PDF Numbers per Planet

By Internus, in Dark Heresy

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624 said:

Imperial Governors are required to raise a PDF to the standard of being able to defend their own planet. So its up to you as has been said, paranoid governor might have close to billions, relaxed backwater world might only have hundreds of thousands instead. I think it must be said here as well that PDF are full imperial guardsmen, parts of the tithe can be the folding of whole PDF regiments into the Gaurd, theyre not old men and children. True there would be an additional recruitment of reservists like the T.A. of the National Guard but for the most part PDF'ers are career soldiers, its just unfortunate for them that the rest of the big dark universe is usually either bigger, stronger, tougher, more advanced technologically so they usually dont fare too well.

Banding around real life numbers makes no sense here either, first off we dont have hive cities, the concept of them cannot even be contemplated, imagine 10 or 20 New York's on top of one another and thats a tiny hive population wise. If you do want the conscript route however Switzerland has a 95% conscript army that forms 6.6% of its population at any one time.

Numbers given for the siege of Verunhive on Verghast, the Verunhive PDF numbered 500,000 and the Zoicans 6,000,000, the a good example of the full deployment of PDF in literature of a good sized hive defending itself, utilising the full range of armoured vehicles from battle tanks to support pieces, infantry but no air support as i believe the Imperial Navy kind of has a monopoly on anything that can get off of the ground.

Landunder may only raise a small PDF in comparison to other larger hives as well, but as it has a huge martial background, the close combat skills of even the rawest recruits would be unparalled in comparison to a IRL conscript tithe like the gangs of Necromunda or Armageddon which are pressed into PDF service when the time calls and even deliberately sought out for the draft.

unlesss the wiki is lying, that is not correct. Switzerland has roughly 8 mln citizens of which 3mln are fit for duty (38% men AND women!!). Of these 3mln there is an active army of 135k and a 77k reserve which totals to a 212k counting army. That is about 7% of 'fit for duty' and 2.7% (1.7% active and 1% reserve) of its total population. Note that this is a small and fairly rich country. 2.7% is a LOT. And indeed they do have a conscript army, if that's fit for duty and men only then thats 1.5mln potential conscript soldiers or roughly 19% of its populace.

If I look at my own country it boils down to 0.36 % of the total population is on active duty.

As mentioned before though these numbers don't really reflect to the W40K world, the population density is completely different and in general there is much more turmoil and threat.

Everyone is throwing some numbers here… generally speaking somewhere between 15 and 20% of the total population is male and between 16 and 49 AND fit for duty, you could double that number with women but then your society would indeed collapse. On active duty I would take somewhere between 0.1% upto 2% of the total population where 0.1% for hive worlds and 2% for low population density worlds

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Dulahan said:

That's seriously true. I often think Marine Chapters would make infinitely more sense at 10,000 strong given the scale of things that happen. An even using the whole 'scale' thing where Marines are worth 100 normal troopers… they sure drop easily enough to normal heavy weapons. But at 10,000 strong a chapter,. Not only do their numbers reach a point they could compete, but some of the "these guys are all over space!" aspects where the named chapters end up in every war… EVER a lot more feasible…

This is something that is going to turn up a lot when you start thinking about things… but not something that I think you should worry too much about. It only becomes an issue IF you want each chapter to be unstopably on any one world and you have each chapter acting alone most of the time.

It actually seems pretty rare for a Chapter to assault an enemy held planet on their own these days. During the Great Crusade it was happening all the time but the Heresy books were talking about 10's (if not Hundreds) of thousands of Astartes in each attack, which resulted in the planets falling very quickly.

But like historical battles with massed defenders angainst superior forces, the planet would fall with most of the defenders not engaging the enemy at all. Lack of mobility is very big aspect, if you millions of men your need hundreds of thousands of dedicated vehicles to keep them mobile and PDF are by design spread out all over the planet.

And when it comes to Hive worlds, I don't have a problem believing that, if they've full mobilised their populations and dug in then it is going to be a major task to take it. There isn't going to be that many in each sector and they are usually Sector and sub-sector Capitals. Some of the largest battles in the 40k history have been fought over single reinforced hive world.

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Also remember that there is the factor of Naval Gunfire support in the 40k universe. If the defender were to mass an army of millions in one place you would likely attract the attention of orbiting naval forces. Unlike even modern day warfare, there is NO PLACE safe from orbital bombardment. The limiting factors are shielding, Target value (Intact) and orbital defenses. Generally, Even in a Hive if the shields are brought down either by direct fire or sabotaged then the hive is VERY vulnerable! Space marines are very well suited to this kind of action. Once orbital shielding is removed then armies of whatever size can simply be annihilated from orbit. In fact, The larger the army the easier it is to to do this. The reason is that it is hard to adequately shelter huge numbers of people! PDF units that are dispersed to multiple hardened strategic locations are actually safer then large numbers for this reason.

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As we speak about void shields on the planet. How much firepower would be needed to take down void shield around hive? In my BC campaign PC going to attack Imperial World so question is important. Is it possible to take it from orbit or from the ground?

I remember that in one novels about Night Lords they amassed hundreds of vehicles and it took few hours to take down shield from fortress. In other about Word Bearers they couldn't breach shield around capital of non Imperial empire.

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coolzyg said:

As we speak about void shields on the planet. How much firepower would be needed to take down void shield around hive? In my BC campaign PC going to attack Imperial World so question is important. Is it possible to take it from orbit or from the ground?

I remember that in one novels about Night Lords they amassed hundreds of vehicles and it took few hours to take down shield from fortress. In other about Word Bearers they couldn't breach shield around capital of non Imperial empire.

In BFG a Hive would essentially be similar to a Space station on the ground. (A Very large one!) If we use the Blackstone as an example then we wind up with 6 shields (Using RT stats). Armor level would be comparatively light (Maybe 16 or 17) Hull integrity would be very high (200 or more) due to the more dispersed structure of the hive. (If this does not seem impressive remember that a single point of damage in a Hive with 2 billion population would cause 100 million casualties!)sorpresa.gif Additionally it would be ringed with low orbit defensive installations. These in BFG would be roughly the equivalent of "Weapon components" and would feature weapons such as Lances, Torpedoes and Launch bays.At least the equivalent firepower of a Battleship! (Probably more!). On The Blackstone it would translate to roughly 10 Weapons components per Arc! Remember that a hive represents hundreds if not thousands of years worth of investment by the Hives rulers. It is not going to be taken down by a raider with a case of the ass! In answer to your question; It is certainly possible to take down a Hives shields (Or other defensive components) via commando raids or subterfuge. This is not easy task to say the least. The Defenders know that this is their vulnerability as well! This is where Space marines (or CSM's) are at their best! These facilities will be huge and well defended but strikes at key points could potentially cripple a defensive corridor and leave it open to orbital attack!

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Face Eater said:

It actually seems pretty rare for a Chapter to assault an enemy held planet on their own these days. During the Great Crusade it was happening all the time but the Heresy books were talking about 10's (if not Hundreds) of thousands of Astartes in each attack, which resulted in the planets falling very quickly.

While some of the biggest battles might have broken the 100,000 Astartes involved mark (Let alone the Heresy proper, which in the biggest had more than that per side) - it does not seem common at all for a whole legion to be involved in a battle. 10,000 or so perhaps. But not Legion Strength. And other than the Word Bearers and Ultramarines, none of the others even topped 100,000 or so, give or take. With some of them significantly lower. (10,000 or so Thousand Sons, 80,000 or so Raven Guard…)

Doesn't much change things. And of course they were always backed by massive normal human armies and Titans too. And took on the toughest fighting. As it remains in the modern 40k era.