>every time you lose an escort in BFGA, 25k people die
>every light cruiser is 65k dead
>guess what, every cruiser lost is 95k dead, a healthy sized city
>with every grand cruiser destroyed with all hands, that's almost 150k dead
>a crushing defeat could result in a death toll of half a million, for just one battle
I wish I didn't know this information now
Manpower is the most abundant resource in the Imperium.
If anything, you should be mourning all those machine spirits.
If RT is anything to go by just disabling a ship is a mission kill and happens far more often. Yes it may be entirely spaced but they're so reinforced and compartmentalized that sometimes the crew survive. Survive to be rescued in a year or in a hundred, perhaps.
Or maybe just to degenerate into deadly mutants.
The people are considered cheap compared to the ships though, so think about all of the lives lost in the construction of those ships, such as how many people are going to die just from mining the resources.
Life is cheap. Your lasgun is worth more than you - it will serve longer, and it complains less.
I'm going to tattoo that on my ass.
Post pics
Or they become a part of one of these. Still become mutants, or get eaten by gene stealers.
>A colony that has lived inside a disabled ship for generations
>They've lived this way for so long they don't care about the outside world
I am stealing this.
Rogue Trader rpg was insane for body counts
>Jumped some chaos transports and escorts
>2x Iconoclast Destroyers blown to hell in about 30min
32-33,000 dead
>Boarding action on transport #1 by the RT
>rolled around 8 degrees of success, its a fucking slaughter
40,000 dead
>Boarding action on transport #2 by other PC's
>rolled around 6 degrees of success, its another fucking slaughter
40,000 more dead
In about 2 hours of ship battle and boarding, around 120-125,000 dead... that's just nucking futs
Where's that 'planet made of 80 quadrillion troopers' meme when we need it?
The only thing I don't like about the crew numbers is that they don't match up well with ground forces. Like, in the Imperial Reformation it was essential to stop regimental commanders from commanding cruisers, because that stopped one man from having transport and troops. But if there's tens of thousands of men on each warship, your average commodore could carve out a petty empire if he went rogue.
Do they still worship Emperor or pray to the almighty Oxi-gen Deliverer?
Tens of thousands of men, most of whom aren't soldiers And the majority of them have never been on a planetside and they lack support like ground transports, tanks and so on.
They're sailors and slaves, not soldiers. Sure, there's some marines with shotguns on board for discipline keeping and anti boarding actions, but not enough to rule a world
The problem with what you guys are saying is that a regiment wouldn't be any more of a threat.
A regiment is a threat because they have soldiers, tanks, transport, command structures and logistics. 70% of a ships crew are menial laborers. A large suburb/small city with a national guard depot does not an empire make.
Ten thousand trained soldiers(and remember that the guard is mostly composed of the best the various PDF forces have to offer) vs. a rabble of 50 000 poorly trained and armed men with maybe several thousand of them who have good training and weapons.
One in the same my friend.
One in the same.
...
>a crushing defeat could result in a death toll of half a million, for just one battle
Not really that much of a big deal considering nearly 2 million people died in stalingrad
Yes, but Stalingrad happened once. Something very similiar happens dozens if not hundreds of times in the course of something like the Gothic War
considering OP said only half a million in a really bad battle crushing defeat, it would take 4 crushing defeats to even get to stalingrad levels. Its not really that bad considering how many worlds are in the imperium.
not that 40k really makes any sense when you look too closely. Its fantasy fiction, they can kill as many people as they like!
Do you even space hulk?
You also forget a good 15-20 percent of crew is family, along with another 10 percent being servitors and tech adepts.
Earth does not have hive worlds with populations in the 30 billions.
1 hive can support 4-10 billion. Some hive worlds have 5+ hives. A few thousand are a drop in the bucket.
You loose more by having the millennia old ship get blown to shit then the humans, which are less than currency in some parts of the Imperium. Humans are not important.
Resources are important. Tools are even more important.
Welcome to the grim dark future of the 41st millennia.
>Voidborn slaves
>people
I read one or two stories like this. They become a mixture of void feralworlders which create a sort of cargo cult around working machinery.
If the AdMech found out, I wonder what their reaction would be...
>It's Heresy!
>But see their circuit [3-B] cerimony. Despite 50 years without proper oils, the machine-spirit remains pure!