SPACE HULK LORE DISCUSSION

[JolyJew СлаваУкраине]

considering that i got my answers to the original question pretty fast. and the fact that everyone started to ponypile here to discuss about WH40k. i might as well rename the thread for its new intended purpos.

so, have fun discussing about purging xeno filth and about finding holy relics of the imperium in this thread :)

here's the original post, for noveltie's sake:

Originally posted by Jolly Jew:

the game looks good and all. buti really must ask why are the space marines so stupid.

i mean, from what i could tell the space hulk is choke-full of genestealers. and a space hulk can be as big as a planet...

SO WHEY THE HELL ARE THEY SENDING A SINGLE SQUAD OF TERMINATORS???

i know terminators are the emperor's finest but when they are outmubered a million to one?

[datguy13]

Originally posted by Lord_WC:

Space marines are seriously outnumbered, according to lore. Even in their prime they barely reached 1 million heads which is laugable - for comparison the chinese army is 2.3 million. And those guys are keeping the peace for a million human controlled planets. So yeah, 5 of them going into a hulk to kick xeno ass sounds pretty accurate to me. Actually 5 in terminator armor should be quite an overkill.

"In their prime" there were 20 Legions of approximately 1 million Space Marines each. The Legions and Chapters jobs were not to keep peace, it was to enact Compliance through subjugating a rogue world, then turning it over to the Imperial Guard for enforcement.

Originally posted by Jolly Jew:

so to sum up this thread. 5 terminators + librarian CAN destroy a whole swarm of tyranids in the hulk all by themselves?

Yes, but it's likely they will do it with casualities. They also won't do it by personally shooting each and every Genestealer, Broodlord or Hybrid with a Stormbolter. They'll use a large number of weapons and explosives, as well as the terrain and technology of the Hulk itself to get the job done.

Originally posted by The Angry Admiral:

No .... the oldest space marine is the current chapter master of the blood angels with 1 700 years ???
.

Chapter Master Dante of the Blood Angels is the oldest known Space Marine. As of M41, he is 1100 years old.

[Takao]

Astartes forces are not deployed to just gun down massed number of enemies that outnumber them greatly. After the legions broke into chapters, this type of warfare was made impossible.

The role of the astartes is to be a specialized shock strike force that is supposed to overwhelm key objectives and eliminate key targets. The terminators are sent into a space hulk not to kill every crawling thing inside, but to achieve a cerain objective. Terminators are actually ideal for space hulks:

The often tight coridors leave little room for maneuvrability so it diminishes terminator armor disadvantages.

Terminator armor has inbuilt teleporters which can be used to go in or get out of the space hulk.

Terminator armor is outfitted with much more complex and advansed sensors than regular astartes armor, this allows to have more tactical asessment of the enviorment within the hulk.

Terminators can deploy higher firepower, and some weapons that are ideal for close quarters.

Terminator armor can protect from even the deadliest enviorments that can appear within the hulk such as extreme radiation and prolonged void exposure.

[Jhea]

why they send a single squad of terminators...?
coz they are usually enough... also they are the elite of the elite of the elite... and therefor not many of the terminators exist...

for comparision, in the tabletop game a single terminator costs up to 50 points, where as a normal space marine is about 28, and a normal orc is somewhere about 10 - 12
and a normal human soldier costs about 7 - 8 points...
making it quite funny if you have a 800 point battle, with 100 imperial soldiers on 1 side, and 16 terminators on the other...

i bet the normal soldiers will win this, soley based on numbers and dice to be cast... but well - noone ever believed me...
and then my 3 point grotlings stormed a fortified terminator stronghold and killed 3 of 5 in the first wave (just have enough of them) and when my funny close combat boyz stormed in, the case was closed.

so yeah...

there are not many terminators in the universe ;)

[DarkChaplain]

Keep in mind that the rules aren't an accurate representation of the lore. The game is designed for large battles whereas you rarely see a full company deployed at once, in one single battle. Then you also have the problem that Space Marines are too numerous for their cost - and that's down to how well they sell. GW won't turn them into the "movie marines" style army of elites they should be, because they want to keep selling more and more boxes of them.

[Warlord]

A single space marine can best hundreds of regular troops in combat.

That's really all you need to know. Terminators are the elite of the elite. The odds are in their favor with only a squad.

[mie001]

they only senting SM to do what is must-do.Dealing space hulk is not one of them,what is inside the space hulk is,they wont simplely just blow up a ship carring a relic.And if it is connected to secret of dark angels,of course they will involve.
BTW,IOM have space hulk problem every single day,not all of them need space marine involve,if there's nothing inside that hulk,they will just call up the navy and blow it up.
sometimes the space hulk is too big,and navy cant reach in time,then they will sent space marine to set a meta charge at the generator,and let the warp do the rest

[FlippantSausage]

I assume if they arent actually committing more than one squad its because its unneeded. Say if they arent actually trying to do anything but reach their objective and do a thing. A mass deployment would only provoke a larger angrier more immediate reaction from the hivemind.

Also they could just be 1 squad of several, i havent actually seen any story details suggesting anything either way. The plot of the board game and PC adaptation of Space Hulk is basically 2 squads go gas all the dormant stealers. So a five man squad could be considered enough for a lot of objectives. And a Librarian is a great force multiplier.

Also ITS 40K, IT NEVER WAS REALISTIC OR MADE SENSE TO BEGIN WITH!

[PorkChop Express]

Originally posted by machinech:

If you don't understand the Space Marine lore....try not to look stupid prattling on about it. There's actually a fair bit that speaks of why a small contingent of veterans would choose to assault space hulks an other impossible missions. However learning more about this would require reading, which is usually not a thing for caps lock afflicted complainers.

+1 ^^^^^^^^

[LeperousKhan]

Shpess Marines are Humanity's super special forces. They go in, murder, then get out. They are insanely mobile, incredibly smart, walking tanks. These guys are the best of them. A space hulk is a bunch of close quarter battles where numbers mean nothing.

[RoflTank]

Originally posted by datguy13:

Originally posted by The Angry Admiral:

No .... the oldest space marine is the current chapter master of the blood angels with 1 700 years ???
.

Chapter Master Dante of the Blood Angels is the oldest known Space Marine. As of M41, he is 1100 years old.

Unless you don't count Dreadnoughts, the oldest of which is good ol' Bjorn the Fell-Handed at a ripe old age of 10'000 years old.

Give or take a century or two.

[Kumad]

Originally posted by Vargas78:

They should work on the backstory more. You know the usual scenario, something went wrong with the warp travel, only a small fraction of the original force made it there. They decide to proceed with mission anyway but most of them got wiped out and your the last 5 left.

Problem solved. Your welcome.

Just quoting this so more people see. This is the setup for Space hulk. They didnt decide to just send 5 dudes to do the job the scenerio is there was much more but they are the only left.

The fluff is very fickle but you guys should know that as op as space marines are they are just as prone to being wiped out.

The original story of the Space Hulk boardgame was A chapter of blood angels go to the sin of damnation and only 50 brothers survived out of the entire chapter.

Space marines are jusat as brittle as guards. welcome to the grim dark.

[deimos]

if you watch the trailer there are 8 pods going in so unless ther empty i doubt youre the only squad. but it is just a trailer so we shall see

[Diarmuhnd]

Originally posted by Jolly Jew:

...
i mean, from what i could tell the space hulk is choke-full of genestealers. and a space hulk can be as big as a planet...

SO WHEY THE HELL ARE THEY SENDING A SINGLE SQUAD OF TERMINATORS???
...

Well. From what i remember from the warhammer 40k lore back then.. is a bit spotty.. going on memory here amd that was a long loing time ago. and yeah... ive been playing warhamemr 40k since before its official birth.. ive seen it all... gods im old. LOL.

Ok. to answer your question here goes...
oh, this is a mash up of lore from the every changing Lore of the Genestealers


these spacehulks had millions (or more) of genestealers on them. And that it was more cost effective to destroy those spacehulks with small squads of the Emperors finest Astartes Custodes instead of a fleet of the Imperial Navy since those fleets were needed in war zones along multiple fronts; also, spacehulks were so massive, that 1 fleet (or even 3 fleets) may not have had enough firepower to destroy it completely before that spacehulk slipped back into warp on its way to a populated Imperial hive world system. So they sabotaged critical key points that would cause a chain reaction to destroy the spacehulk from within. Also, it wasn't just 1 squad of 5, but multiple squadsm hitting all those citical key locations to start that chain reaction.
The last point, would be that the patriarch (or was it matrearch?) and certain late generation genestealer hybrids were in fact powerful pyskers, so conventional armed forces like imperial gaurdsmen or even regular space marines would most liekly fail and not get the job done. They just didint have the training or equipment to successfully tackle an infested spacehulk.

Later in the lore, we learned that genestealers were in fact advance scouts for the Tyranid Hive Fleets approaching human space. etc. // and the Lore is rather extensive...

I would recomend you read (or watch) the lore behind warhammer 40k's diverse war torn universe. :) Its quite fun, and immersive.

last note: sorry for any gross errors.. but im going on memory here as to why it was done this way.

[Rogxu]

They don't send in a single squad of terminators, they send in a squad of Deathwing terminators. There is a difference.

There is alot of lore written about the Dark Angels and Deathwing aswell, not all of it is about the "fallen". These Deathwing actually have their armor painted white (bone white) to remember a single squad of Deathwing that sacrificed themselves to cleanse one of the Dark Angels recruiting planets of a Genestealer infestation, let's say Dark Angels have a certain resolve when things get personal...

Also most hulks would probably be abandoned when they search them, it seems this one just has a few surprises and a Space Marine in Terminator armor is the best soldier you can get to deal with surprises in a cramped space ;)

[Snake]

because the emprah commands it so!