Reasonable supersoldiers

Not exactly cheaper by any means considering they are just as locked behind dogma and use of expensive cybernetics.

Can't be worse than iron hands, where you build a full space marine and then proceed to replace it. Why not give them all the augmetics right away and be done with it?

The flesh isn't that weak when you augment it?

I mean we are talking about eating brains to get their enemies memories, that's not something you can just build (at least where the mechanicus currently are)

High ranking iron hands are on the level of admech where most of your organic stuff is the brain. You could just augment the brain and build them all as cyborgs and avoid wasting time and resources in building a redundant, soon to be discarded space marine.

Gene-engineer a few dozen colonists and wait a few hundred years.

You'll have a whole planet of super soldiers ready to fight. Each of them genetically pure and superhuman. Toss them resources and their super genius intellect will have them make way better guns for them to field. Just have a few Genetors watching and fixing problems.

Bam. You win the war against everything.

they could also just ignore the ban on AI and make a robot army and just tell everyone they are servitors.

Human males pumped up on super-scifi-space roids and with cheap exoskeletons. People underestimate how strong humans as a species actually are.

>genetically engineer smart ogryns

Unless you gene them to be completely loyal to you they will conquer the shit out of you, having no cultural ties or loyalty to you. Wouldn't even consider you human next to themselves.

Someone probably wants to, but it would be against the whole "having human components as a base" thing, that by this time is also part of the admech spirituality. Granted, that never stopped hereteks, but they're not exactly known for efficiency and succesful endeavours...

That's what religion is for, it's pretty much mind control.

>hurrr

Everyone has Carapace armour (5+ save). Everyone has Cybernetics (6++ save) Everyone has Frenzy drugs. Everyone has Droppacks (deepstrike). Everyone has Camoline Camoflage (boosted cover save). Everyone has Frag, Krak and Smoke Grenades.

Standard squads have two Hot Shot Volley Lasguns (twin linked), each supported with implanted servo arms. Each Lasgun has a Bayonet and counts as paired/twin melee weapons. Each soldier has either a melta pistol or flamer pistol, two Bolt Pistols and frag and krak grenades. Each sqaud has a coms specialist with an Auspex and Vox-Caster.

Each squad has support members with either two of: Melta, Flamer, Grenade Launcher, Storm Bolter. One on each Servo Arm.

There are "fire blocker" squads whos job it is to stand infront and block firing lines, who have storm shields supported by their servo arms.

There are "fire support" squads with Storm Bolters, Sniper Rifles and Rocket Launchers (also Splitfire).

There are "heavy support" squads with Stormshard Mortars or Twin Linked heavy weapons (including Assault Cannons).

There are "cavalry" squads on Space Marine Bikes with Hunting Lances and Storm Shields. Alternatively, you can take an entire squad with Heavy Weapon Sidecars.

Standard vehicles are Chimera, Leman Russ, Razorbacks, Predators (including Baal and Annihilator Predators), Basilisks.
Can take Armoured Drop Sentinels (that can take Dreadnought weapons, including Dreadnought melee weapons)

.And most importantly, they will have Drop Fortifications. Deepstrike a voidfield in with an entire army behind enemy lines.

>not cheaper
>this is why the admech has billions of them

I recall once reading a book where some empire basically did this. They then ended up calling themselves "Homo Superior", and started a huge war to purge the galaxy of all lesser human life.

Wasn't there like a rival imperium on one of the HH books that used Gene warriors that were essentially space Marines light?

>create a literal master race
>they genocide all the subhumans

Right, Gland Warriors!

1d4chan.org/wiki/Gland_War_Veteran#Difference_between_Gland_Warriors_and_Space_Marines

It's from the FF RPG though so, non canon and no longer supported.

Sounds like you want some Clans, quiaff?

Alot of the weapons you're describing are too rare or valuable to produce enmasse.

Let's say you make an entire faction out of these lite Marines, like the Scions are a faction of their own. Why have Scions when these guys can do everything better and are a lot more numerous?

What would they even be called?

You won't get a cheap method of making super soldiers. The better answer would be to take someone with the training of Scions, and give them Armored Sentinels that are better kitted out for a variety of situations.

They have a lot of armor that you need tank weapons to destroy, can carry heavy weaponry with ease, and are cheap enough that fielding them in large numbers should be easy.

At that point though you're basically just going for the Tau method of having Crisis suits instead of marines.

Zentradi?

For it to be cheap and not wide-spread you'd have to have some reason not to give the treatment to civilians.

Maybe the modification is a simple injection but shortens the soldier's life significantly?

>Maybe the modification is a simple injection but shortens the soldier's life significantly?
isn't that basically thunder warriors?

Depends, was the rest of their process cheap?

...

>all this tacticool junk
>and they forgot where to put the pilot's limbs

Like pootery

most definitely no

Ok heres my build:

104th Sidreal Pioneers
Recruited from the most insane guardsmen out of the normal sidreal regiment, see resistance fear.

Home world: Hive world 3pts (Hightened senses hearing)
Commander: Maverick 2pts (Resistance Fear)
Regiment type: Line Infantry 2pts (Rapid reload, Athletics)
Doctrines: Close Quartars Battle 5pts (+10BS at point blank, Light Carapace armour 5ap)
Equipment: Combat drugs 2pts (5 doses of stimm)

Draw backs: Misstrusted +3pts The few +5pts, Cult of Chivalry +3

Additional kit: 48
Vanahiem shotgun (Range 40m S/3/6 1d10+4I, 15rds) Average 8pts (Inq Handbook)
- OW shotgun rules +3 dmg +10BS at short range.
2 Hallucinogen grenades 20pts
Upgrade single item from common craftsmanship to best (light carapace 6ap) 10pts
Auto Injector: Scarce (Inq Handbook) 10pts

Favoured Basic weapon: Storm bolter
Favoured Heavy weapon: Heavy Flamer

I'd also roleplay it that every character took fear rating 1, due to covering themselves with the blood of the enemy and having gas masks that look like pic related. So basically they have fear rating 1 and resitance fear. They could easily go toe to toe with banshees. I also have a thing about giving storm troopers storm bolters. I'd also like to give them sprint so they can dash over the trenches. Paranoia also seems oppertune. They basically use the 5 doses of stimm in their auto injector.

My suggestion would just be to have Guardsmen in Carapace riding space marine bikes, and replace the Bolter mount with a Hot-shot Volleygun. Have some with special weapons, and some attack bikes with Heavy Weapons like Multi-meltas. Heavy Weapon teams with Carapace and Scion-level marksman training can fill in for Devastators, especially if you stick them in Rhinos.

Now you have a bunch of fast bikers with guns that are better than bolters, and are as armored and durable as a Space marine is normally. Combine that with the typical support marines recieve and you could kit out a lot of guys that way.

tip

It's for cripples

Still less rare than space marines.

But lets cancel it down a bit.

There are already regiments with only Carapace so thats fine. Cybernetics too is common in the Empire of man. Likewise for combat drugs. Again, entire regiments of Drop pack troops exist. Camoflage is a basic option in the rulebook. Frag and Krak grenades can be bought for everyone. Smoke grenades can be added to vehicles so just use them without adding them.

Instead of special lasguns and robot arms, they can just have two lasguns tied together with a piece of plasteel glued over the triggers, they are super light anyway. Give them two knives. You can buy Guardsmen bolt pistols as standard so no reason not to give them two. Auspex and Cox Casters are also common but non omni present, for these soldiers they are. Melta pistols and flame pistols I will give you. Instead we just give every soldier a small model melta or flamer, those exist just fine and again are common but spread across large numbers of troops.

Storm Shields are basic equipment for Arbites, but due to Bureaucracy and Tradition, not for Guardsmen. Thats dumb. Give them to Guardsmen. Same goes for bikes, even if they arent space marine bikes. And bolters can be mounted to them, even if the average Guardsmen cant fire them. Hunting lances are just a stick with an explosive on the end.

Out of all the heavy weapons and vehicles, the only ones that are especially rare due to production are Annhilator Predators and Storm Bolters because the Space Wolves/Russ made them up and were powerful enough that the mechanicus looked the other way mostly. The twin linked heavy weapons I made up, ill give you. The space marine weapons dont seem to be uncommon, just restricted, as space marine regiments resupply near instantly.

And this is non cannon remember, the Imperium would never do any of this because its heresy and not tradition etc etc especially tech modification.

So what it is a regiment of cybernetic drop storm troopers with lasguns and bolt pistols each and more common basic equipment given out more liberally.

Is some of it uncommen? Yeah sure, but we are trying to find something like a space marine here, but easier to produce. Not just "a good guardsmen regiment", but the best concievable with all the stops taken off.

Nah, skitarii are dirt cheap. They build skitarii with whatever they have on hand so you have everything from leather bellows lungs to sophisticated electronic rebreather systems.

also, they recycle the parts from anyone with augmetics who dies around them, so it's really a one time investment to produce the equipment.

Pick all the best non warp mutations of mankind and try to make a guy with the best combo of them.Make virus to give humans these mutations and spread it on guard training centers.

Grab a Necron gun,reverse engineer it,pick the parts that can be used to improve lasguns,make a STC of them and plant it on a lightly defended Space Hulk during a Admech raid.

Set up some forgeworlds to make the super lasguns and environmentally sealed armor

Send Raptors and Cypher to train the recruits.Don't let them leave boot camp with BS inferior to 9.

Get some Catachans.
Give them Bionics.
Give them Light Power Armor.
Give them Drugs.

Hey, what's going on in this --

Sister?

Get the promethium.

I strongly suggest you calm your tits, sister.

>an entire regiment of just straken

>It's from the FF RPG though
gland warriors are from inquisitor, mate

My god, sir, we have encountered giant elves! Spirits of Veeky Forums preserve us!

Get out of here khan

If we're talking 40k......why would you even bother?

The Imperium probably still has the ability to support near GC level legions of Space Marines in theory if it could accept that kind of power existing within its madness inducing framework of power struggles, but it wouldn't help as much as you think. The issue now isn't pure combat abilities, it's occupation and response. Smaller chapters do, in fact, work better for quick response and attack. No reason they can't be part of a larger whole, but oh well.

IG is vastly superior in just about every aspect beyond pure combat ability and can be used more more effectively considering their size. Thing is.....the Great Crusade was pretty close to a success! Big E united most of humanity in the galaxy and only failed at destroying ALL REMAINING THREATS to it. This means, however, that now humanity needs to basically occupy itself until it can overcome those threats (and find new ones to be slowly overwhelmed by) or perish to them. The former requires IG out the ass, the later SM to heroically and futilely sacrifice themselves.

Choose your end and welcome to the grim darkness of the 41st millennium.

>dark heresy no longer canon
Fuck sake. When did that happen?

It... Never was? FFG stuff was always 3rd party. And then they lost the liscence

of all the fucking things to try and take seriously, they pick 40k. Incredible.

Shit, they did? Does that mean no more games from them cause.....I'm not playing the fucking wargame. It sucks.....

Welp, time to start building a houserule system.

That's a weird way to spell Iron Hands

Sometimes it's baffling how low the Imperium's tech level is compared to what it should logically be even if they lost 99% of their progress thorough the ages

One of the clearest examples is how lore sometimes treats the current era as basically the stone age, but shit we already have or are well in the way of developing is treated as if it was impossibly advanced sci-fi nonsense. Like decent prosthesis to replace lost limbs. A fancy bebionic robo-arm will set you back around 10 grand, and DARPA already succeeded in making one with a functioning sense of touch. This kind of thing is implied to be beyond the reach of all but the highest echelons of the imperium's society

Likewise with power armor. There's already a couple of commercially-available and military-use powered exoskeletons. Considering how prominent it is on the setting, I doubt the adeptus mechanicus would clueless as how to mass-produce primitive power armor

what makes it even more silly is in the age of strife everyone and their mother had power armor and someone who knew how to make it.

Or you could.

You know.

Play Dark Heresy.

>This kind of thing is implied to be beyond the reach of all but the highest echelons of the imperium's society
Meanwhile shittons of gangers in squalor hive cities have robolimbs.

Also it's almost like two or three great calamities caused people to forget how to make certain things, thus causing an imbalance in knowledge bases.

Knowing how to make Astartes-tier power armor but being unable to make simpler models on a significant scale is less "imbalance in knowledge bases" and more like knowing how to build the Burj Khalifa but being at a loss when someone asks you to make a mud hut

There is so much wrong with this post that I am physically ill.

>Sometimes it's baffling how low the Imperium's tech level is compared to what it should logically be even if they lost 99% of their progress thorough the ages
Like any science fiction property conceived in the late 70's and early 80's, judging it by modern technological knowledge and standards is ridiculous.

Except Space Marines are already mass-producible and by simple mathematics we can deduce that the Imperium has the ability to produce tens or hundreds of millions of them, if not billions.

They don't because of dogma.

Are super soldiers that are trained from a young age, sounds femilliar ?
if you look at the game you notice that Master Chief is about the same size as a space marine in height.

If artillery is the king of the battlefield, than orbital artillery is the God Emperor. Space Marines are special forces, not regular troops and Infantry is for taking real estate. For killing the enemy the Imperial Navy is all.

Jetpacks + mini nukes.

Some chump in a starship trooper style suit could fuck up a platoon of space marines tbqh and the imperium definitely has the technology to make it.

Exploding remote controlled drones.

Why not just give a horde of fanatics bath salts, chainswords, and high-grade explosives?