I agree. Too bad the game is no longer supported.

Writers & designers for the 40k universe have ALWAYS had a problem understanding scale. I usually just assume they are off by a factor of 10-1000 for most things.

If you read about the Halo barge it is supposed to be bulk haulers, large and slow - but practical. But it would be entirely impractical that they could only transport 2 TEU containers worth of material.

But if we assume that instead of 40 they can carry 40.000 tons, then we start getting somewhere. A stack of TEU containers 20*20*5 is a nice clean stack of 2000 TEU (1/4 - 1/8 of modern container ships) that a large bulk hauler should be able to get into orbit in the way described for the Halo Barge.

20 of such 40Kt Halo barges would be able to get 900Mt (argentina * 6 production) into orbit per earth year, providing 8 hours for a full trip (loading, orbit, unloading, return to ground).

It also comes down to how many ships you'd want to see in your interpretation of the setting: The same amount of cargo can be carried into orbit either by a lot of smaller ships making more trips, or a few larger ones taking longer but carrying significantly more. I could see either option work out, evoking a slightly different atmosphere (a higher number of ships leading to "busier" air traffic and more stress for dock crews).

But even so, personally I'd push the Halo Barge's capacity to 400 or 4,000 tons to distinguish it from a normal shuttle. For comparison, modern river barges carry around 1,000-2,000 tons of cargo, and their size is something I could imagine to work nicely for an inter-atmospheric hauler in 40k. Too large and it'd look too much like a proper spaceship.

It also bears noting that in many systems, asteroid mining is a thing so various bulk hauling 'system ships' would also be in use. These actually would resemble a proper voidship with the notable exception of lacking a warp drive.

Good discussion!

If I give an average vagabond class trader about half its length and half its width (with an equivalent height) in cargo space capacity

That seems a little excessive - even a vagabond still mounts armour and ship-to-ship weapons, after all. However, even having it be a third, or a quarter, isn't going to be an order-of-magnitude change to your sums.

This gives us a handy comparison with the real world as well: one small Imperial trader can carry about the same amount as 100 real world large container vessels. Or about 25 million tonnes of cargo.

So I guess I can skip further math and go from there. For all this meat, I would need about 6 to 8 ship movements. And added to that, we have the mining station, producing vast amounts of raw metal for the forges of Scintilla.

Which sounds like a nice number. If a moderately prosperous agri-world can expect a merchant ship pulling into orbit every couple of months (well.....either that or half a dozen at once at 'harvest season', depending on the nature of the crop) then ships still feel 'special' but turn up regularly enough to be a useful plot device.

It also means that "a starship has arrived" on a minor world remains important enough for potentially planet-wide celebrations. If a frontier world has a vagabond turn up laden with luxury goods, forge-manufactured industrial tools, and so on, you're genuinely carrying enough to satisfy the world's needs for months or even years at a time.

- Universe class transporter: about 5 to 6 Goliaths and 50 to 55 Vagabonds. Allowing for the equivalent of 50.000.000 to 60.000.000 containers and 1.500.000.000 metric tonnes of cargo. Corresponds to about 5.000 to 6.000 large container ships. In a real world perspective, this is about twice the amount of containers that Singapore deals with in a year.

Which again, makes sense. To me, a Universe-class Mass Conveyor is essentially Singapore or Rotterdam harbour but mobile. Certainly, the impression you get when the Misericorde (the one in the Calixis sector) is discussed is that the Misericorde is a major chunk of the sector economy more important than some of the lesser worlds it's occasionally found orbiting. Certainly there's reference to other merchant ships setting their routes to meet it, rather than the world it's currently at.

As an additional observation - military logistics. Figures come from The Science of War by Michael E. O'Hanlon

Taking Desert Storm as an example, deploying 500,000 US ground troops needed 10,000,000 tons of supplies (split about 30% bulk supplies, 60% fuel and 10% water) for about 6 months deployment including 1 month of serious combat.

Guard regiments are highly variable in size depending on who's writing the source material, but that number suggests that a single Vagabond could realistically supply several months of operations on a minor front.

Guard regiments are highly variable in size depending on who's writing the source material, but that number suggests that a single Vagabond could realistically supply several months of operations on a minor front.

is there any reason that only the ship's lifters are the only method of transport? I would imagine that the there would be landers based on the planet to help handle large transport loads, and if not, and no orbital docks to just unload at and you needed to unload the entire ship in one place ( and seems like it is being replaced with another commodity) the ship would probably just land to speed up the process.

The further out into the sticks you go, the more likely it is that there's no permanent orbital presence (not one that can accommodate bulk cargo and starship moorings, anyway), but you might find additional lighters whose services you can lease. Ultimately, though, sooner or later you find a world with no orbital transhipment capability other than what you bring with you.

And Rogue Traders tend to operate a looooong way out in the sticks.

On a sidenote, the Imperial Guard probably needs a lot less supplies than a modern military force -- they don't have the huge logistics section that makes up a considerable portion of a 21st century army to begin with, they often utilise local resources in terms of manpower and nourishment, their vehicles can burn all sorts of indigenous materials, and las weapons can be recharged even from solar energy, significantly cutting down ammunition needs.

If it were otherwise, the Imperial Guard probably couldn't function as well as it still does, given how unreliable warp travel can sometimes be. There's still demand for spare parts and heavy bolter and cannon shells, but still, this represents a huge saving on cargo space.

It's hard to judge how rapidly they'd go through spare parts, but given how old some weapons and vehicles get, one assumes the mechanicus builds to last, and that assuming stuff was built to the standard guard equipment is supposed to be* things which aren't explicitly 'broken' tend not to wear out.

* as opposed to what they actually get supplied with when someone wants to save resources or time and takes shortcuts.

given how old some weapons and vehicles get, one assumes the mechanicus builds to last

Which comes back to the Standard Templace Constructs and how their blueprints specifically prioritised ruggedness for human frontier colonists, such as with the RH1-N0 Tracked Exploration Vehicle...

Thus, the pieces fall into place.

I am not sure about the 'local supplies go a long way' aspect of an Imperial Guard campaign. At least, certainly not during intensive fighting. A modern army consumes enormous quantities of munition, POL (Petrol, Oil and Lubricants) and spare parts and the Imperial Guard won't be an exception. Furthermore, the sheer size of Imperial Armies precludes trusting on local resources.

For size does matter. Most Warhammer fluff is written for the classic tabletop wargame fought at platoon to company scale. Great fun, no doubt about that, but if we are talking about real war units of this size hardly count for a drop in the ocean, barring some special operations like the German assault on Eben Emael. The largest scale of war we have known so far is continental (yes, we have known world wars but the actual fighting took place on a smaller scale) and devoured divisions: think Barbarossa, Stalingrad and Kursk. Imperial mobilization goes at least as far as the USSR during WW II and Imperial forces fight their battles on a truly planetary level, with weapons far exceeding the destructive power of those used on the Eastern Front. Imperial warfighting will devour army corps and armies.

There is no way such battles can be supplied by using local resources. An army will strip an area bare of food in no time (and has done so since antiquity). Setting up a production chain of munition, spare parts and POL would use valuable lifting capability from orbit to planet that would first of all be used to get more troops down and would take time - and time is probably the most precious commodity in battle. It is nice that the lasguns of the Imperial Guard can be recharged by sun or even by throwing the battery pack in a fire. But individual weapons only use a minimal amount of the ammunition expended by a modern force. Firepower is provided by the crew served weapons and most of all by that god of war and death, artillery. The weapon of choice of the Imperial Guard.

So I cannot see any large invasion or intensive battle happening without a vast logistic tail, stretching at least back to the cavernous holds of ships in orbit and in all probability supported by a continual shuttle service from logistic bases in Imperial territory. Things might change once we proceed from intensive fighting to 'pacification' and the like. In that case time will be less of an issue and the consumption rate of supplies will become far less. In such cases it makes great sense to use as many local resources as possible, no doubt about that. Much fighting will in each case be 'pacification' or 'tydying up'. A rebellious planet might be conquered in a few months (and this would be a very fast operation) but to stamp out any trace of revolt will take years.

It means very little, I grant, but it amuses me that you mentioned "as in the tabletop" (paraphrasing), when, for the most part, in that very game , the days of the huge, horde armies of the Imperial Guard are really no more. If you look at almost any list, these days, it's nothing but small squads of melta-vets, maybe with a Chimera to each 10-man squad, maybe seconded to a Valkyrie, instead. These are often supported by a few Leman Russ tanks, and led by a Lord Commissar, or a bare-bones Command Squad.

When I got into 40k, back in 2003, one of the things I liked about the IG was their Zap Brannigan-esque tactics. "I'll throw wave after wave of my own men at them!", and if you look in Only War: Hammer of the Emperor, p.62, the nice quote text for the Commander will try to keep this feeling alive, but I've honestly seen lists, these days, where the model counts of Guard, even when facing Space Marines, or even ELDAR!, can be about balanced; the game has gotten too spendy to support buying boxes of Guardsmen, to make multiple 30-man blobs, who still die when looked at funny, and cost way too much to paint, just to die in droves, each game. When I was new, the game allowed for it, but now, even their codex seems to expect you will field 2-3 squads of just Veterans, probably with meltas, and hope cover will allow them to hold objectives. As I said, this is entirely pointless, but even the game doesn't assume you'll play Guard like Nids, or Orks, anymore, and those two forces are sort of poo, at the moment, as I understand it, so they don't sell so hot, anyway.

As for stuff that matters , this is also why Guardsmen often use lasguns; no ammo consumption, if you can keep them in power packs, or they can keep those packs charged. Certainly food is an issue, but compared to what America feeds its fighting men, the Guard are eating cardboard, toothpaste, and the bits of fallen comrades. Guardsmen eat masty ration bars made of whatever they can be fed, be it rotten animals, corpse starch, or lots of terrible things. Plus, once they have space superiority, it isn't so hard to have what I'll equivalate to drop pods rocket down to the ground, from orbit, in areas held secure against attacks, and just keep the bulk up there, safe from looters, and easy to take with if they have to abandon the planet, and Guardsmen, during the exercise. I can wholly see a ship, preferably a cruiser, but smaller works, with the component that deploys a temple (counts as a barracks), some drop pod bays, or a landing bay for shuttles, and maybe some good macros, and MAYBE a bombardment cannon, in the prow, showing up, decimating a location, dropping their compliment of Guard, with a base, and staying above, to support, with bird's eye view, more bombardments, and occasionally "parachuting" in more supplies, otherwise kept safe in the ship, above. Otherwise, parts of the Guard would have to steal resources, as they capture enemy fortifications, to support themselves, as there is little way for their allies to do this, especially if I give the Navy component, above, too much credit to actually stick around. Whatt hey DO bring with them they probably do in stockpiles, and corpse starch probably keeps for a long time, anyway.

Due to this, many battles in 40k are also over within weeks or even days, with the Third War of Armageddon one of the very few examples expected to go on for years -- and this is partly due to Imperial leadership deliberately prolonging the fighting to lure the Orks in from across the segmentum and keep them contained on this one world.

Where's your reference for that? Not to start a lore debate, but I am fairly certain the Imperium would rather end the War of Armageddon quickly rather than being forced to watch as worlds fall because of the massive amount of manpower needed to contain the Orcish hordes. Not to mention the fact that Ghazghull long since left Armageddon and has gone on to create at least another self-perpetuating WAAAAAGH! area in the form of the Octavian War.

I guess it comes down to interpretation. From the fluff I've read, planetary invasions are actually fairly limited affairs, simply because the use of orbital weaponry makes open concentrations of hostiles subject to easy elimination. You don't even have to land any troops if you want to take out an army; "boots on the ground" is really only done for preserving what you want to keep, such as critical industrial centers. The invading army's aerial superiority will also disable the enemy's ability to move armies from the other side of the planet to where the attacker is focusing their strike.

What fluff are you referring to? In the published campaign books by Forge World all examples of planetary invasion, those being among others the Taros Campaign, the Siege of Vraks and the Fall of Orpheus, the wars are described as pretty grand affairs spanning years at least. Orbital bombardment is a finicky thing, especially considering the enemy is usually very well-entrenched in a planetary invasion scenario and any planet worthy of being subjected to an actual invasion fleet has anti-orbital defenses that need to be destroyed by ground troops.

I'm also of the opinion that the infantryman remains the Imperium's most important unit. Yes, tanks or artillery may be more crucial in modern times, but we are talking about 40k, where lives are thrown away much more casually, and the fluff abounds with the Imperial Guard solving a problem simply by throwing ever more men at it.

I would agree with you, were it not for the fact that artillery plays such a massive role in all Imperial Guard lore, to the point where most wars are described as WW1-esque trench warfare as seen in the Spinward Front, the Siege of Vraks and the Doom of Mymeara among many others.

A man after my own heart, van Reibeeck. No, wagon trains are not an answer, they weren't even in ancient times when swords and spears didn't need to be reloaded. Hannibal took elephants over the Alps, but not a pack train. Xerxes' defeat at Salamis meant there'd only be 50K Persians at Plataea instead of 180K (yes these are both arguable figures, but the point stands). Gunpowder only made things worse. Something besides food was expendible. Napoleon marched all over tilled Europe with little or no wagons but when he entered Russia that ploy failed miserably. 2 horses pulling a wagon eat the entire wagon load's weight in wet fodder in less than 3 days. Wagon trains are tied to depots and those must be stocked ahead of time, and filled to bursting (van Creveld and Lynn; I won't cite books and pages here). Military historians have argued the foraging question to death. I recommend Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton for those who want the unadulterated version, or Feeding Mars, for those who prefer shorter essays.

Limited invasions don't tend to work well, even when the invader has incredible advantages in technology and firepower. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan demonstrate this quite well, and Africa's numerous conflicts only underline the obvious. Limited invasions turn into wars of occupation, and technology doesn't outweigh the birth rate. And the more weight to firepower, the more gets wasted. I don't remember exact numbers, but in WWII it took about 50K bullets to account for a single enemy casualty (not including shells, bombs, etc.); in Vietnam about 75K, and in Afghanistan about 150K, and the latter were bullets that were flown in or trucked over mountains. Lasguns have a real advantage here but still require a power source (that campfire thing only works once). And artillery shells are even worse, 40 or so to a ton, more with packing weight, and those aren't Earthshakers. Infantry without artillery support is called Light Infantry.

Now I'll grant you that formations need to be dispersed in the face of orbital bombardment. This just means that a strike force with orbital supremacy can go anywhere it wants. It might still have to fight when it gets there and preliminary orbital strikes tend to create lots of cover. I foresee difficulties.

I know we like to keep our wars in the game short and sweet; it provides nice plot points, but that doesn't fit with warfare as we currently know it.

Contrary to what most films (and Warhammer tabletop) would like to make us believe, individual weapons are only responsible for a small part of the casualties in a real modern war. Most casualties are caused by artillery, directly followed by crew served weapons. To me, these are the core of the Imperial Guard. For let's be honest, why fight Tyrannids with a lasgun if you can obliterate them with a corps level time on target? Warhammer40K might paint a dystopian future, but the Imperial Guard should at least have WW II level capabilities.

Of course, firepower, both ground based or space- and airborne doesn't solve everything. Try to conquer that rebellious Hive City of 6 billion souls with firepower. Or worse, pacify this Hive City with firepower after it has been taken in a long and bloody fight. The first should take at least weeks, but more probably months and years. The second should take years to decades. War is a nasty business and quick fixes seldom work.

I consider these details important because I try to maximize the suspension of disbelief by trying to approach 'realism' as closely as possible. Fluff supports, but should be logical. Which, I admit, starts to limit the role of Space Marines. If they appear in one of my wars, they appear in an airmobile strike guise comparable to the German use of their heavy tank battalions during WW II: small units with vast power, capable of turning the tables on the Schwerpunkt. But conquering a whole developed planet with a couple or hundred men....no way.

I believe the USSBS (United States Strategic Bombing Survey, which btw considered many aspects of WWII besides strategic bombing) placed total casualties by artillery around 25-26%, considerably higher than any other weapons category causing casualties. Yes, artillery is the big killer, too. And yes, the Imperial Guard is modelled directly after this. They are the front line that holds the enemy in place while the firepower is delivered, and directs that massive firepower from the rear.

And yes, the very notion of taking a hive city beggars the imagination. Stalingrad swallowed entire divisions for breakfast, and that was a city of less than a million before the war (IIRC). Imagine one of today's great cities of 25 million people with its skyscrapers laying on their sides and their squatter settlements a stain of sewage on a mountainside...no roads, no infrastructure, just a concrete jungle filled with desperate and deadly inhabitants. Now multiply that by 40 or even 400. The scale is truly staggering, much like the scale of the rest of 40k.

I do think the Space Marines still have a niche role to fill, though. The Imperial Fists are anachronisms (sorry Fist fans, but they are silly), but war in space is where Space Marines excel. Whether boarding space stations, taking out satellites that generate solar power, sabotaging a defensive installation on a moon, or any other numerous limited, though strategic missions, the Space Marines would be the masters of this type of warfare. But 100 guys in cruiser conquering a planet? Bah. That's only in the comic books.

I ran into this problem GMing a Trader Militant with a penchant for empire-building. I found the RAW landers to be woefully inadequate when it came to mass-landing troops and, probably more importantly, their supplies. The first drop, I forced him to combat-drop an entire regiment with 20 guncutters, 40 arvus lighters and 10 halo barges. He chose to brave the enemy AAA batteries. It did not work well, but that was what he got for forgetting to raise this question sooner. He resorted to piracy to recover his lost atmospheric landers and managed to return in time to save the company-ish size group of survivors (now severely ptsd but extremely good at killing things and staying alive) from becoming xenos-chaos slaves. The second drop was in modified guncutters, as they are pretty much the only decent void capable armed transport. After troop recovery and a little vindictive irraditation of the atmosphere with reactor waste, the first order of business was finding an AdMech shipyard to demand a series of militarized landers, ranging in size from 30-40 men with roughly 4 days of supplies to something capable of hot-dropping a battalion and serving as a bunker until permanent facilities could be built, along with a cargo lander capable of moving regiment-level tonnage. I called an end to the session and scoured the RAW, homebrew, and fluff.

IG fluff mentions a variety of landers, and I quickly found myself shoehorning what I had read into a homebrew stat sheet. Even the front cover of the last edition IG codex has a very large lander featured in the background, with entire units of men disembarking from ramps while what looks like artillery and heavy bolters provide cover fire from the ship itself. While I was glad for the free hand in making ships, I found myself irritated that RAW hadn't addressed this issue SOMEWHERE. Settled on a handful of military landers, with varying grades of hardware depending on how much you wanted to pay for them. The civilian lander I envisioned as the largest version of container ship currently in use, multiplied by seven to form a hexagon with a core. With a rough hull volume, I quadrupled the volume given over to engines on a modern cargo ship (it is harder to escape a gravity well than it is to cruise on the ocean, after all) and arrived at something like 80k TEU. This amount of material, while certainly a feat of organization to unload efficiently, could feasibly supply the Trader's reinforced mechanized heavy infantry regiment (4400 troops with mobile artillery, chimeras [No astra militarium update in my universe! IG labels on all their new toys, though...]for every squad and Elysian vehicles for the scout elements) with enough war material to fight at maximum intensity for at least several weeks, allowing capture of, for example, a single city of 100,000 without resupply of ammo for a month, and food for three months. Given the bloodiness of 40k, I doubt the men would last that long.

My RT accepted the (slightly outrageous) price tag I slapped on my creations and then got a 3 on his acquisition and a 7 on his final round of commerce checks after passing all the others. I decided that substandard workmanship was the reason for the excellent price and large quantity available on hand when the AdMech negotiator I had drawn up as an NPC secretly passed his scrutiny and deceive checks. The next planetary invasion was something more akin to the (horrible adaptation of the novel ) Starship Troopers movie, with dozens of 40-man landers punching through the atmosphere and touching down just out of range of enemy fire for exactly as long as it took the midshipman at the door to throw the last guy out and close the hatch. Second-wave landers (roughly 10k TEU) followed shortly, with garage crew driving the vehicles out to their squads and setting up temporary strongpoints while the 10k TEU "medium" landers continued to shuttle back and forth with more vehicles and support personnel/war material. Used a 2k TEU lander as a puddle jumper later in the campaign, supplying locally conscripted troops in mountainous areas.

There has only been cause to use the 80k TEU lander once, while battling orks that threatened a prize recruiting planet of my RT. Normally used for target practice, the local Ork polulation decided they didn't like 'actin' like squigs' and to 'git up dere and ****** dat import'nt humies dakka and flyin' kan' (and hat) while the RT was reviewing his newest battalion of hardasses. Dropped 80% of his flagship's armsmen, the battalion of almost-space-marine House Guard, his heavy mobile regiment, and 10,000 nameless serfs from the bowels of his ship onto the surface to form a resistance around the 80k lander and two dozen other landers of various sizes. The RT also detatched cargo containers of supplies in orbit for later retrieval. A cumulative ten degrees of success on the various f.lore and tech rolls and the portable void shield emplacements are wired into the huge lander and force the orks into a protracted siege. At WW1 consumption rates, they were halfway through their ammo by the time the first scout ship made it back to them six weeks later (escort launch bays filled with heavily modified guncutters in a sword works pretty well as a non-astartes rapid reaction craft, it turns out) and could have held out at least a few more weeks before things got truly desperate.

Clearly, when the scale of a conflict increases, so must the scale of the cargo transports. I find it hard to believe that, at no point, someone at FFG pointed out that there was a need for supply landers, even in BFK. Even being deliberately vague about the sizes of space values makes it harder for players and GMs to play the game more deeply than just making a few rolls and calling it good. The simple question of "How long will it take to load my ship with the xyz we just got?" becomes something that we are forced to resort to guesswork to answer. I would really like to see FFG throw the RT community a supplement, even a crappy web release to help settle a few of the longer-running issues with the logistical angle of RT. I can deal with regiments equaling combat strength, be it four thousand men with non-astartes bolters or a hundred thousand with swords, but that is something I would like to do more than hope I am making a correct assumption on. I can look at various ship stats to calculate how long it would take someone to sprint from the armored prow of the Overlord to the aft engine baffle observation gallery, but I cannot tell how many oranges fit in one unit of cargo space? The thought makes me wonder if the trade angle of Rogue Trader was ever really considered, or if they assumed everyone was just going to go around shooting people in the face for what they had in their pocket/safe/gun room right from the start...

Artillery inflicted about 50% of German army casualties on the Eastern Front and a staggering 70% to 80% on the Western Front during WW II. The trend towards lower percentages in more recent wars is not a sign of a lessening of artillery firepower (think about the Steel Rain of an MLRS system or Multiple Round Simultaneous Impact Time on Target of classical tube artillery), but should be considered a sign of the more limited intensity of recent wars.

This means that any advanced army finding itself in protracted high intensity fighting will have a voracious appetite for artillery munition, with the Imperial Guard exceeding most others. For a normal human isn't that good a soldier when compared to Eldar/Ork/Tyrannids/Necrons/you name it. But the Imperium has the industrial basis to churn out endless amount of cannon and ammunition and humans are **** good in using those.

To me, the closest real world example of the Imperial Guard is the Soviet Army of WW II (including its commissars and shtraf battalions): almost endless amounts of rifle divisions to hold the line (which were used till depletion, taken out of the line and refilled, repeat as needed), strong tank and mechanised forces as the basis of maneuver and gargantuan amounts of artillery, all of this deployed in fronts and armies. In normal Warhammer tabletop battles this is hard to simulate, for these are platoon to company fights. Epic approaches it better and showcases the dependence of the Imperial Guard on artillery firepower to do the real damage.

Errant Knight: I fully follow you on Space Marines. They obviously excel in operations in the void and considering their rarity and the impossibility of training quick replacements, a sane commander will try to limit their use to these targets. If they are used in the great flesh grinder of a planetary campaign, only highly important targets would warrant their use. Loose an Imperial Guard Infantry Division? You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Loose a Space Marine company? Shtrafbat for the responsible commander!

Van Reibeeck, the numbers you cited are somewhat faulty. I believe they come from Citizen Soldiers , and IIRC the total sum is over 100% to due to crossovers. IIRC (again, I'm working here without handy references) Ambrose got his numbers from field hospital records. All casualties that weren't accounted for were considered artillery deaths since the large calibres made it unlikely that a corpse would be located. But consider the details. Is a mortar an artillery piece or a crew-served weapon? In the USSBS these are differentiated with far more categories. Artillery and assault guns are not lumped together simply because they use the same weapon...they are employed differently (i.e. indirect fire vs. direct fire). Those mortars requiring transport (e.g. 122mm) were considered artillery, while those that were man-portable (e.g. 60mm) were considered crew-served. Additionally, aerial bombs were classified in the same category as artillery shells. To top it off, field hospital records are more indicative of which weapons wounded without killing. The largest percentage of those that made it to the field hospital and died shortly afterwards were victims of small arms fire.

I think the USSBS is a better source for determining the efficacy of various arms. After all, the USSBS was an attempt to find out what did work and what did not work in the case of another war's occurance. Mind you, none of this ameliorates artillery as the big killer. I've just pointed out that your numbers might be inflated. And yes, the trend toward artillery inflicting lower casualty rates is due directly to the decrease in battlefield population density. And, this is contrary to what we see in the 40K 'verse where warfare is WWII taken to a planetary scale, with even more deadly weapons, and duplicated across thousands of planets simultaneously. If anything, 40K warfare would have an increased percentage of artillery casualties (which brings up the question of what category to place orbital bombardment in). Mind you, this assumes the IG's enemy has artillery of the type we are discussing. Tau, Necron, and Eldar seem to prefer direct fire weapons for some reason.

I do agree that the Soviet army is the best example of the IG, with its NKVD regiments (regiments of commisars!) and shtrafbats. I can easily see the IG liquoring up its troops for an attack on a fortified position. [Commissar] "Comrades, we cannot arm all of you with lasguns for this fight, so when the man in your squad that has a lasgun falls you are to throw down your wooden replica and pick up that lasgun and continue the advance." WWII tales have some very surreal qualities. Consider battalions of liquored-up IG advancing across open steppes with their arms linked, singing, not a weapon among them. Or, what about some IG in the desert that formed square with their heavy weapons in the corners? Yes, I'd expect to see some silliness in the IG, but silliness that has real-world examples.

Warhammer tabletop is a game for entertainment and competition. It should be discounted by anyone attempting to consider the "reality" of 40K warfare. Pinning someone in place with your IG weshwesh just to obliterate them with artillery that isn't even on the tabletop might be fun for the IG player, but not for his/her opponents. Even Epic falls a bit flat. It increases the scale but doesn't get the flavor of an actual planetary landing, let alone an assault on a hive. Then again, that's just not something that's easily simulated on a tabletop with miniatures.

In normal Warhammer tabletop battles this is hard to simulate, for these are platoon to company fights. Epic approaches it better and showcases the dependence of the Imperial Guard on artillery firepower to do the real damage..

in tabletop 40k, the closest parallel is the Renegades & Heretics list - the Vraks Renegade Militia do a good job of duplicating either WWII Red Army, or WWI.....well, anyone , really.

Their two unique detachments are:

• "The Purge" - which combined with one of their warlord options allows you to field a detachment with essentially unlimited quantities of medium and heavy field artillery, leaving "chemical weapons" dangerous terrain markers
• "The Unending Horde" - which requires A minimum of three platoons of two squads of twenty men each - all markedly worse in a fight than a 'proper' Imperial Guardsman (frag grenades, flak armour and BS3 are all 'optional upgrades') - but when wiped out, the unit 'respawns' in ongoing reserve on a 2+, can enter by outflank, and cover saves from one unit blocking line of sight to a second improves to a 3+

Errant Knight: I fully follow you on Space Marines. They obviously excel in operations in the void and considering their rarity and the impossibility of training quick replacements, a sane commander will try to limit their use to these targets. If they are used in the great flesh grinder of a planetary campaign, only highly important targets would warrant their use. Loose an Imperial Guard Infantry Division? You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Loose a Space Marine company? Shtrafbat for the responsible commander!

Very much so. There are several documented occasions where an Astartes Captain has either been sent on or volunteered to go on a one-man penitant crusade after losing most of (not even all of) a company (Terror Tigers - Inquisitor, Imperial Fists - Sons of Dorn, Blood Angels - Bloodquest).

An Astartes is a match for ten times or more his number of troops. But that still only means a chapter's 'field force' of four battle companies is an equivalent of a couple of guard regiments in a standard 'fight on the line'. They're still good, but only normally do that sort of thing as a last resort. Their main advantage is their mobility - they are one of the only forces in the imperium whose company-level formations are assigned organic orbital and interstellar transport, making them incredibly fast to respond, and able to get in and out faster than 'normal' troops can respond. Their classic missions in a 'normal' war are 'orbital drop, murder the command post, high-tail-it out of there'.

Siege of Vraks is (again) very good inspiration: The Astartes don't do the bulk of the fighting but fight several key battles:

• taking the breach in the fortress curtain walls (a Nap-of-the-earth thunderhawk flight to drop an assault squad into the breach, who in turn use a teleport homer to call in a terminator strike force, who hold the breach until a guard force can cross no-man's land and take it properly),
• taking out the vraks spaceport* (orbital drop of several squadrons of astartes tanks by lander, followed by an armoured spearhead assault from an unexpected direction, then recovery of same before reserves were brought up)
• Assaulting the main citadel gate. A bloody, near-suicidal charge into the teeth of defences....but whilst it's essenitally 'charge for the guns', when you're talking about small arms at close quarters, astartes can take that sort of fire whilst mundane humans can't. If they'd tried crossing the fields of fire of the big guns, they'd have been just as dead as the death korps assaults who tried the same things - astartes can badass their way through small-calibre firearms, not howitzer batteries.

* All right, this one turned out to be a trap, but the plan was sound and classic astartes tactics.

Hey, I don't want to hijack the thread and we've gone off the OP topic, so I've started a new thread.

Yep!

I actually found a little something in the old 40k Compendium:

"A regiment is supplied with weapons and other equipment at its foundation, and a regimental commander may request additional equipment from the Administratum for a particular task. However, since these requests can take some time to process and are by no means certain to be approved, many regiments will take over factories and workshops on the world to which they are assigned.

Uniforms are supplied at the foundation, but are not replaced thereafter; it is the responsibility of the regimental commander to arrange the supply of such items, and in an old-established regiment it is common for uniforms to vary from platoon to platoon. The basic pattern of the uniform will remain the same, as laid down by regimental regulations, but its colour and material will vary according to what is available at the time. Thus, for example, a regimental commander may requisition a batch of material from a factory on the regiment's posting world, and if only blue material is available, then the replacement uniforms will be blue."

Granted, it's not about food or ammo, but I could see the same principle to be applied elsewhere.

Where's your reference for that? Not to start a lore debate, but I am fairly certain the Imperium would rather end the War of Armageddon quickly rather than being forced to watch as worlds fall because of the massive amount of manpower needed to contain the Orcish hordes. Not to mention the fact that Ghazghull long since left Armageddon and has gone on to create at least another self-perpetuating WAAAAAGH! area in the form of the Octavian War.

You're right -- sort of. Armageddon is a lost cause, but the Imperium won't admit it. It would be more efficient to just pull everyone out and exterminatus the place, as the Imperium has done elsewhere, but that'd only mean the Orks scatter all over the place. This way, at least the threat can be concentrated, even if that means the Imperium has to throw in ever more men and materiel into the grinder. Regiments are cheaper than starships, after all.

"[...] The High Lords of Terra have a less prosaic view. The unification of so many Ork tribes has long been feared by the Imperium. The Armageddon War must continue - the sector cannot be allowed to collapse, lest a tide of green-skinned warriors comes to threaten even hallowed Terra itself. With over half of its industry in ruins and casualties in the billions, Armageddon needs more troops, armaments and ships if it is to hold back the vast pressure of the Ork menace from the heartland of the Imperium. Already, forces intended for the Tyrannic Wars on the Eastern Fringe have been diverted to Armageddon and a 10,000 light year recruitment zone has been established around the system. Every Imperial world within that zone has had its tithe of Imperial Guard regiments tripled and their industry turned over to armaments production.

Imperial analysts predict that the Ork Waaagh! on Armageddon cannot be maintained, that over a sustained campaign the Orks' supply lines will fall, that their losses cannot be replaced. Those who have fought Orks before are less certain, knowing as they do that resilience and improvisation are the Orks' greatest strengths. All agree, however, that humanity's resolution cannot be dimmed and that human flesh and blood will be the instruments of decision on Armageddon, not tanks and guns.

Armageddon remains a planet at war, a permanent battle zone which promises to remain for decades to come."

-- White Dwarf #251

What fluff are you referring to? In the published campaign books by Forge World all examples of planetary invasion, those being among others the Taros Campaign, the Siege of Vraks and the Fall of Orpheus, the wars are described as pretty grand affairs spanning years at least. Orbital bombardment is a finicky thing, especially considering the enemy is usually very well-entrenched in a planetary invasion scenario and any planet worthy of being subjected to an actual invasion fleet has anti-orbital defenses that need to be destroyed by ground troops.

Codex Planetstrike:

It is my understanding that the normal method is not to go through copious amounts of chargepacks (they wouldn't need to be rechargeable if this were intended), but rather to hook up spent chargepacks to a generator in the regiment's encampment.

As to where those generators pull their power from could be anyone's guess. I'd expect either solar panels, or a fuel converter similar to the engines of the Leman Russ MBT, which can transform anything into energy, from promethium to wood to clothes, all sourced locally.

If the tanks have this sort of equipment, it says a lot about the Guard's MO, I think.

Yeah, I think this quote from Epic 40k and GW's d100 Inquisitor game really encapsulates it well:

"The Space Marines are the Imperium's elite fighting troops, a core of highly mobile shock troops trained to fight on land and in space. On the battlefield they are expected to take part in the most dangerous and important attacks, to hold their positions no matter how hopeless their situation. Space Marines are entrusted with all sorts of perilous missions, such as lightning raids behind enemy lines, infiltration attacks to capture vital positions, and tunnel fights in enemy held cities.

They also undertake long voyages of planetary exploration and conquest on behalf of the Imperium, earmarking planets which are too well defended so that they can be attacked later with the support of the Imperial Guard."

In short, they're the scalpel; if you want the hammer, talk to the Guard.

It really is too bad that not more of the current "Games Workshop Creative Team" writers take the time to read books like Planetstrike or the Siege of Vraks. Instead we get the idiocy that is the Mont'Ka Warzone Damocles book with its quote:

Then the blackness of space split open. Out came leviathan cathedral-topped warships - an entire Imperial armada in all its might and grandeur. Probe-station 7221:488 whirred, all its instruments working at maximum function. The probe scanned the fleet - a colossal feat, for the flagship-pattern craft alone offered a wealth of data and it was but one ship of hundreds, and not even the largest. The scanner-probes identified massive battleships, smaller escort craft and truly vast transport vessels filling the empty void that had been empty just moments before.

I mean sure, I know the Imperial Guard need big supply lines but hundreds of ships? Really GW, that's what we're going with now? Not to mention the fact that this world of Mu'gulath Bay is apparently a young colony not even a century old and already has orbital defences that put fear into the heart of the Imperial Admiral. The so-called planetary invasion that follows is also little more than a joke, which just goes to show how little the writers care about this vital part of the lore.

The imperial fleet does not perform anything but the shortest of bombardments, instead relying on a mass landing in some polluted wasteland outside the main city just to march towards it without any artillery or orbital support and taking constant fire by the unharassed Tau forces.

Wow, that does sound bad.

I have a feeling the studio has had a high turnover rate over the past decade; "new blood" may result in some new way of looking at and writing about things, or may even change studio consensus on fluff that used to be a fairly established thing in the past. I don't really understand why they had to change from there being just one Storm Trooper regiment to what seems like hundreds or more, though I have to admit that I do like some of the new Schola Progenium fluff.

Just another case of different interpretations, I suppose. It's why I've started considering to "lock down" my headcanon at about 5th edition or so.

Well, I look at support arms in 40k like they really used to be looked at in Battletech. They were never mentioned and when playing campaigns only those of us who care about them were prepared.

And the Landing Craft, well if they are only fluff, well no one notices what we have doesn't work like we claim. and the IG has theses for landng combat troops

and when you are done you need to look at this https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/107487-a-few-ship-related-questions/?p=1103559

The Devourer is nice, but it lacks flexability. Any force that wishes to be able to apply its power effectively needs a range of transports. Look at the spread of aerial vehicles the U.S. military uses to deploy troops, vehicles and supplies and compare that to what the IG brings to the table, and it soon becomes obvious that there are some holes in their lift capabilities.