What's the point of Space Marines?

In confined spaces, of course tanks are superior in open combat, that's why the space marines have tanks.

>why do you need infantry when you have tanks
>why do you need special infantry forces when you have your usual rank and file infantry

Infsntry will always be needed and space marines are heavily armored infantry. If you cant understand that read about how bad tanks are in city fighting, forests, jungles, mountains, river crossings, amohibious landings, etc.

I dont think space marines would fit through most doors.
They lack the befits of beeing a human: to use stairs, ladders, go through doors
And on the other hand, they are inferiour to tanks when it comes to armor or firepower

yes, i have really trouble understanding that.
I dont see how space marines are immune to flanking, or how they can traverse better or faster than tanks

Okay, pretty clear this is bait

space marines would be pretty shitty in jungles and shit.
They very bulky, have zero camoflage, can hardly move through thick jungle and yet can be taken out by an RPG, especially if they dont wear a helmet

So, I have a question.

Do you know anything about actual infantry tactics, or combined infantry/tank tactics, that you didn't learn from a movie or game?

Ok, this has to be bait.

Are you that dense? Because tanks cannot fight in every terrain and are not as versatile as the common infantryman. Theyre harder to produce, require more supplies, vulnerable to certain weapons in certain areas.

Why have special infantry? Same fucking reason the military has special infantry today. Space Marines are supposed to be the equivalent of thousands or more guardsmen.

>Greentext post
>Filename
>Taking it seriously

Wee lad

I am certanly not an expert on infantry tactics.
So if you know more about the topic and see a niche for slow and bulky heavy armored infantry, please enlighten me

>Space Marines are supposed to be the equivalent of thousands or more guardsmen.
how?

They still move better in the jungle than a tank would. Theyre not a force that tries to stay hidden unless the chapter uses such tactics.

Power armor augments the strength, endurance, and speed of the user. Adding their genetics to the equation Space Marines can move faster than Jedi I shit you not.

>before:
some of the most elite soldiers in the entire galaxy
>after:
disposable manlets

he greentexted because he was being ironic, what the fuck

MARINES
EAT
BRAINS
TO
ABSORB
INFORMATION

>They still move better in the jungle than a tank would
but yet much worse than cheaper, unarmored infantry

>Theyre not a force that tries to stay hidden
Then why don't their enemies just call artillery strikes on them?

>Adding their genetics to the equation Space Marines can move faster than Jedi
But still slower than a tank

user this is clearly a bait thread, or you haven't read the books. Space marines are fast, they are not slow. I forgot what the real world math an user once did was, but essentially they can sprint about as fast as a car going like 50 to 60 miles an hour. So imagine how hard you would shit yourself if you had a group of these guys charging your defensive position. Their is an actual term called posthuman dread or something like that to specifically describe the fear an Astartes make someone feel. Lay ontop that they are armored like a tank as you said, and can still move at those speeds makes them even more terrifying. Also in the 41st millenium architecture is different. Of they happen to be fighting on one of the Imperium's less developed worlds they may have difficulty with structures not being as comfortable for them, but i sure as hell won't stop them from killing everything.

They get sent to places where the situation has gone FUBAR, and get the job done with small numbers. The Imperial Guard number in the Trillions and more but the space marines are restricted to 1,000 each chapter. The entire chapter isn't always sent meaning they get even more done with less numbers.

That's a really useful ability to be honest
I would keep people who have that ability out of harms way.
They should be secret service, rather than infantry frontline

Whoops sorry mate I need to drink another beer

can you give an example for a mission where space marines are better suited than both tanks and regular infantry?

How do you know they would be slower? Also every guardsmen is armored with flakjacjets of course, and without power armor their endurance and speed would be lower.

Because the power armor makes them resistant to artillery

Infantry are slower than tracked or wheeled vehicles dont you understand that? Thats why transports exist.

Wow, that is really fast indeed
But I think, a tank can move just as fast
Plus, it will waste much less fuel for that, because by its nature, wheels are more energy efficient than bipedal locomotion

Dude, I was like being ironic and shit.

I just imagine that it would be really difficult for those bulky space marines to move through a thick jungle
And are you really telling me their armor can withstand artillery shells? I find it very hard to believe. Especially if they dont wear helmets

>But I think, a tank can move just as fast
Some tanks, yes.
>Plus, it will waste much less fuel for that, because by its nature, wheels are more energy efficient than bipedal locomotion
An Abrams tank used like a gallon every hour.

Certain situations to kill an enemy commander behind enemy lines. Tanks are spotted from hundreds of kilometers away by even the least advanced sensors in 40k, massed infantry too, sure, you can send in scouts or assassins that might take a while to find the perfect scenario, or you could drop a few Space Marine squads on their position from orbit.

>I just imagine that it would be really difficult for those bulky space marines to move through a thick jungle
That's why they carry chainsaws everywhere.

But seriously, jungles are not tight hallways. They're made of incredibly bendy stuff.
>And are you really telling me their armor can withstand artillery shells? I find it very hard to believe. Especially if they dont wear helmets
Unless they're right next to the shell when it explodes, they'll survive the shrapnel and blastwave.

Stalingrad or Berlin, heavily urbanised area that has been exposed to heavy shelling, or any fighting in Italy, Squishy infantry can't charge machineguns, or fight snipers, without mass casualties. Tanks can't operate without getting panzerfausted from roofs, sticky-bombed from the side, or otherwise fucked up. Space Marines can do these things, as they are more responsive than a tank, and have better senses than someone restricted to a tin can.

That said, combined arms is the way to win wars.

Sounds like a mission that requires stealth
Wouldn't a sniper be better?

Depends entirely on the stairs.

Once again, might take too much time, and the typical enemy that Space Marines are sent to fight are either so stupidly durable that a sniper shot, even to the head, might not pull it off, do sensors and stealth better than the Imperium, and the like.

Space Marines are specialized infantry for special occasions, that's why they're outnumbered thousands to one by even the elite Imperial infantry.

>Tanks can't operate without getting panzerfausted from roofs, sticky-bombed from the side, or otherwise fucked up
can't space marines get panzerfausted aswell?

Lets see a warband of Chaos Space Marines is invading [insert type of world]. The local PDF is overrun and the IG sent there are having trouble dealing with csm and daemons, but the situation hasn't attracted the attention of Grey Knights yet.
Lets say theres a valuable stc on the planet that produces an important ype of vehicle. Space Marines get called in to deal with it.

Fihting would be in an urban environment and against corrupted heavy infantry and daemons. When normal humans encounter Daemons corruption spreads like wildfire, and normal men and women tend to go insane like in hp lovecraft stories. Space Marines are more resistant and capable of fighting them.

Now you might respond this mess wouldnt have started if they didn't exist in the first place. Well we can replace the chaos enemies with any other foe such as the orks, tyranids, necrons, dark eldar, eldar, tau, or some unknown xenosnthat are strong.

Space marines are suited to heavy close quarters fighting that occurs around 1km. Depending on the amount and company sent to this world they may have tanks themselves and different vehicles.

Depends on the location. Dude locked in a fortified bunker will be nigh unkillable by a sniper, instead an infliltration team, or assault team would be better.

Not as easily, because they're infantry that move more easily, can take cover, and work in squads.

They can, but you try panzerfausting running three times as fast as you, with reactions, hand-eye coordination and accuracy many times greater than your fastest, most perceptive and best shots in your army combined (as far as Humans are concerned), on top of massively more experienced and with hyper-advanced sensor suites, including targeters, neurally uplinked to them through their Power Armour.

Space Marines are the kinds of supersoldiers you see in fiction who have put a shot in the chest of every target in the room while one, at most, got a wild shot back in that timezone.

I think the implication here is that an individual space marine is cheaper than an individual tank, which i very much doubt, considering they have to be trained since childhood

so like an inferior version of point-defence?

They can, but you won't kill a squad of 5 in an ambush, at least not without a fight. Marines are significantly smaller than any 40k tank

you know servo-motors are a thing, right?

Sure, except it kills you before you get the shot off and isn't limited by angling, and also has the ability to turn its accuracy against targets outside of its limited programming.

i just dont see how space marines could sneak up to the enemy general, seeing how bulky and visible they are.
As soon as the enemy detects them, the general would get the fuck out, i assume

You rang?

Also, much smaller target, and the only way to get a kill is headshot or body shot.
They are much more expensive, seeing as there are more tanks than space marines, but tanks cannot fulfill the same role.

The Astartes generally wouldn't sneak up, they'd just drop in, from orbit, probably in a pattern so their firing lines and/or spheres of influence forms a lattice to try and prevent escape. The general could try and bug out, but the same risk lies with snipers, except the general's bodyguards can actually deal with snipers in a firefight if they get caught.

Drop pods/teleporters.

Their other abilities make them more useful as Infantry.

>what is the point of tanks that can go inside buildings, guard terrain, fight underwater or in space, etc. etc. etc.

Are you retarded?

Space marine scouts do exist and are more lightly armored so thwy would perform fine in a jungle. I do recognize that light infantry exist for rough terrain such as jungles forests and mountains. Yet with their power armor and superhuman genes space marines do not suffer from the fatigue that a common infantryman would have from lugging his gear around in such environments.

Most do wear helemts they just suffer from the trope of art looks cooler when heroes dont wear helmets.

The thing with artillery is you would need a direct hit to kill a space marine. What kills people the most when it comes to artillery is the fragments from the explosion. Thats why flak jackets would naturally protect from fragments and a power armored suit would be well suited. Even if a space marine gets directly hit he still may survive because he is super human. Space marines have been known to lose limbs and get them replaced with bionics so they become cyborg soace marines.

If I was in charge of the planetary defense, and if normal soldiers weren't able to face the enemy due to corruption, I would take the space marines out of their power armor and put them in tanks, and obliterate the chaos space marines with superior armor and firepower

They are useful for quickly and effectively destroying important targets.

why not just drop in/teleport in bombs?

>Put Space Marines in tanks
>Not putting Servitors in there, who are also resistant to corruption and you don't have to retrofit your tanks for, then uplinking the Servitors to a noospheric grid to keep them effective

Stupid ideas go both ways, user, you've just fallen for your own hatred of tactical incompetence.

you see, the problem that due to their size and the weight of their power armor, i doubt space marines could interact with most of human infrastructure

Well you see user space marines already have tanks so why not have both infantry and tanks? Combined arms warfare is an efficient tactic and this is what space marines and competant guard divisions do.

Because the 40k setting doesn't entirely run off realism in order to allow itself to exist, it was never an exercise in the most efficient or effective methods of warfare and, if it was, the whole setting, along with basically any other mainstream or secondary mainstream sci-fi setting that attempted to claim such.

Just like how 2 meter tall people can't interact with most of human infrastructure.

YOU GODDAMN RETARDED AUTIST.

that's fine
for a moment, i thought some of your guys were arguing that something like space marines could actually be a viable tactic in real life

I'm too tired for this shit.

>attempted to claim such, would fall to pieces

If it was realistic we wouldnt have leman russ tractors, titans, and 1,000 marine limit on chapters. It is hard to believe that a company of 100 space marines could fight and win a battle on a planet.

Of course not, or at the very least not with the kind of warfare we practice today. The concept might be sound if it was radically altered and it's easy to see why in a soft-sci-fi they make sense, but I don't think anyone would argue that anything in 40k is even remotely optimal for its technological level, even the Tau would be considered retarded by proper military experts considering the tech they have.

If it was realistic, there would be no ground armies at all, only nuking planets from the orbit

"My lord, the loyalist commander is sending tanks."
>And what else?
"Nothing else, lord. Just tanks."
>Deploy the raptors, armed with melta bombs. And my Termintator guards, with their chain fists.
"At once, lord!"
>Our enemies hide in METAL BOXES, the cowards! THE FOOLS! We… We should take away their METAL BOXES!
"...Are you all right, my lord?"

And lose out on the intel/resources/structures/hostages you're securing?

Even if your primary goal is death, when you send in the Astartes instead of bombs you can do things like recover the hive spire for the God Emperor without having to rebuild the entire thing.

For a wargame, GW is intentionally ignorant of basic tactics.

Yes, a band of charging Khorne berserkers can be blown into cunky salsa by a few concentrated salvos of ranged fire, turning the entire hill they are on into a crater. GWs MO is not to explain why that cant or wont work, but to simply never have anyone in the past 20,000 years ever think to try it.

A lot of 40ks problems can be solved by a modern day vacuum salesman with a smartphone who watched more than half of Saving Private Ryan on TNT. The censored for TV version, too.

Poor fluff excuses nothing.

Rule of Cool

>trying to score a direct hit on a moving, slightly-larger-than-human target with a slow-firing anti-tank weapon at anything other than point-blank
The hit probability of RPG on a 16'x8' target at 200m is about 51%, with typical modern infantry engagement ranges being about 150m or so you'd really struggle to hit a 7' spessmareen unless you caught him completely unawares.

Well you see the problem with that is it makes having the planet come with more issues like nuclear winter and radiation. Sure world like krieg thrive on that stuff, but some world are important for growing agriculture, mining, place of worship, manufacturing, or being a hive filled with humans.

Fusion weapons, which 40k has already advanced past, would actually cause minimal long-term geological or atmospheric damage beyond the annihilation of the biosphere, which could be terraformed.

So you wouldn't want to do it all the time by any stretch of the imagination, but if push-comes-to-shove it's not a pointless move.

Whoops responded to the wrong post heres my response user

SINDREEE
youtube.com/watch?v=gqinPt-vN54

Space marines are a Huge investment considering how their recruitment procedure is inefficient and takes a long ass time to produce results kind of like the Spartan-II program in halo.

If we had such a thing in real life it would be stupid due to how many kids would die until a candidate was found.

Sure. But that probability goes up when you are aiming at a group of them, and you are not the only one firing.

The problem isnt that marines are not better than baseline humans. They are. The problem is that they are not anywhere near invulnerable enough or punchy enough to justify their cost and timesink. I can have a thousand guardsmen with rocket launchers and long range artillery support for less than it costs to produce and equip a single marine, and in a fraction of the time, too.

With one or two exceptions, the guard can use the same guns as the marines anyway, so no firepower is really lost. And there are a worrying number of things that instakill a marine just as much as a human, so whats the point?

The IoM doesnt need a smaller number of super soldiers. They need to equip their REGULAR soldiers like they are expected to matter.

You're talking out of your ass. Concentrated fire and the like get employed constantly in the books, and it also works on the tabletop as well. If you make your Khornates charge out from the open like idiots they die.

IRL RPGs can't breach Power Armor, they're way too weak for that. You can use 40k RPGs to kill or injure Spess though, especially if you use krak missiles.

>let's use exterminatus only!!!
Except you need to defend your own populations or to remove the enemy without killing your dudes. You can't win on Armageddon via orbital bombing, because even if you did that and managed to kill every single Ork on it, that would mean destroying the entire industrial infrastructure which would render Armageddon entirely without value, and that's something the Imperium cannot afford (neither can they afford rebuilding the most important parts).
Also annihilation of the biosphere might be un-repairable, or require enormous amounts of time. Nobody knows how terraforming would work IRL and I'm not sure the Imperium even has the tech for it.

>It is hard to believe that a company of 100 space marines could fight and win a battle on a planet.
Why? SM rarely engage in field battles, they're more frequently used as shock troops that utterly decimate the areas they get into. They're like SF that don't need to fear getting shot at, like having Rambo IRL.

aren't orcs like spores or some shit
unless you use bioweapons, anihilation of biosphere seems like the only option to me

Here is one very important things you need to understand about tactics in 40k: If it looks like the Imperium is doing a stupid thing when it comes to warfare, it's probably because the Imperium is doing a stupid thing.

Well eith the arrival of the Primaris marines and papa smurff we might finally see he space marines go back to legion and great crusade strength where there were a lot more space marines.

I do agree though if only the guard were armed and armored like other sci fi verses such as mass effect, halo, starcraft, starship troopers the book not the ig movie. Add onto this with modern tech designs that wern't created by a dolt. Then they would kick the ass of those filthy blueberry communists and every other enemy of the Imperium.

The actually moves way faster than a human

They are called Space Marines because they are marines that fight in space.

Tanks don't move so good in space.

>What's the point of Space Marines?

Depends, are you talking about for the setting or the lore? For the setting, it's obvious. They're pretty neat and offer a cool idea to play.

For the lore? Well, they're designed to be used in a shocktrooper role with the support of armor and lighter infantry from the Solar Auxilia. They were the big, meaty armored fucks they used to exploit gaps that couldn't be exploited by tanks.

In "modern" 40k, they're used more in a Special Forces role due to the separation of Chapters and the limit of supplies and resources. They're the fuckers that do what the normal special forces can't, either due to lack of capabilities or lack of numbers. Astartes are a lot sturdier, a lot better armed and have abilities that you can't replicate with experience.

If the Imperium could equip Guardsmen with power Armour, they would... or would they, actually? Is it really a good idea to provide masses of men whose loyalty isn't even guaranteed (PDF rebel all the time, IG regiments can fall to Chaos, etc.) equipment that would be close to or equal to what the Space Marines have?

They are. Eradicating Ork incursions is extremely difficult, almost impossible IIRC, but there are many cases where destroying the planet or severely damaging it is not possible.
In Armageddon the destruction of the biosphere wouldn't be a problem actually because there's no biosphere to speak of left anyway, but you'd need to wipe out the infrastructure as well, and that cannot be done.

They can run at speed of 50km/h so...They outrun some tanks

>Tanks don't move so good in space.
Oh yeah? Checkmate athiest.

They are super elite light infantry (in the modern sense i.e. unsupported by significant mechanized and armored elements, perhaps enjoying light direct-fire artillery, sometimes supported by indirect fire or air elements) that are meant to operate detached from the main body of deployed forces. Their purpose is to eliminate high-hat targets that cannot be taken out by other means (e.g. dug-in forces in a hardened location that can't be dislodged by bombing and is too risky to assault frontally) or to take positions with things that you want for yourself (and therefore can't destroy) and to hold those positions until they can be relieved by heavier (read: has artillery and tanks) forces.

Light infantry has to be able to engage both soft and hard targets, and SM equipment fits the bill since they are almost all carrying man-portable, rapid-firing rocket launchers and are armored/mobile enough to not immediately wither away under fire.

They are also, on an operational level, logistically self-sufficient, if not indefinitely so. They carry along almost all if not all of what they need and can be combat effective for long periods of time without resupply.

Their ability to insert on both the tactical and operational.level assists in all levels of their mission. The value of opening up another front against an enemy, especially if they are unprepared for it, should not be underestimated, especially if they can do so without being the extra juicy and relatively vulnerable target that is massed armor that also needs more or less continuous supply lines.

In this regard, think of them as something like WWII to post-WWII paratroopers or modern-day air cavalry.

I always hated the guntank design i think its an utter abomination.

I prefer stark jegans and gm snipers along wih the geara zulu. Those are great looking suits can you imagine if the imperiums had mobile suits? Basically titans in spaaaaaaaaceeeee. It would teach those blue communists a lesson.

>Why would you need dude who moves at 90 kmph, lift 2tons, can withstand RPG like nothing and his most basic weapon is basically a automatic grenade laucher with the precision of a rifle?

>heavy infantry.
>faster, stronger, way harder to kill than normal doods
>the power armor they wear lets them wield weapons that normally require a crew or vehicle to field.
>They have their own vehicles too for when the air becomes filled with explosions and las cannon beams.

Space marines are an example of scale. While it might take 500 humans to capture a building. it'd only take like 10 marines, mostly because the marines are walking meat grinders.

Death watch uses them as special forces with max emphasis on "right time, right place". Plus having a soldier that can naturally live 1,000 years kind of helps out in the long run.

>Their purpose is to eliminate high-hat targets that cannot be taken out by other means (e.g. dug-in forces in a hardened location that can't be dislodged by bombing and is too risky to assault frontally) or to take positions with things that you want for yourself (and therefore can't destroy) and to hold those positions until they can be relieved by heavier (read: has artillery and tanks) forces.
They also sometimes just drop in among the Guard so that they can get a morale boost, because oh my gaaaaaaaaaaaaaad (emperor) turns out the Astartes weren't just legends but actually real.