It's right in the rulebooks and codexes, newfag. One of the latest nid codexes has a scene with an Inquisitor putting all the pieces together collating various documents and analysis of the Tyranids and the chances of the Imperium stopping them, and realizes the situation is so hopeless he blows his fucking brains out like Ronnie Mcnutt.

>>98450184
>It's right in the rulebooks and codexes
Post 10 examples where it says "Tyranids wiped out more Imperial worlds than any other faction". You have 5 minutes.

>>98450171
>1 or 2 splinter fleets
Kraken was said to splinter into hundreds and when splinter fleets are successful they can grow back into an entire full sized Hive Fleet that threatens the galaxy

>>98450279
>Kraken was said to splinter into hundreds
Book, page number, and exact quote.

>>98450201
Kek he couldn't do it. Newfag projection moment.

>>98445898
>The chemicals for propellant plus the fossil fuels are really hard to get,
Not for Orks, there's probably some kind of squig that poops gunpowder, and there are any number of orkoid organisms that can be processed into biofuel.

You have to remember that 40k Orks are an entire invasive fungal ecosystem, not just a band of orcs and goblins.

>>98450333
>Not for Orks, there's [headcanon]
Imagine if everyone just argued that their headcanon is right lul. Yeah dude the Imperium actually wins because they have extradimensional time warp printers which is how there are always more marines/titans/guardsmen/whoever to throw into the meatgrinder.

>>98444561
Basically every non-Imperium faction is fairly close to 'winning' provided a condition gets met.
>For Orks, that's becoming united under a single leader and WAAAGH
>For Necrons, it's waking up all their tomb worlds
>For Tyranids, it's the full force of their hive fleets arriving in the galaxy or any hive fleet growing too big
>For Tau, it's expanding to more worlds and getting advanced enough that no amount of bodies can stop them
The Eldar are just fucked though.

>>98450371
It's not headcanon, it's expressly canon that the orkoid fungal ecosystem provides them everything they need to build their "civilization".

>>98450419
>It's not headcanon
Book, page number, exact quote of the "squig that poops gunpowder."

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>>98450426
NTA but ork fuel is made from squigs and fungus, yes. You keep asking for specific citations for every little fucking thing because you've never read any lore.

>>98444561
Russia was a nation of 147 million in 2022, but could not logistically support more than 200,000 men in Ukraine, a battlefield that is only a days drive by automobile from the industrial heartland of Russia. Space Nazi USSR isn’t able to ship men from one star to another in merely a day, and formations are mixed gender by default because they need the natural reproduction to replace time-attrition enroute. The Imperium doesn’t have the flexible and swift reacting logistical systems needed to do what you propose.

>>98450473
>NTA but ork fuel
Which is?
>Not gunpowder
Ok so you were wrong.
Your (uncited, unsourced) screenshot would actually support my argument if I took it as fact btw. If they'll specifically detail squigs that do that, why wouldn't they do it for gunpowder squigs unless they don't exist? End of.

>>98450558
You're so fucking retarded.
>Your (uncited, unsourced) screenshot
It's from a White Dwarf article by Rick Priestley, the creator of 40k. It does not get more canon.
>If they'll specifically detail squigs that do that, why wouldn't they do it for gunpowder squigs
Because the article was about Ork vehicles retard, mentioning gunpowder isn't relevant here they were literally just talking about the way the fuel in the vehicles can explode and this was mentioned offhand. But there is abundant lore about how everything the Orks could ever need logistics-wise is supplied by squigs. They don't need to explicitly mention every little thing, you dumbass autist. It's all covered by the lore statements that the squigs provide. You are coping and reaching so hard but basically no one else takes you seriously because many anons have actually read the lore that a secondary like you has never touched. Just because I do not have exhaustive photographic memory cataloging exactly which statements were made on which pages of which of 400 different official sources over the years said this or that doesn't mean it isn't commonly understood knowledge for people who have actually read 40k content.

>>98451530
>It's from a White Dwarf article by Rick Priestley, the creator of 40k.
Now it's cited, but it's still not sourced.

>>98451530
>It's from a White Dwarf article by Rick Priestley, the creator of 40k. It does not get more canon.
Old shit gets retconned into not being canon all the time. Still waiting on sourcing btw.
>Because the article was about Ork vehicles retard, mentioning gunpowder isn't relevant here
You were screeching about how Orks have squigs that poop gunpowder. I asked for a source. You're incapable of giving one because you believe your headcanon over what the lore actually says.
>there is abundant lore about how everything the Orks could ever need logistics-wise is supplied by squigs
And what page of what book says, exactly, "everything the Orks could ever need logistics-wise is supplied by squigs"?

>and in which book is it written that guardsmen intake oxygen and convert it into carbon dioxide?

So you can't do it. You lose.

This entire thread is some faggot autist wondering the guard doesnt win every fight by throwing more men at the problem and then making up headcanons to excuse all of the factual lore statements other anons are telling him that explain how the imperium hasnt won through sheer manpower such as xeno races that outnumber the guard, literal demons from hell, extreme technological superiority to even the enemies number (as seen in the korean war but to an even more extreme degree)

As for Orks they are addicted to war and will literally charge headlong into melee combat just to get closer to the action even if it provides 0 tactical advantage. Death is meaningless to them so they dont care about the risks. Orks come in such large numbers outnumbering the Guard in any given engagement because logistics is basically meaningless to them. Theyre so godamn impossibly crafty that any amount of random bullshit can be turned into a weapon because they have literal supernatural powers. They are so self sustaining that the 8th and 9th edition Ork codexes have said that Orks were even seen popping up on worlds supposedly striped bare by tyranids.

>muh page number
fuck you, #1 rule on 4chan is dont bother spoonfeeding retarded faggots because they just move goalposts

>>98444561
Imperial guard are often made to be a bit of a jobber faction army that have to suffer enough to justify the arrival of space marines.

>>98450403
there's still ynnead or something... maybe...

Who is the highest ranking Imperial that is confirmed to know about the Tau? I sincerely can't picture the High Lords wasting even a second of their time on literalwhos.

>>98463228
>I am extremely mad that someone asked me to stop using headcanon as explanations: The post
You can't source anything because you're wrong about everything.

>>98464083
Roboute Guilliman.

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>>98465796

Being a massive Romanboo, it would be perfect in-character for Roboute Guilliman to cynically and shamesly copy lots of stuff from the T'au. Rome’s real superpower wasn't original genius; it was aggressive, cynical adaptation of foreign inventions.The Roman Republic stole the gladius from the Celtiberians, warship designs from Carthage, and chainmail from the Gauls, and other stuff from many other cultures.

Having him treat the T'au Empire as an unpaid R&D division would not be only lore-accurate to his pragmatic nature, it is the most authentically Roman thing he could possibly do. It is a pity he's trapped in a realm of suicidal religious fanaticism. When he looks at the T'au, he probably doesn't jsut see xenos to be purged; he sees an efficient, hyper-rational logistics engine that is actively out-maneuvering his own empire.

Guilliman would shamelessly strip-mine T'au doctrine and culture. He’d also study their statecraft, how they use axiliary non-xenos and apply it to the Imperium, and how secular civic duty can replace death-cult zealotry.

>>98465831
How does he achieve this without getting killed? I can't imagine the wider IoM administration being on board with this.

>>98445986
are you fucking retarded

>>98465831
>He’d also study their statecraft, how they use axiliary non-xenos and apply it to the Imperium, and how secular civic duty can replace death-cult zealotry.
They already do that in the 300 worlds without needing taufagery. Try and keep up.

>>98465831

This isn't a fair comparison, the Imperium is magnitudes more massive, demons that can alter reality, including digital records are a constant annoyance, and that's not including when Tzeench demons screw with math, i.e. they introduce algorithmic demonic arithmetic that breaks things. The Imperium is not homogenized and is constantly shifting. FTL requires you to go through hell with all sorts of temporal and physical shenanigans. Astrotelepathy is stupidly unreliable, and goes through space hell to get to an endpoint with the aforementioned issues. The logistical system of the Imperium can be compared to a planetsized jenga tower, any broad changes will result in monumental loss of life and resources, it's a miracle that it's as functional as it is. The Admech has a monopoly on tech, and outside of the grimdark tech support satire ultimately they're needed because soul less AI, demonic AI, and tech itself is a threat. The Tau are being setup to be DarkAge/Golden age naive humans who will ultimately become just as cruel as the Imperium to survive. Rowboat Girlyman may encourage some cogboys to emulate some of the tech in approved manners, but he wouldn't integrate their inefficient statecraft, nor any tech that involves AI. That's just dumb gay wishful fanfic thinking. This isn't a setting where you can slap on smurf microsoft excel and find 30 chapters just sitting on their thumbs. Calculators are made from human brains and input/output is done most reliably with pen and parchment.

>>98466881

His Ultramar mini-Imperium while well-run has an average life expectancy of 30. This an high bar by the Imperium.

>>98467052
Isn't the Calgar comic set before Gmoney comes back?

>>98467067
I don't think things would've gotten that much better after the Great Rift and invasions by Nurgle forces.

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>>98444561
Ships retard. Ships are the bottleneck. The imperium does not have the starships needed to move even 1% of its soldiers at once. Thats why the Planetary Defence Forces exist.

>>98467086
Actually he's made a great deal of improvements and reforms.
>100 year indomitus crusade brings hope to the sundered imperium
>technological innovation reborn wih primaris and cawl
>removes most corrupt highlords, baits others into forming the hexarchy, gets rid of them too as anti corruption reforms from the top down
>forms an entire new branch to verifying historical facts rather than hiding it away like the inqusition
>direct administrative and governing roles for astartes, including Dante and rebuilding Baal
>Custodians allowed out of the house to go fulfill the emperor's will
There were a bunch.
I'm not going to go read the 500 worlds series, looks really bad, but the lexicanium has
>On the whole, the realm of Ultramar is composed primarily of industrial worlds, although they lack the nightmarish toxic wastelands common to other Imperial manufacturing centres.[3b]
>Raised in a warrior society which disdains those who do not pull their weight,[5b], the population is disciplined, loyal and productive, living in balance with the local ecosystem.[3b]
>With sprawling cities surrounded by extensive farmlands and oceans teeming with fish, each planet is completely self-sufficient, including raw materials and food, and is the envy of many other worlds.[3b]
>Some small children on Ultramarian worlds go to Scholum, which they often find dull and predictable.[21b]
>Civil unrest is unusually rare in Ultramar compared to other Imperial sectors. This is partly due to the high standard of living, and also to the discipline and productivity of each citizen.[27a]
So while not the best, notably better than anywhere else and reasonable to say the life expediency would be well above 30. 50 at least :)

>>98466801
I accept your concession headcanonfag.

>>98444561
The campaigns and crusades against the Tau amount to little more than a rounding error for the IoM. It's like asking why the US government can't fix a particular pothole in your neighborhood. They'll get around to it, eventually. Maybe. Or they might get the paperwork mixed up and rezone your street into a lithium mine or data center, and plow you and that dumb pothole under in the middle of the night.

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>>98467383
Sure but he's fairly limited in his ability to actually change much, something he does mention constantly, Cawl for example isn't 'rebirthing' innovation, he's one guy who took 10,000 years to bring Primaris around and who is constantly resisted by the rest of the Mechanicus, which means that only the forge worlds directly under Cawls command will really be able to pump out any new designs he has, inherently limiting their actual distribution. Likewise the Guilliman's reforms aren't really going to affect the day to day of most of the Imperium, he might make the 500 worlds slightly better, but unfortunately they don't really matter on the strategic level.

>>98467383
>>98465831
Read Procopius’ Secret History tho. Justinian was a Jeffrey Epstein Eyes Wide Shut demon worshiper behind the scenes.
What has Gulliman actually done besides giving reddit a character to relate to and rubberstamping what any politician would have done in his shoes? He's sent out the royal bodyguards and assassins to get used up on the battlefield, decapitated his main political opposition, and talked to a demonhost. The Grey Knights weren't happy about that!

If James is ripping off history Gulliman could easily be as bad as Vandire.

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>>98446505
The entire Imperial Guard should look like the Death Korps. They should never show their faces, instead looking completely alien, like the Helghast.

>>98471902
while I do like the Death Korps, saying every guard regiment should look like them is dumb since not only are the different looks a great way to allow players to justify their own guard asthetic, but also does a great job as showing how disorganized the Imperium is to the point their "central" army is more like a feudal state where various local areas have to supply their own equipment and uniforms

>>98445986
Every guardsman that does eaten by a Nid is another Nid since the biomass gets recylced. The Nid cannot be facetanked because they are immune to attrition. You fight them by using your goddamn artillery, not cannon fodder.

>>98472328
How do you keep the nids away from your artillery long enough for it to have an impact?

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>>98470148
In Tsarist Russia, peasants would tell themselves that the Tsar could fix all of their problems and deprivations in a heartbeat, if only he knew about them.
This is the American peasant version of this mindset, where the Government is assumed to be omnipotent, but also simultaneous benevolent and ambivalent.

>>98451530
>But there is abundant lore about how everything the Orks could ever need logistics-wise is supplied by squigs.
Then why do they steal dakka retard?

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>>98472410
I don't even think we can say that "the Tsar doesn't know" in this case, as Guilliman has mentioned the Tau by name at least, and the Imperium has lost at least 200 billion Guardsmen on a single frontline against the Tau. And yes, while 200 billion Guardsmen isn't a significant amount by Imperium standards, that's the casualties of over 14,000 Vraks campaigns combined, so I'm not sure the Imperium would consider it a rounding error.
>inb4 "numbers don't matter"
The numbers might be retarded but they're still the numbers they give us, and if we just go based on 'vibes' the lore is even less helpful there.

>>98445089
>a mass of peasants with sharp sticks could defeat any of them.
You do realize the average ork equipped with a sharp stick is on par with a space marine, right?

>>98472417
They don't, they steal scrap to fashion into PROPER guns because mining and metals fabrication is muckwork for grots and slaves

>>98444561
40K numbers are stupid. Like for example let's take for example the Rhino. Supposedly extremely common vehicle used all across the galaxy. Except Imperial Guard aren't allowed to use it.

So even if every single Space Marine had their personal Rhino that means there's only 1 million Rhinos. Compared to how many Leman Russ tanks Imperial Guard have. Terra alone has a population of "quadrillions" so let's assume it's 2 quadrillion to keep it simple. Imperial Guard is clearly inspired by WW2 Soviet Army and during WW2 20% of Soviet Population was in the army. So let's assume that out of this 2 quadrillion just from Terra alone 20% of them are in Imperial Guard. So that's 400 trillion guardsmen just from Terra.

Soviet Union had 90K tanks and 34.5 million soldiers. That is one tank for every 383 soldiers. Let's assume that since Imperium is so slow to produce shit that that the Imperium ratio is 10 times less so one tank per 3830 or let's just round it to per 4000 men. Even with this ratio just the Terran portion of Imperial Guard would have.... 100 BILLION Leman Russ tanks. Or to put in in perspective once again even if every single Space Marine has their personal Rhino the Terran Forces Leman Russ' are 100k times more common. And that is not including all the other worlds.

The Imperial Guard numbers are way too high while the Space Marine numbers are way too low.

>>98472417
You saying that you've never thought about taking something despite having a perfectly reasonable way to get it normally?

>>98444561
Logistics, retard.

>>98445617
That number just goes to show that all numbers in 40k are retarded and baseless.
20-25m soldiers died irl within 6 years in ww2, so a planetwide siege lasting for 17 years and only killing 14-15m soldiers is retarded writing.

>>98473559
Vraks wasn't really 'planetwide' though, 99.999% of the planet was an uninhabited wasteland. The war was only fought for the citadel and the surrounding defense lines, which imperial armor 1 states was only around five thousand square kilometers in size. For refrence the state of rhode island in the US is about 2500 square kilometers of land, so the entire vraks warzone was twice the size of that. 14 million men for an area that small is pretty nuts.

>>98444561
Warhammer's lore is neither coherent nor consistent. It's meant to sell figurines.

>>98476649
why are people acting like this is some insane revelation?

>>98476463
An entire planet having only one defensive outpost is equally retarded btw.

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>>98444582
>Tyranids?
>Quadrillion guardsmen
You're trying to put out a fire by dumping canola oil onto it.

>>98476649
There's good mixed in with the bad. Cain is just a good fun romp that does more for the setting than a million Space Marine "AND THEN COOLIUS MAXIMUS STABBED MOLESTICUS THE FOUL WITH HIS TURGID MEGA-SWORD" schlock novels.
That said some factions eat better than others. Necrons are swimming in good books, while you're lucky if GSC are a side-army in a decent Necron book.
>dude read cult of the spiral dawn it's a good genestealer book I swear!
>it's literally just a toy commercial for the unit types
>also there's some chaos shit happening in the background
LAME!
>Ascension Day
>decent character writing/motivations
>story is actually about the cult from the cult's perspective and mechanicus from the mechicus' perspective
>doesn't devolve into chaos-shit
SOUL!

Could still be worse though, I could be looking for books about the Eldar.

>>98476741
Not every planet needs to be coruscant from star wars, vraks was just an unremarkable planet the imperium used to store war materiel.

Honestly the Tau are kind of unstoppable by the Imperium at this point. The Imperium wanes ever further with each year that goes by, and never advances technologically, while the Tau are waxing in both size and technological sophistication. Maybe the Imperium could win if it threw an enormous crusade fleet together right now and smashed them, but doing that would open up the entire eastern fringe to every other threat in existence and hasten the Imperium’s demise. If the Imperium waits, the Tau are going to get ever larger and harder to defeat because of that, while also getting more advanced, to the point where the Imperium is going to need a larger and larger quantitative advantage to stand a chance. The Tau Empire will keep on picking up new member races, it will plunder Imperial vaults for DAoT tech, it’s weapons longer ranged, more accurate, more versatile, it’s soldiers will be given better equipment and genetic augmentations (the Tau are already looking into this as per Elemental Council), it’s AI smarter and more capable of independence… It’s just kind of over the the Imperium; their best hope is to wait for somebody else to take out the Tau before they get too big, because the IoM certainly does not have the resources!

>>98444582
You need a fleet to get them around retard, which is much more limiting.

>>98472417
>You have ONE shoota
>you find ANOTHER shoota in the hands of some unkrumped 'umie
>you krump the git, and take his shoota
>now you have TWO shootas, and therefore MORE DAKKA
It's not that hard to grasp, anon. I'm beginning to believe you're being retarded on purpose.

>>98445986
>Has practically infinite resources and just grind down the tyranids every time lol. Turns out they can't adapt to "Can facetank all your hive fleets".
yea they could , I feel like this is asking a fat person if he can addapt to a buffet.

>>98467160
epic post anon :D.

>>98478122
youre memeing, but this post was pretty much over the moment the damocles campaign was brought up

the imperium did have the manpower to simply overwhelm the tau if they focused enough resources into a single massive sledgehammer that would have overwhelmed any local superiority that the tau might have gained
but that didnt happen because the tyranids showed up and the invasion fleet that was intended to destroy the tau was suddenly diverted to face the tyranids

what that disengenious poster chalks up to simply plot armor instead underscores what everyone else has been saying this whole time, that the imperium is at war with everyone at the same time and even their massive resources can be stretched thin defending on all sides

so ships being a bottleneck is absolutely true
the ships needed to sustain a prolonged war of extermination against the tau was suddenly more important being used against the nids

>>98478142
>the ships needed to sustain a prolonged war of extermination against the tau was suddenly more important being used against the nids
And that was BEFORE egos and politics of regional leaders mucked things up further.

>>98478142
b-b-but just throw eleventy QUADRILLION guys, anon! a QUADRILLION! you can't beat that! I said the word Quadrillion and that means my guys win.

They also have every-thing proof shields and anti-everything swords.

>>98471810
>listening to millennium old political slander as factual history

>>98478142
>the imperium could do xyz to delete the tau from existence!
The Imperium isn't real, GW would never do that while there are still Tau minis on shelves.

Conceptually, within the context of 40k as a story first and a product second, crazy I know, the Imperium could theoretically create and direct a force sufficient to exterminate the Tau as an empire, but doing so would leave them open to so many other threats that it would be a pyrrhic victory, since an equivalent amount of territory would be gobbled up by Chaos, Orks and Nids behind them. Dark Eldar are raiding and normal Eldar are also raiding, but being prissy and holier-than-thou about it.

Then half the Tau worlds would end up being Necron Tomb Worlds, would get infested with Genestealers cults, and then be attacked by Orks.
The Tau are a useful piece on the board for the Imperium, whether they admit it or not, because as long as the mostly diplomatic Tau are occupying those stars, they're not being occupied by the real threats.

>>98444561
Wouldn't be a much fun game if it was already won, now would it?

>>98478469
That's correct, the Tau have even destroyed Hive Fleet Gorgon that would have otherwise run rampant across the Segmentum Ultima and done far, far more damage to the Imperium than the Tau ever could
The problem is that the Imperium isn't allowed to be pragmatic when it comes to human-xenos relations, at least not at the highest levels of command.

>>98444561
1. The Imperium is also fighting infinite chaos traitors, infinite orks, and infinite tyranids, along with more finite space elves, terminators, and other xenos and chaos bullshit.
2. The imperium only has nigh infinite logistical capacity for their infinite guardsmen

>>98478434
that was the entire point of the post you are replying to
the tau were holding their own against the imperium and they gathered up a large enough force that would have been able to do the trick
but alarm bells in other parts of the galaxy quickly moved those forces elsewhere

this is not a rare event in the imperium, theres always some big shiny new threat on the edge of the galaxy which stretches them thin

>GW would never do that while there are still Tau minis on shelves.
okay, thats the doylist explanation
but the watsonian explanation was laid out pretty clearly, the imperiums abilty to destroy the tau on paper doesnt translate to in practice because the constant threats on all sides prevents them from actually focusing on any specific threat

>>98477097
The Tau will appear to 'go dark' for centuries and the Imperium will think that the Tau have been wiped out. In reality, the Tau were just forced into a war of survival against the incoming Tyranids on that side of the galaxy, no longer able to devote resources to further expansion only bug murder.

In the end, the Tau will have saved the galaxy from being eaten by the nids and set up and automated defense network to intercept and destroy all future hive fleets coming from that side of the galaxy, and from when the Tau next fight the Imperium of Man its with Buster Machines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0vCY3I5yxo

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>>98445589
>The Damocles special military operation
On a more serious note, considering how your average guardsman is atleast somewhat malnourished do you think the average firewarrior would have a decent chance against them? I've seen how horses kick and that could probably break a guardsman's leg

>>98479259
I dont think its ever been stated that the guard are malnourished unless its a dire situation because the entire point of the guard is they are IRL WW1/2 militaries. Also its pretty well known that the Tau are sluggish and terrible at melee fighting despite having combat knives so they clearly practice CQB in their training so I doubt a Tau firewarrior could do that because then they wouldn't be nearly as useless in melee.

>>98479259
Imperial Guard are often the top 10% of the PDF. What people get wrong is presuming this means they're all talented gigachads when in truth it means they're on a modern normal Human level rather than being malnourished, malformed wretches.

Tau have various biological and doctrinal weaknesses for melee and are typically portrayed as very poor at it. They generally significantly outperform Guardsmen overall due to better training, equipment and doctrine, but would probably lose in a fistfight.

>>98479259
as the other guy stated your average imperial guard is well fed enough for the most part that the tau won't be facing some scrawny guy, which when combined with the fact even fire warriors who are physically the strongest are still weaker than human its unlikely they would win in a melee fight

>>98444561
40k is best when it's about ordinary male human fighters in dying societies and extreme scenarios. The Guard covers that niche, from the office politics of logistics pedantry to hungry men shanking each other for rat stew in the mud.

There's a set of short stories called the Caligari Archivum written for the background of a 40k video game. I highly rec it because the authors are old Eastern Eurpean guys who remember what the USSR was like and channel the corruption well.

>>98444561
>the Imperial Guard is fighting the Tau of all factions where they've lost hundreds of billions of Guardsmen
>why not just send hundreds of trillions of Guardsmen instead?
Because the imperium is retarded and Tau are totally awesome

>>98478631
That has long been the issue for the Imperium.
Too many fronts, more than enough troops and armor, not efficient enough transportation to get them to where they need to go.
Eldar have the exact opposite problem, Nids and Orks have the same problem.
To wit, Orks would win if they had half of the unity and organization as the Imperium, but outside Ghazkull, no single ork can mass those numbers reliably. I would like more tales of Ghazkull dominating and uniting orks the way he is said to be able to.

>>98471795
>who is constantly resisted by the rest of the Mechanicus, which means that only the forge worlds directly under Cawls command will really be able to pump out any new designs he has
That isn't exactly true, he got multiple other forge worlds to cooperate and collaborate with him (notably Accatran and Tigris, both of whose leaders had a clear "fuck the dogma, winning matters more" attitude) and has significant support on Mars itself.

>>98479990
>40k is best when it's about ordinary male human fighters (...) dying
Well, the Guard is undeniably the best at that.

>>98467160
People can't mentally fathom the logistics involved in a galaxy spanning empire with all the handicaps the Imperium has. You could have a trillion titans, and it wouldn't matter without the ability to maintain, rearm, crew, or transport them within an acceptable time frame.

>>98479311
>>98479324
>>98479719
Are Tau really weaker than humans? I've been looking into it and couldn't finds sources.
Only that they are shorter on average and don't train for melee

>>98481422
if I recall the box the greater good explains tau strength, but there are also other sources that conflict with it

>>98444561
>esl nigger
>worthless spam outside its containment thread
/tg/s second favorite fag/op/ behind the unironic tranny tier faggots that infest every digital space

>>98481422
there was a blurb that they have poorer reflexes, which is why they are bad at melee

>>98472328
>Every guardsman that does eaten by a Nid is another Nid since the biomass gets recylced.
Wrong, you can't recycle slag. Nids can and are facetanked regularly in the lore.

>>98478087
>yea they [headcanon]

>>98478434
One of the few succinctly correct posts ITT.
GW isn't interested in chudcope like >>98478142 or other nonsense they want to sell. Therefore every faction has plot armor in proportion to how many minis they sell. The Ultramarines can facetank a billion Tyranids and the Imperium will never, ever, not in a billion years with a quintillion defeats, be significantly impacted.

>>98482271
That's not cope, thats literally the plot of the damocles campaign
The nids pulled resources away from the campaign intended to finish off the tau

The imperium is spread thin and cant actually defeat any of their foes because they are fighting all of them at the same time

>>98482289
>That's not cope
Yes it is.
>thats literally the plot of the damocles campaign
No it isn't. The plot of the damocles campaign is the tau getting BTFO and saved because they have plot armor because tau models bring a profit.
That's the end of it. The rest is chudcope to justify their favorite plastic minis existing in a way that doesn't address reality.

>>98482296
>Yes it is.
its a factual summary

>The plot of the damocles campaign is the tau getting BTFO and saved because they have plot armor because tau models bring a profit.
The imperium had to divert resources to fight a different threat because the imperium is repeatesly besieged on all sides and resources are pulled in every direction
The tau were saved because the imperium is stretched thin as it is and new threats prevent them from actually putting all their weight on a single threat

>>98482316
>its a factual summary
What I said is yeah.
>Repeating himself
You're niggerlooping, all you've got is huffing cope because you were proven wrong.

>>98482325
>because you were proven wrong
Nothing about the sequence of events proves me wrong
The imperium simply cannot afford to tackle every single other enemy at the same time even though they outmass each individual enemy 1 on 1
The tau proves that true, since the imperium attention is caught by other more pressing events, showing that even smaller powers can achieve local superiority because the imperium is constantly fighting on multiple fronts

>>98482343
>Nothing about the sequence of events proves me wrong
Everything about the sequence of events proved you wrong.
>The imperium simply cannot afford to tackle
Yes they can. They have practically infinite resources and infinite manpower. The sole reason the Tau exist is because their models sell. That is an unassailable fact that you're avoiding because you self insert as Tau.

>>98445374
>Lorelet
>Lorefagging

Incredible how 40kiddies seethe if you just tell them to quote their own lore. They must all watch youtubers instead of playing the game kek

>>98478332
This is just how 40k lore is written.

>>98485023
I self-insert as Departmento Munitorum sub-clerk adjacent (grade 13) supply prefect of the subsector lasgun cells depot. /myguys/ WILL receive a full combat load of lasgun power packs (class 4b) and they WILL sign in triplicate so I can get the annual day of leave!

>>98465831
>Rome’s real superpower wasn't original genius

I've been led to believe it was also logistics, and creating a system that let them maximally extract manpower from their land in the form of heavy infantry that was more efficient than their neighbours and competitors.

>>98481548
I might've been in the now non-canonical source that also said Eldar shit crystals, but I vaguely recall their eyes are setup more in prey animal configuration which fucks up their depth perception and line of sight.

>>98444561
>so why not just send hundreds of trillions of Guardsmen instead?
Psychotic autistic Adminstratum bureaucracy.

>>98487137
Efficient paperwork and bookkeeping is the fulcrum upon which all military endeavors are forged or broken. Actually sending the shit is a given, naturally, but if it doesn't exist on the books then it might as well not exist. The second it leaves the books it's either black market goods or it fell off a fucking truck (i.e. black market goods anyway).

>>98444561
>How?
None of it is real.
I'm not talking about it in the context of irl, I'm talking about the 40k universe.
All of it, from grunts to chaos demons, is propaganda bullshit through a lens of bureaucracy that's been filtered through multiple civilization-level revolutions, told across distances that are impossible to travel in a normal lifetime.
Unreliable Narrator 40k.
And if one of the wrench turners or shit farmers starts asking questions then there are multiple branches of the government that just straight up murder whole families if someone furrows their brow in too inquisitive a manner.

But you shouldn't follow 40k lore to find a kernel of truth, you follow it to revel in the lies. Every faction has their own truth and their own dirty secrets.

>>98487422
This sounds really smart until you realize books don't materialize military power.

>>98487485
This is the wrongest possible stance. The setting is very plainly being explained for an out of universe perspective.

Your codex is not the uplifting primer, it's literally just the writers telling you what the setting is.

>>98493913
It definitely won't materialize without paperwork.

>>98494151
>Nobody ever fought a war until paper was invented
Topjej.

>>98494199
>implying recordkeeping doesn't predate paper
dog shut the fuck up you're not a semantic genius

>>98494215
>Shifting goalposts
I accept your concession.

>>98494226
you're the kind of retard that hears someone say something was "shopped" and then go "uhhhh akshually photoshop isn't the only image editing method"

>>98494255
>Non-sequitur
Acceptio Concessio!

>>98494255
>you cant say you xeroxed it when your photocopier was made by LG

>>98494259
If follows just fine, you're just a double digit IQ retard and simple comparisons are beyond your cognitive capabilities.

>>98494267
>If follows
You're so mad you can't type and you wanna talk about the IQ of others.

>>98494277
Holy shit you don't even know what the fallacy you cited means.

>>98494226
NTA, but no one associates 'paperwork' with physical sheets of paper, it's a descriptor of an activity, not an item.
That said, people are taking your bait, so good job?

>>98494317
You'll say anything to cover up that fumble huh?

>>98494326
that might be a sign of actual autism, getting hyperfixated on terminology
>t. someone actually diagnosed with high functioning ASD

>>98494326
>>98494330
>NTA
(Lie)
>but no one associates 'paperwork' with physical sheets of paper
(Lying harder)
>That said, people are taking your bait
By people you mean (you) are.

quick make sure you ready both replies ahead of time!

>>98494329
Let me go ahead and make it clear for you, you stupid fuck: When you say "non-sequitur" you are literally claiming my argument does not follow. No sequence, does not follow, non-sequitur. Go read a fucking book holy shit.

>>98494367
Let me make it clear for you: You meant to say "It follows" not "if follows" and fucked it up because you were seeing red and couldn't keep your hands from shaking.
You are incorrect. Don't talk about reading when you can't even spell, child <3

>>98494372
I'm glad you had a stroke when seeing an "f" instead of a "t" and I hope it bothers you for the rest of the week you fucking subhuman.

>>98494376
>Y-you had a stroke!
t. Guy so mad he was genuinely shaking with rage. You'll think about this for the rest of your life and I'll forget about it before I go to bed.

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>>98494151
Wrong.

>>98494215
War predates "recordkeeping" too though. Cities like Hamoukar have been unearthed that were besieged and destroyed by a foreign army, predating anything approximating administrative paperwork or military records.
An army only needs three things to exist: Food, water, a shared purpose. Anything else they can get on their own or manage without, and that includes administration.

>>98444561
>but the Imperium has a population in the tens of quadrillions
1: nobody actually knows the population of the Imperium, just an incredibly vague ballpark that shifts as the plot requires
2: Militaries are 90% tail 10% tooth. So whatever figure of population you think the Imperium has, divide that by 1.1 because that's how many people you need on the homefront to support a space military
3: children and elderly take a chunk out of the population eligible for military service
4: some large number of women also need to stay on the homefront as labourers and baby factories
5: the imperium suffers huge inefficiencies from spanning 100,000s of worlds. Many worlds are under some form of rebellion, don't provide tithe, are forgotten or unreachable due to Warp storms, etc
6: huge parts of every planet's population are criminals, mutants, itinerants hiding deep beneath the surface of hive worlds, and other lumpenproletariat not fit for military service and/or actively hiding from it
7: manpower is nothing without weaponry power to back it up in this setting. Mankind is the squishiest race in the galaxy apart from the Tau and maybe Eldar. Everything else can fuck them up unless they outnumber it massively, are Space Marines, or have great guns. There's not as many powerful weapons as there are humans.
8: even with powerful weapons, some daemons, xenos, and other monsters in this setting require like 100 humans minimum to kill each, and there's a neverending tide of those too.


Finally, 9: What you're saying is right disregarding all of this, because yes the xenos and daemons can't kill the humans faster than they breed, but the humans can't kill the fungus spores, bugs, or warp creatures fast enough either. This is why the galaxy has been in constant stalemate war for 10,000 years.

>>98481422
Shadowsun fights a human colonel while in her powersuit in one of the books and still gets her ass beat, because his reflexes are too fast for her.

>>98494424
>nobody actually knows the population of the Imperium, just an incredibly vague ballpark that shifts as the plot requires
That reinforces the point.
>Militaries are 90% tail 10% tooth
In WW2 the US army was 20% "Tooth" and 80% "Tail" by their own numbers. So you're just wrong in general.
>children and elderly take a chunk out of the population eligible for military service
If you have infinite population this doesn't matter.
>some large number of women also need to stay on the homefront as labourers and baby factories
See the above.
>the imperium suffers huge inefficiencies from spanning 100,000s of worlds. Many worlds are under some form of rebellion, don't provide tithe, are forgotten or unreachable due to Warp storms, etc
See the above.
>huge parts of every planet's population are criminals, mutants, itinerant
See the above.
>manpower is nothing without weaponry power to back it up in this setting.
Infinite population = Infinite production = Infinite weapons. Numbers don't matter because there are infinite numbers.
>even with powerful weapons, some daemons, xenos, and other monsters in this setting require like 100 humans minimum to kill each
Still not a problem.
>and there's a neverending tide of those too.
The Imperium regularly beats back Daemonic incursions so this doesn't matter and is neverending as well.
>What you're saying is right disregarding all of this, because yes the xenos and daemons can't kill the humans faster than they breed
"breeding" isn't the issue.
>but the humans can't kill the fungus spores, bugs, or warp creatures fast enough either.
Yes they could.
>This is why the galaxy has been in constant stalemate war for 10,000 years.
No, the reason is to sell models. If the Imperium got serious it could win on any and every front. But then how is James Workshop going to sell all his expensive plastic toys?

>>98494438
>the reason is to sell models
thats the business reason they decided to make a galactic stalemate
which is not to be confused with the in-universe reason for the stalemate, which is that the imperium cant actually afford to go all out all the time on every front

>>98494451
>thats the business reason they decided to make a galactic stalemate
It is the *actual* reason the stalemate exists. Any other reason given is incorrect or layered in contradictions and counterfactuals.

>>98494459
>It is the *actual* reason the stalemate exists.
the business reason of needing to sell models is the reason why the universe has a million factions and why none of them lose
which does not at all contradict with the watsonian reason for the stalemate: which is that the imperium is crumbling and can only barely hang on to what they already have, nevermind winning

>>98494466
>the business reason of needing to sell models is the reason
The *actual* reason, yes.
>which does not at all contradict with the watsonian reason for the stalemate
Actually it does. There can only be one *actual* reason. And due to GW's need to sell models they invent contradictory narratives all the time. The Imperium is stretched thin but nothing ever actually happens, losses are instantly undone, and even massive events that would destroy any empire "stretched thin" actually lead to even BIGGER armies and MORE factions, with brand new models to sell.
As all reasons given in-universe are faulty and contradictory, there is only one *actual* reason: GW want sell model. Therefore, the Imperium is invincible and infinite, and always will be.

>>98494480
>The *actual* reason, yes.
its the reason for why they invented a world with an eternal stalemate
and is therefore also the reason why the imperium is stretched thin and incapable of actually bringing 100% of their forces on any single enemy

>Actually it does
it explains the business decision to write the story the way it is
which is also that the imperium is crumbling and unable to actually defeat any of its enemies

nothing you are actually saying actually disproves that the imperium is too stretched thin to actually defeat anyone
you are just saying the out-of-universe reason for why they decided to write things the way they are without actually saying anything about the story itself, which is that the imperium cannot defeat all of its enemies at the same time

>>98494498
>its the reason
Yes, the *actual* reason. There are no other reasons and nothing else is true.
>nothing you are actually saying actually disproves that the imperium is too stretched thin to actually defeat anyone
Yes it does.
>you are just saying the out-of-universe reason for why they decided to write things the way they are
The way they are written is inherently contradictory and thus incorrect. Thus, the actual and sole reason is that they want to sell models. This frustrates 40kiddies because they're mental children who can't admit 40k lore is an advertisement.

>>98494511
>Yes it does.
how so?
the business need to keep a stalemate means that the imperium cant ever actually beat their foes
which means that the imperium is actually too weak to defeat all their foes at once

>Thus, the actual and sole reason is that they want to sell models
>This frustrates 40kiddies because they're mental children who can't admit 40k lore is an advertisement.
it is an advertisement, but that doesnt disprove the notion that the imperium cannot actually defeat all their enemies at once at the same time

>>98494521
>how so?
By disproving it.
>the business need to keep a stalemate means that the imperium cant ever actually beat their foes
Correct. This is not because they can't in-universe, this is because they want to sell models. There are no other reasons.
>it is an advertisement
And you're arguing that the advertisement actually has really deep and solid internal reasoning when it... Objectively doesn't. You can stop screaming "leave the big corporation alone!" anytime now btw.

Why do you smoothbrains keep ignoring the logistics of transporting people and the things they need through a type of hell that fucks with time and space with a limited number of ships across an entire galaxy, where the only way to communicate is through said hell using delayed and unreliable telepathy that demons screw with, then having that all processed by a bogged down system due to the sheer scale, dogma, and warp fuckery the setting is.

>>98494525
you are acting like the need to sell toys is somehow contrary to the in-universe reason that the imperium actually cannot just defeat every faction at once
these do not contradict, it just informs the process of writing the outcome

the imperium is too stretched thin to defeat every faction because it helps sell toys
how do you not understand this statement?

>>98494537
>you are acting like the need to sell toys is somehow contrary to the in-universe reason
Because it is. There cannot be two *actual* reasons. And if the in-universe reasons are contradictory and make no sense, they don't matter and aren't valid.
>how do you not understand this statement?
I understand what you're trying to force, and it's ultimately still just you being mad that the game is an advertisement and not coherently written.

>>98494536
Warp travel either makes transportation of anything totally impossible or poses no real problems depending on what a given author wants, so it's a non-factor.

>>98494549
>There cannot be two *actual* reasons.
the need to sell toys is the out of universe reason
the imperium being too weak to beat every faction at the same time is the in-universe reason created to reach the out-of-universe goal
these two statements are not contradictory

>, and it's ultimately still just you being mad that the game is an advertisement and not coherently written.
its just pointing out that the in-universe explanation that the imperium cannot beat every faction at the same time is the almost tautological reason that they cannot defeat every faction at the same time

>>98494553
the randomness and vagueness of warp travel is explicitly mentioned by almost every source in the franchise as being a significant reason why the imperium cannot simply respond instantly to every threat
alongside there being too many threats for the imperium to consistently respond to all of them

>>98494554
>the need to sell toys is the out of universe reason
It is the *actual* reason.
>these two statements are not contradictory
They are, in fact. There can only be one *actual* reason.
>its just pointing out that the in-universe explanation
There isn't any that isn't contradictory.

You're really, really mad that your plastic toy ad isn't internally consistent.

>>98494559
>the randomness and vagueness of warp travel is explicitly mentioned by almost every source in the franchise
Proof?
It's never stated in what way exactly it's random or what that averages out to, so it's meaningless. Massive fleets can travel perfectly fine when needed or not when the writer decides otherwise. In-universe, there's no real explanation given, it's just hand waved away.

>>98494553
The entire setting revolves around the problems of warp travel you weaponized dingus.

>>98494566
>It is the *actual* reason.
the writers were told to write a story that justified a never ending conflict to sell toys
so they wrote a setting where the giant undying imperium is beset by threats on all sides and it takes all they have just to stay as they are
how do you not comprehend this?

>They are, in fact.
the execs want an eternal stalemate to sell toys
the writers write a giant empire that is surrounded by so many threats that they can only take a galactic holding action
these two facts are not contradictory

>There isn't any that isn't contradictory.
the imperium cant take on every faction at once
thats the simplest statement as to why theres a stalemate

>>98494576
Not really.

>>98494578
>the writers were told to write a story that justified a never ending conflict
And failed because they kept contradicting themselves. Which didn't matter because that reason never mattered, as the *actual* reason is to sell toys.
>the execs want an eternal stalemate to sell toys
Correct.
>the writers write
Debatable as to whether you can call it "writing".
>these two facts are not contradictory
Didn't say they were. Check your reading comprehension baby child.
>the imperium cant take on every faction at once
They can. They don't because GW wants to sell toys.
That's the *only true* statement as to why.

>>98494579
Oh, you're just baiting people.

>>98494583
basically your only argument is that they need to sell toys
an argument that only strengthens the statement that the imperium isnt actually strong enough to defeat all other factions at the same time
what even is your argument?

>>98494585
If you say so.

>>98494588
>basically your only argument is that they need to sell toys
That's a statement of fact, not an argument.
>an argument that only strengthens the statement that the imperium isnt actually strong enough to defeat all other factions at the same time
It proves beyond all argument that they are, and the sole reason they don't is to sell models.
>what even is your argument?
I'd ask you that, but you're not really here to argue, you're just mad that I'm shitting on something you imagined to be greater than it actually is.