Blood Pact said:

Ok, so the novels arn't canon, White Dwarf isn't canon, BFG isn't canon, and the various codexes arn't canon. What does that leave, exactly?

By the way:

Nope, no huge windows here, folks, and certainly not rows of portals. (Obviously the references to them in the Light of Terra section of Lure of the Expanse were mistaken)

I'll point out that commisars don't have any authority at all over civilians unless martial law is declared. (This has been stated in several novels, granted..)

What is flat out stated is that not every ship has commisars on board. And you tap dance around the sheer number of ships required far outstripping what is supposedly present.

There are 'only' 200 Inquisitors in the Calixis Sector (number from FFG, unless you feel that's not canon either). How much time do you really think they spend watching over YOU among the uncounted trillions? Considering how much heresy goes on ON THEIR DOORSTEP at Scintilla, and the number of large, highly skilled, heretical organisations in Calixis, I would not say that they are able to watch everyone at every moment.

The whole reason that heresy exists is that the Inquisition cannot be everywhere. Heck, if they were in a strong position, would Quaddis or Malfi or any other 'den of scum and villiany' (and heresy) still be standing?

And, by the way, there is a simple way to get both the location of the warp gate and it's destination: All those kroot in the Expanse came from someplace, right?

BaronIveagh said:

Maybe they imported some Inquisitors dedicated to just watch over that?

Anyway this ain't going nowhere.

Alex

Thank you Blood Pact for addressing me and in doing so, addressing your view on things so that I could see your view laid out in its entirety.

As I said in the post you replied to this boils down to a difference of opinion on the level of control over information in the Imperium of Man. And as I said even the authors who pen the setting we enjoy do not uniformly agree on these same ideas; some showing the Imperium as all powerful, controlling and with a secure Iron Grip; others showing it as a place where to those with the ability to find it, information is available, and where that Iron Grip is weakening as the ages pass and things grow more dire.

Also there is a lack of consensus on the narrative as you pointed out. But that is what we all do, adhere to the way we see/envision/understand the narrative.

Cheers for the reply mate, and I retract anything I said about rudeness of character; I too know a hot button issue can do just that, make one say something that they might otherwise not. Canon to many of us can be a hot button issue as we all see it through different filters (novels we favor, authors we like or dislike, codexes we prefer, exposure to the White Dwarf publication or not....) However I still thought the crass usage of the language was not necessarily called for.

Alexis

*smiles*

I'll point out that commisars don't have any authority at all over civilians unless martial law is declared. (This has been stated in several novels, granted..)

What is flat out stated is that not every ship has commisars on board. And you tap dance around the sheer number of ships required far outstripping what is supposedly present.

Um... I daresay that every ship drafted into military service will have a naval Commissar aboard who is quite authorized and willing to do everything it takes to keep a little secret.

There are 'only' 200 Inquisitors in the Calixis Sector (number from FFG, unless you feel that's not canon either). How much time do you really think they spend watching over YOU among the uncounted trillions? Considering how much heresy goes on ON THEIR DOORSTEP at Scintilla, and the number of large, highly skilled, heretical organisations in Calixis, I would not say that they are able to watch everyone at every moment.

Who's talking about the uncounted trillions? I thought this thread was about a high-priority military crusade that hinges on the keeping of a single secret. Smuggling a few acolyte cells or just sleeper agents onto the ships should be quite doable.

2nd issue first: He was talking about having agents already in place on the ships for years in advance, not slipping them in after the crusade starts. His assumption implied that the Inquisition was all seeing, and all knowing, and that people had thier covertly inserted inquisitorial minders on them at all times. This is an obvious impossibility, given how frequently planetary govenors, admirals, and other imperial bodies, seem to go rogue. Frequently the first sign that there is a problem is that the planet fails to send it's tithe or the ship opens fire on it's comrades.

On your first point: The problem there is scale. Without a source of supplies on the Jericho reach side, you're looking at thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of ships to maintain the forces on the other side. More, if you're relaying supplies to a depot on this side and then taking them from the depot here to the other side of the gate. While the Imperium is huge, there's still a finite number of navy commissars and Inquisitorial agents.

Let's say that, as Millandson suggested over in the RT forum that there are approx 2500 ships in Battlefleet Calixis. Now, each of those commissars has taken years to train, and is deployed from the schola every year, as assigned.

Suddenly we need, using the earlier numbers for deploying a huge force in a year, 10 times that many, on top of the ones we already have. To make a supply strain comparison, it would be as if 20,000 Imperial Guard regiments had been raised all at once in the same place. To place just one agent on each ship would mean that each Inquisitor in the Calixis Sector has 100 acolytes, minimum, devoted to just this. Throw in how fractional and backstabbing the Inquisition can be, they would probably be spending as much time spying on each other as the crews they are supposed to be watching.

BaronIveagh said:

Only a hazy memory since it's been a while since I looked at the materials, but wasn't Battlefleet Gothic somewhere in the realm of 80 ships? Probably just misremembering it, though.

Kage

See, this is the monstrously frustrating bit, you focus on inane minutia, and just flat out ignore the actual concrete bits of my arguement.

For example the two pictures you posted. One of those is obviously from the bridge, which is of course going to have windows. While in the second picture, most of those look a lot more like running lights than windows, so my point stands, windows are going to be restricted to the areas of the ship where the important people are. The important people who are either in on the secret, or being watched.

About Commissars, are you trying to say that there's going to be some sort of shortage of them? No wait, you're ignoring the fact that the ones taking men and materials to the Calixis-side depots don't really need any security measures at all, because all they're doing is taking X to depot Y, repeatedly. As I and others have said, the Imperium is not a bumping incompetant, they're not going to be sending one ship the whole **** way, from the origin of the cargo, all the way to the final destination of it.

Now as for troop transports, they're not coming back, typically. Once some soldiers are done in one warzone, they're going to be moved to another. Or a ship, once it unloads the Guardsmen it's carrying, will be retasked to transport another group of Guardsmen. Or do you think they're sending a new ship in to the Jericho Reach for every **** paperclip that has to be transported?

While I might have overestimated the number of acolytes involved (and not too much, considering some Inquisitors have veritable armies of them), I again remind you that they don't need to watch everyone, just those who are the greatest risk, which are those who atr travelling back and forth through the gate, who would be a relative minory of the people actually involved in the Crusade.

Also, I didn't mention White Dwarf or BSG, I'll thankyou very much for putting words in my mouth.

Let's say that, as Millandson suggested over in the RT forum that there are approx 2500 ships in Battlefleet Calixis. Now, each of those commissars has taken years to train, and is deployed from the schola every year, as assigned.

Suddenly we need, using the earlier numbers for deploying a huge force in a year, 10 times that many, on top of the ones we already have. To make a supply strain comparison, it would be as if 20,000 Imperial Guard regiments had been raised all at once in the same place. To place just one agent on each ship would mean that each Inquisitor in the Calixis Sector has 100 acolytes, minimum, devoted to just this. Throw in how fractional and backstabbing the Inquisition can be, they would probably be spending as much time spying on each other as the crews they are supposed to be watching.

Then forget the naval Commissars. The drafted vessels are pretty much all troop transports - remembering The Traitor's Hand, more regiments than not seem to have a Commissar attached at regiment level. That's your overseer right there.

Kage2020 said:

I think the 80 count was a rough number for the ships of the line; cruisers (light, battle, grand, heavy and regular) and battleships, and didn't include escorts, q-ships and the various support craft. Once all support craft are accounted for, the numbers likely become much more grand. There could be 600+ warships with 3-4 times that number in support craft in a sector fleet when you get right down to the number crunching.

-=Brother Praetus=-

The 80 count was, IIRC actually battleships, battlecrusiers, cruisers and grand cruisers, since light cruisers arn't used as ships of the line in IN but rahter as long range patrol ships. However, the Bastion fleets are also stated to be much larger then that (Scarus among them) and contain the Reserve fleets of mothballed battleships, etc. (Cadia had something like 5,000 ships IIRC Scarus would probably be similar.

And, : No, the supplies for the men would probably make up the bulk of it. The problem is that they're feeding.... according to the map, seven fortress worlds, and do not have a single agriworld or forge world in use. (The one they have is currently forbidden according to the map) Without a secure and steady line of supply bringing food and material in, those worlds are done.

And, as far as ships bringing supplies to a central depot and then dropping them off to be picked up? That doesn't halve the number, that doubles it. You still have 20,000 odd ships ferrying goods and troops back and forth. Mostly supplies. Remember, you're going to need billions of liters of fuel alone, for example.

Look at it this way: In the build up for D-day, over 1,600,000 tons of supplies were gathered to put 160,000 men on the beach. and that was just for the initial landings and push inland.

The only way to keep a system like that working is to create a 'Red Ball Express' style system where ships form a continous conveyor of supplies.

(Yes, running lights, shaped like the windows in the bridge. That seems a bit... odd. And it still doesn't address the rows of glowing portholes mentioned in Lure of the Expanse))

And, also, again, why not just ask the kroot how they got there? Pech is on the other side of the galaxy, after all, and I doubt that they snuck all the way across the Imperium just to set up shop in the Calixis sector and Koronus Expanse.

Edit: reading is actually a great way to spread propaganda, another thing the Imperium likes. Heck, one of the items mentioned in the DH books is a leaflet round. If the public is composed of illiterates, what's the point of that?

And, as far as ships bringing supplies to a central depot and then dropping them off to be picked up? That doesn't halve the number, that doubles it. You still have 20,000 odd ships ferrying goods and troops back and forth. Mostly supplies. Remember, you're going to need billions of liters of fuel alone, for example.

It doubles the number only if you're trying to double the speed. Otherwise, it stays exactly the same.

And, also, again, why not just ask the kroot how they got there? Pech is on the other side of the galaxy, after all, and I doubt that they snuck all the way across the Imperium just to set up shop in the Calixis sector and Koronus Expanse.

While I'm less than sure, I believe it was specified that yes, they got there by normal means - being bounced around the galaxy as mercenaries and seekers of new and interesting genes.

Edit: reading is actually a great way to spread propaganda, another thing the Imperium likes. Heck, one of the items mentioned in the DH books is a leaflet round. If the public is composed of illiterates, what's the point of that?

Reaching those few that can read.

Finally, though, the solution of Blood Pact (I believe it was him) was actually pretty brilliant - with three units of ships, one before the gate, one through the gate and one beyond it, you can entirely limit the problem to the officer castes of the second group by just granting the ratings shore leave on the far side of the gate.

Cifer said:

...which is why the Navigators and Astropaths are all in on it, and are given many, many reasons by members of the Inquisition why they should not tell anyone else on the list of "need-to-know" people.

Otherwise, I agree with Cifer in his last post that Blood Pact's solution does, in fact, cut down the number of people who need to know drastically, and as such makes it a lot less likely for the secret to spill.

Cifer said:

.... Ok, if it takes 20,000 ships to move the men once, how does it not take 40,000 ships to move the men twice if they have to disembark and then reembark on different ships to maintain the same speed? Otherwise you end up with a bottle neck in your reenforcments (which is bad, even if you're the Imperium). Each time you have to stop and disembark everyone, you add another 20,000 ships to keep the chain of supply moving.

Never mind that the ships would also have to move tremendous amounts of other supplies. 20,000 is JUST THE MEN.. At the usual rate of consumption, assuming the average for supplies hasn't changed a lot, the crusade will consume something like 11,000,000,000,000 tones of supplies in weeks, maybe as long as three months if they are not activly engaging the enemy. (Probably vastly more supply tonnage, since Imperial equipment tends to be larger then what's used now. Consider this an extreme lowball)

On the leaflets: Leaflet rounds are to incite the enemy to surrender. If only a hand ful of people can read, it's likely the officers, and they're the first ones the Imperium would logically exicute. It's the average trooper that leaflet rounds target, in any propaganda scenario. Again, how does this make sense against an illiterate foe?

I'm not entirly sure on the kroot there either, I don't remember there being an explaination given. It seems like an awfully large number of them are in the expanse for them to have just 'shown up' (particularly if there are enough of them to justify them as player characters)

BaronIveagh said:

Keep it up Baron, you're saving me a lot of typing pointing out the blindingly obvious.

I think it's hilarious btw, that arguments based heavily upon canonical resources (novels, art from rpgs and the tt games, WD, etc) are being dismissed here as irrelevant , though only of course when they contradict the other sides belief that all (or the vast majority) of Imperials are utterly ignorant of anything at all, or the other canonical points that create problems - such as the inarguable fact that Imperial ships are always depicted with ranks of windows running down them - both external and often internal pics. I wish I could find my copy of BFG as that has black and white pics of crew areas of the ship, with deck crews working in front of wall sized windows. But that's non-canonical right? Because ... it just is.

Brilliant.

BaronIveagh said:

Okay, I really didn't think I needed to spell this out, but I guess I will. First of all, you and Adam need to stop making up numbers off the top of your head. 20,000 ships? An interstellar starship in 40K has a crew in the tens of thousands, at least, going by Rogue Trader, so it stands to reason that they can hold a few hundred thousand, maybe even a million or more, tonnes of cargo. But that's not the issue I wanted to address right now, as you and Adam seem to be lacking a basic understanding of how this logistical chain would work.

Breaking up the movement of men and materials does not multiply the number of ships needed, because those ships are individually travelling a shorter distance than they would be if they were travelling from the source all the way to the front. That is, a ship does not pick up its cargo at Point A in the Calixis/Scarus/Ixaniad sector, and carry it all the way to Point D in the Jericho Reach, which would be a very long journey. No, instead it makes a much shorter journey between the source of its cargo, Point A, and the supply depot near the Warp Gate, Point B. This is a much shorter journey on its own, a journey that is repeated as often as necessary, and one that should be able to be made several times in the amount of time it would take for that ship to instead travel all the way to Poind D. And from there, men and material are taken from the staging areas at Point B, and moved to Point C, on the other side of the gate, which is again a much shorter trip that can be performed over and over again in the same time that it would take a single ship to make the journey from A to D. I hope I don't need to describe the how the final leg of the operation works, do I? So as you can see, breaking the logistical chain up in to multiple phases does not multipy the number of ships needed, ships will just be divided up according to the distances involved (A trip of 2,000 lightyears will need roughly twice as many ships as a trip of 1,000), as well as risk to shipping and imminent need of that part of the warzone.

As for making a bottleneck, well I'm afraid you've failed to consider just how impossible that is to avoid. The Warp Gate is a bottleneck in itself, everything has to go through that, no matter where it's coming from. Both sides of it are going to be some of the most heavily protected locations in the entire Crusade, hence my earlier comments about no Rogue Trader being likely to survive an attempt to force their way through and make it back alive. But fair enough, putting all your eggs on one planet is a bit risky, but it doesn't really change anything to just have multiple depot worlds in the immediate area close to the gate instead of one. It might make security a bit more tricky, but the circumstances of ships tasked with the middle phase, travelling back and forth through the Gate, doesn't really change.

And I think it's an absolute farce that you're acting like artwork and novels are canon. Artwork needs to look cool, while novels need to tell a good story. Both of those can quite easily necessitate deviation from canon. Or should I remind you that in the 2nd Gaunt's Ghost novel it has him and a platoon of mere Guardsmen counter-ambushing a dozen or so Khorne Berserkers and winning with almost no, if any, casualties? Using Lasguns. Yeah, the novels are really 100% canon. Or how about Eisenhorn and his lightsabre? Or for another Gaunt's Ghosts reference, when he takes out a Chaos Terminator with a Bolt Pistol? While in Traitor General he describes Chaos Marines as being so terrifying that athey've made whole Guard regiments retreat with just a single squad. The novels can be pretty contradictory and vary in a lot of ways, depending on who the author is, their experience with writing for 40K, and the subject of the particular novel (Inquisition, Imperial Guard, etc.). Should I go through the rest of my novels to pick out inconsistencies? I'm sure I could find more, I only have a few dozen of them, plus several fluff books (The Inquisition, Third Battle for Armageddon, 13th Black Crusade, Sabbats World Crusade, Uplifting Primer, and Munitorium Manual), the Liber Chaotica which has pictures of Space Marines in it. And while we're at it, why don't I just throw in the fluff from the last three editions of the 40K core book, my multiple codices and the old Inquisitor book for the hell of it? I'm sure I can compile a load of contradictions and inconsistencies.

And while recent canon might have scaled it back, kroot have been said to be not uncommon throughout the galaxy. My comments above notwithstanding, if you're so intent on taking every picture and scrap of fiction as canon, then I recall a short story from back when the Dark Eldar Codex was being released, where Vect is speaking to a human prisoner, telling him the history of his race, and other things, mentioning in particular how he's disgusted with the way that humans and other races, specifically the kroot, are spreading accross the galaxy in the wake of the Eldar's fall. That aside, it seems that GW is taking the route that the Kroot were not encountered until the Damocles Gulf Crusade, in which case the same situation would apply to them as it would the Tau. Strange race that noone in this part of the galaxy has ever really heard of, learning that they originally came to the local sectors through the Warp Gate wouldn't really change that, because the location of the other side is being kept secret, which is the whole topic of this.. debate. For all anyone in the Calixis sector knows, the gate connects to the Margin Crusade, or some part of space nearby.

But again, feel free to just ignore all this well reasoned logic and common sense... it's not like you haven't done it many times already.

While the "novels are/are not canon" stance is somewhat debateable and dependant on personal taste (dare I say the dreaded word starting with "multi"?), the explanation for the supply not taking twice as many ships is entirely correct, assuming you have enough men and materiel to keep the line occupied at all times. Otherwise, a certain Mr Ford (no, not Harrison) would be the greatest idiot in the history of economics for instituting the conveyor belt in his factories instead of letting one employee build a product from start to finish.

Honestly, I believe that most of the safety of the conspiracy rests with one word: fear.

Fear of the Inquisition is worth far more to the security of the secret then a million inquisitors, commisars etc. To the average citizen of the Imperium, to take any action to harm the Imperium is unthinkable. To bring the eyes of the Inquisition upon them with the thought of treason(which is what revealing the secret would be) is beyond comprehension. There will always be those exceptional people who might have the will, the courage and the traitorous and self serving nature to reveal a secret like the actual truth of the crusade, but those are the exceptions to the rule. Those are the people that the Commisariat and the Inquisition would be watching.

The other I would offer, is what long term benefit is there for anyone to reveal this secret? Honestly? Rogue Traders might be able to reap a fortune in short term gains, but the Imperium would no longer offer a safe haven to them if they were ever found out. And destroying the morale of a Crusade, and possibly pushing 3 sectors to unrest is certainly the motivation that the powers that be in the Imperium need to find out who is responsible. And once the guilty is found out(and between the sages of the Inquisition, the sanctioned psykers at their disposal and the motivation that the assigned throne agents would have, I personally believe its a when, not an if), that is when the Temple Assassin is assigned to the case.

Any one who is clever enough, motivated enough and powerful enough to be able to reveal the secret of the crusade is probably smart enough, experienced enough and has enough of a sense of self preservation to never ever do so. They would understand that no matter what rewards they reaped, their lives inside of the Imperium would be absolutely over, and that the arm of the Imperium is very long indeed. Certain fanatical types obviously would be an exception to this statement, but again those types of individuals would already likely be on the radar for the instruments of control like the Commisariat and the Inquisition.

Again, its not a matter of whether or not someone could reveal the secret, its a matter of why they would, in a repressive, facist, totalitarion society.

PCs are an obvious exception to this rule. Being a GM I firmly understand that players do what players do.

Brother Praetus said:

Now that you put it that way, I do have another hazy memory that is the case. Of course, it still becomes a relevant number given the crazy lengths of ships that people assign and, if you put the military fleet at 2,400, the Merchant Fleet comes in at a 24,000 ships. Shipping in the Imperium is getting somewhat more common... (Depending on how much you fudge "support" ships by meaning that they're reservists, or something similar. )

Kage

The problem is, if you go back, that it the 20,000 number was for a 1 week long (real time) warp jump between the depot on one side of the gate (which is a fairly short trip in non-warp time), and the depot on the other. It would take another 20,000 (probably much, much more) to move men and materials to the depot (supplimented by civilian ships, possibly), and another 20,000 on the other side of the gate to distribute. That's 60,000 warp capable ships (at minimum).

Further: let's say, for the sake of argument, that each ship holds 10,000,000 tons of cargo. 11,000,000,000,000 is 550,000 loads.

A typical agriworld will produce 230,000,000 tons of food (using modern global agricultural outputs as a guide, and assuming they are not under attack by tyrannids) within the same time frame as that 11,000,000,000,000 tones of supplies. Assuming that 200,000,000 of it is shipped off world, and there's no spoilage or warp mishaps, it's going to take the entire output of 15 agriworlds to produce enough food.

Pulling out my Imperial Munitorium Manual (I love this book) wherein we detail the glorious chain of supply of the most holy Imperial Guard, the depot worlds of the Departmento Munitorium that would be supplying this crusade are , oh my, Hydraphur and Cypra Mundi. These supplies would then be relayed to from segmentum command to sector command at Scintilla, which would arrange for thier disbursement from there to somewhere on the spinward side of the sector, possibly the Markayn Marches or the Periphery where the fleet is being redeployed to.

Of course, you may consider such a book to be non-canon, but that's your call.

I certainly consider it to be a hell of a lot more canon than a **** novel.

And please stop throwing around madeup fake numbers like they're some kind of proof? There's absolutely nothing backing them up and it's getting kind of annoying having to argue against something you and Adam pulled out of your asses. 20,000 ships? 11,000,000,000,000 tonnes of cargo? Where does it say this is how much the crusade needs? Is it per week? Month? Year? Give me a page number and I'll stop criticising them, you owe me that much.

As for Hydraphur and Cypra Mundi, being the main disbursment centres doesn't mean that every scrap of suppy needs to go through them. As you cited yoruself earlier, the crusade to conquer the Calixis sector ended up creating a hiveworld just for the purpose of managing the supply needs of the Crusade (Malfi, wasn't it?), so obviously the two main planets mentioned earlier aren't the sole sources of material, and a the logistical chain of the Crusade in to the Jericho Reach will have many other routing areas and depots before the final destination in the Calixis sector, the Warp Gate. This doesn't necessarily invalidate or contradict what's in the Munitorium Manual, just elaborate on it to provide a full picture of how military logistics works in the Imperium.

Also, if you're so keen on the Manual, why not re-read the section in it and the Uplifting Primer about the kinds of crimes and the punishments you can suffer in the Imperial military establishment. And logically extrapolate that any civilian shipping concern, whether independent trader or cartel, would find themselves beholden to their regulations if they were drafted in to shipping men and material for the Crusade.

Blood Pact said:

Actually, it's simple math.

11 billion gaurdsmen (which is a number someone else cited, not me) / 5 regiments per transport (approx 20,000 men), factoring a one way trip through the warp of one week, and a return time of one week, with a goal of landing all troops within a year = 20,000 odd transports.

11 billion guardsmen * 1000 tons of supplies (avg over 2-3 months) per man (based off supply per man of the Normandy invasion, since hard numbers were avalible) = 11,000,000,000,000 tonnes of supplies over 2-3 months. (which I said before)

11,000,000,000,000 tonnes of supplies / 10,000,000 tonnes of transport capacity per ship = 550,000 loads.

Malfi and Fenksworld both, since the Crusade had two fronts on opposite ends of the Sector, with supplies comming in from Scarus and Ixnaid. I didn't say that they would not have to build a hive world to manage the supply flow (quite the opposite, actually) I said that they would have to build one at each supply dump (which is what they did in the earlier crusade)

Let's halve the numbers, makign the Crusade as small as the Sabbat Worlds Crusade: we're still looking at over 10,000 transports moving between dump A) and dump B).

As far as punishments go: Yes, they are in there: however, the problem is that the number of people involved would outstrip the ability to enforce them. (However, I'll point out that, and you may find my use of the novels unacceptable, but the only occasion I could find covering ship board authority vs IG regulations, implies that even civilian ships have a different set of regulations then the Imperial Guard does, so it's likely that none of these would apply.)

Further: both novels and Manual and primer suggest that IG on board ship are subject to the ships regulations as well as IG regulations, not the other way around.

However, 11 billion is still a number plucked from out of thin air, which makes the rest of your figures meaningless. Without the actual figures of how many troops are involved in the Crusade, any figures used for how many supplies are needed, how many ships would be needed to carry those supplies, etc, are worthless.

MILLANDSON said:

Granted.

However: according to the map, we have at least 7 fortress worlds. Now, IIRC, on an Imperial Fortress world, nearly the entire population is under arms. Admittedly, I'm basing this off of known fortress worlds such as Cadia.

Let's say that, due to being recently recaptured, the populations are low for the imperium, only say, between 1 and 3 billion. If only 1/3rd of them are under arms, for whatever reason, that's between 2.5 and 7 billion men garrisoning those worlds. (It's probably higher then that.)

And that doesn't cover offensive forces, or forces garrisoning other worlds in the Reach.

MILLANDSON said:

Isn't that a bit harsh, MILLANDSON? They're speculative, not worthless. Their worth lies in the idea that if you wish to consider these issues, then the practicality and the volume of the endeavour begins to take on the appropriate scale. YMMV as to whether the Imperium can keep this a "perfect secret" (I once again point out that it remains, regardless of how hokey it is, an easily exploitable story line from both sides of the argument), but BaronInveagh's post does indicate the scale likely involved.

So worthless? No, I wouldn't be that harsh.

So I don't have to search back through the thread, could someone remind me what the whole point of the Crusade is? I must have blanked it out.

Edit: <grumbles about crappy forum software that keeps on double-posting quotes requiring that you don't use the system or you create your own!)

Kage

Well, yes, they are speculative, but if you are several billion out up or down, they do become worthless, because they would be incorrect by a fairly high margin. That's all I meant.

As for the fortress worlds... all of the ones held around the Hadrax Anomaly are held by Chaos, and several of the ones held by the Imperium (according to the rulebook) are in ruins, and hold only a fraction of the number they normally would.

Also, remember that several of the planets held by the Imperium are agri-worlds, and many more worlds that are not strategically important (such as many agri-worlds, which are left with garrisons and then the Crusade forces move on to a more important planet) are not covered on the map.

As such, we have no idea how much of the Crusade supplies come from conquered planets in the Reach, and how much comes through the Gate.