but I guess their peers(astartes chapter masters and Inquisitors) aren't? I'm actually kind of surprised by that.
Entirely agree with you that the Imperium don't enforce the rules around this, and indeed heresy in general, in a consistent way. Partly the tracker is written from an IC perspective, that's why it says 'filthy xenos' for lizardmen for example.
Specifically using authority as an example, the Codex Astartes specifically forbids Marines to command mortal troops, and in general a lot of Imperial regulations are designed to prevent the conditions for another Horus Heresy (eg, separating army and navy, forbidding combined arms regiments).
Generally we don't know what the Emperor wanted for his Space Marines after the Great Crusade, there's a line somewhere that says he was going to kill them all like the Thunder Warriors, but Gulliman seems to think they could become administrators.
In universe the authority of space marines is in question quite frequently. Strictly speaking they're only accountable to the High Lords, who I doubt care much if some marines seize a particular planet or sector. The problem becomes when other people get involved. There was some chapter who did that and an Imperial Fist Chaplain came up and killed all of them (it was not a well written story) because he considered it heresy. Comparably, the Karthan Sector command oppose Huron taking Badab, and complain to Terra about it, who don't care much for several hundred years till the Badab War breaks out. Also there's always Ultramar etc.
If you compare that to a Rogue Trader, the purposes of different organisations are different. I can see that Space Marines might not have the authority to do some things, but might be permitted or ordered to do them anyway, because the High Lords don't want Chapters wandering off all over the place when they need to be crusading in X sector. Comparably, Rogue Traders, like Inquisitors, are specifically and formally outside the chain of command. As another example, if an inquisitor or rogue trader created a pocket empire somewhere in a wilderness, eventually someone would say 'ok, give that to the administratum now'. yes an Inquisitor could do it with their authority, but they're not meant to be running worlds so some other inquisitors could turn up and say 'hang on a minute'.
Generally in this sort of case I'd emphasise the informal nature of authority in the Imperium. Chains of command are often not as precise as you're implying. Yes Techmarines have taken rites on Mars and similar, so might have a certain rank, probably as a Magos, but that doesn't, for example, mean an Archmagos could command them. Would a Librarian hold a specific and explicit rank in the Psykana? I don't think so, and I think actually on the negative, because Dark Angels let Librarians into the inner circle when they don't let techmarines because of the Mars association, however, 'would anyone question a librarian doing warp stuff' or 'would a psykana person obey a librarian' are entirely different questions and don't rely on that formal of a classification.
FWIW, I'd been waiting because I thought there was going to be more writeup of this previously mentioned item:
Didn't think you'd go for it as it's risky but I was going to cover it in the results chapter, in any case, for now:
Experimental Rapid Zygote Maturation - When Apothecaries mature zygotes from the Chapter's Gene-seed, they can only implant as many seed-organs as there are Progenoid Glands in the first place. Thus, a single Progenoid Gland can be used to mature a single Maintainer, a single Forge of Strength, a single Rememberer, and so on. With the experimental theory developed by Thalis in his study of the Chapter's Gene-seed, the Chief Apothecary believes he can modify this process to ensure each Progenoid can be used to create double the number of zygotes. This means that double the number of Scouts can be trained and implanted, with the survivors receiving the actual Progenoid Glands themselves. However, Thalis warns that the long term effects of such potentially heretical modifications to the Emperor's holy work cannot be predicted.
With this (if it worked given Thalis has just had the idea and hasn't tested it properly) you could effectively treat your geneseed stock as doubled. It wouldn't actually be, it's just the zygotes, but 90% of the aspirants are going to die anyway so they'll be enough progenoids at the end of the process. In general the problem isn't the lack of progenoids, its a downstream thing of a lack when you've got lots of aspirants.
In general this plan feels like it's micromanaging elements of teaching that the Astartes have experience with, my impression was that our job as voters is mostly the high-level decisions not the specifics of shuffling around neophytes.
Yea I'd agree with Exmorri. There's no need to specify specific elements of the different things, and I think that complicates things really. It's the same reason all the Companies have just numbers rather than 'heres brother so and so of squad 3 and here are his stats and he's armed with this'. The Blood Ravens quest torraror did had that sort of thing and I always thought it was insane and I'm not really sure how they managed to maintain such a system.
I'm uncertain who this applies to. If my plan assigns 500 of the latest tithe to various trainers, does that mean the other 800 die because the chapter already started injecting them? Or does it mean that if a Veteran Scout Trainer dies, his 10 aspirants die too?
So no one has started to be implanted yet. Oh apart from Tithe 1, they have. But none of the 1331 Tithe 2 cohort have. If someone from Tithe 2 isn't implanted they'll be released elsewhere (eg to serfguard) and probably won't be heard of again, other than perhaps a minor reference as you say if they know what a bear sounds like in a future battle etc. Comparably, if you've got 36 Sergeant trainers now and you implant 500 Scouts, you can only properly monitor 360 of them using the trainers, so therefore the remaining unmonitored scouts might have some medical problem that no one picks up on and therefore die because their geneseed broke or whatever.
On your second point, no, if a trainer dies their scouts will be distributed again, If you went a little bit over this, eg 10 scouts distributed to 5 squads meaning 12 scouts per trainer, that would be fine, if you went to 20 though that would be a problem. Comparably, if you went with the Black Templar idea, you'd have to assume that if a battle brother died then his attendant died too given they'd be squishier.
To lay all this out:
130 Tithe 1 Scouts, which will be reduced to about 20 in another 7 years or so. At that point they'll require 20 Progenoid Glands to implant.
1331 Tithe 2 Aspirants, which will be reduced to 133 in roughly 9 years, at which point they'll need 130 Progenoid Glands to implant.
However, both groups need zygotes to implant now, and there are specific stages at which each new organ is produced and cultured by the Apothecaries, then implanted.
You have 612 Progenoids, therefore your current 'implantation capacity' is 612. With Thalis' experimental treatment, you could have more. Equally this could go badly wrong and wipe out your stock of modified organs entirely. At most, you could double your capacity to 1224.
The 10th Company has 36 Veteran Trainers. This is an abstraction, I have no wish to specifically track the squad size of each. As such assume that if one squad gets reduced then the trainer will take on more from another or whatever. Therefore your training capacity is 360.
Your current organisation is as follows:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 10 | Armoury | Reclusiam | Librarium | Apothecarium | Totals |
| Leaders | 2 | 2 | x | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 12 |
| Apoths | 1 | 2 | x | 1 | 3 | | | | 2 | 9 |
| Chaplains | 1 | 1 | x | 1 | 4 | | | | | 7 |
| Techmarines | 1 | | x | | | 14 | 5 | | | 20 |
| Librarians | | | x | | | | | 2 | | 2 |
| Veterans | 7 | | x | | 36 | | | 1 | | 44 |
| BBs | | 78 | x | 60 | | | | | | 138 |
Not available for various reasons: 3 apoths, 5 acolytes, 2 apprentice techmarines, 2 veterans and a librarian, 32 bbs, 1 librarian, 8 bbs
You could use these numbers to boost your training and implantations capacities. Assume that you could get 2 Progenoids from each specialist, leader, or veteran, and from 3/4s of the bbs, for a total of 396 more Progenoids, bringing you up to 1008 Progenoids. Again, there are risks to this.
Assume that each leader, specialist or veteran could act as a trainer. For example, you could have 10 Norscans with trade skills join the Armoury to become Techmarines in future. You could take the last remaining veterans from the 1st Company and put them in the 10th. This has effects though, if there's no one in the 10th then you don't really have a Terminator squad capability anymore because Brother so and so is off doing something else training people and he might not be able to make it back to put his suit on in time to fight whatever's attacking. Assume also that the Techmarines, for example, would be busy actually making stuff, so assigning them a load of people to train would further reduce your action budget potentially. However, in extremis, you could assign 360 Scouts to specialists instead of scouting, 138 to your 138 BBs as Black Templar style initiates, and 70 more to your last 'free' veterans. That's 568 extra slots, +360 existing budget, for 928 training capacity.
I'll note that the 10th have already tested and so on. The remaining Aspirants of the Norscan tithe are very good, and there's little to differentiate them form each other in terms of quality. Therefore only crude methods like 'have them kill each other till you have 10% left' are available.
But after the Sorcerer's Isles are conquered, I hope to take the Settlement of Araby option next turn: