Well...isn't it.
All the elite eggs in one basket that is.
I mean personally I'm not happy about the fact that Vanaheim produces most of our ships because as was demonstrated with the recent decision on where to send the Waargh we really have to shape everything around the fact that most of our ships are made there. As for Midgard, that's a result of happenstance more than anything else. Midgard is just the Hive world, with luck it won't be alone soon.
Ensuring all elites are made on Avernus does make sense from a purely efficiency based perspective that you're going for, but as has already been stated it'll never fly with the other members of the Trust and I'm doubtful your plan would have major impact on two fronts.
1. Even if we're constantly conscripting anyone who makes it into the PDF we'll never match the numbers of the Chosen or Svartalfguard, even before the fact that we can't conscript everyone comes into account and the higher up you go there are fewer and fewer candidates for Helguard ect.
2. A dependency problem. All it takes is something cutting us off for us to collapse and the Trust to be badly weakened (already a problem, but lets not exacerbate it).
Vanaheim producing most of our warships is something we deal with. And it's entirely worth it.
1. Is utterly ridiculous. Chosen are not who I'm talking about at all. They're the chaff that make up the bulk of the Trust's armies and not really elites at all. They're part of the balance of elites not being all the eggs in the first place. Svartalfguard numbers are low enough that just promoting a decent fraction of Helltroopers to Helguard with the increased gear would be enough. We already know there are enough candidates for that sort of numerical increase, we just can't possibly afford it in the current state.
2. Cutting off Midgard would probably implode the Trust because we wouldn't have the chaff to fill out our armies. Cutting off Vanaheim would see the Trust without enough naval assets to possibly fend off the naval attacks we deal with. Why is this any different?
Nah fair amount more, due to transport and our inability to maintain it.
Not because we wouldn't have enough resources under your proposal, but because we just wouldn't have enough artisans, who we cannot move from Svartalfheim to Avernus (well unless we want a lot of dead artisans.)
You miss the utterly obvious solution. You move Avernite soldiers to Svartalfheim and have their gear maintained there. This simultaneously gains the benefit of Avernite troop quality, Svartalfheim equipment quality, and spreads out troops so they aren't all trapped if a planet is caught in a Warp storm.
Rituals yes, compacts and contracts with Daemons though. Those can be arranged far in advance and take a lot of souls as well and if you have a glut of souls from an angry populace this is the perfect time to be making deals that ordinarily you'd take more time on.
Unless of course they do what they always do, which is raid other less fortified targets. It'll be harder to do that later on as the weak polities get smashed, but I'm pretty sure the Tzeenchian domain at least can just ride in with their super weapon make a list of demands collect and leave.
Suddenly tada they've got a new population and all the military equipment they could need for a while.
If it was practical for them to do that they would
already do that.
1) The Knight issue is one that is largely political like with the Mechanicus issue if IIRC.
2) It was mentioned that it is actually really expensive and time consuming to heavily focus on Naval production which is why not everyone is doing that. Even then Avernus is another planet that has it's own ship yard and IIRC Midgard is building up it's own as well now.
3) Midgard is a hive world meaning it has a far higher population than literally all the other planets combined so of course they have the most soldiers out of everyone.
4) Having too much power in the hands of a few people also lead to the Imperium being such a shit show since the Imperium got so big it couldn't run everything without serious issues. Which is why I doubt anyone is going to be thrilled with the idea of trying to unite all of humanity under one Empire again after how badly it went last time.
5) Max efficiency isn't always a good idea since as an example it would be far more efficient to create AI's or even Man of Stone for our tech but there are obvious issues with that.
1. It being a political issue automatically makes it exempt somehow? It's a serious issue in that it's a case where Asgard is the
only one that provides them. Elites, ships, and chaff are all provided by multiple worlds to at least some degree.
2. It's really expensive and time consuming to heavily focus on elite production, which is why everyone shouldn't be doing that. Avernus building its own shipyards is really another issue, I don't think that's all that great an investment on our part given how ruinous our military budget is for us to afford to build ships as well.
3. Which no one seems to have a problem with. Avernus is a death world being it has far better elites than literally all other planets combined so
it should produce the elites.
4. I completely disagree with pretty much that entire statement, but I don't see it as all relevant to the proposal.
5. Point of fact people
want Men of Stone, and it has come up that we want to start using them again. We also strongly suspect that Muspelheim has active AIs right now.
An important thing to note is that Rotbart is perhaps one of the greatest human generals alive who has control of some of the deadliest warriors in the galaxy with a literal army of hihgly trained psykers and even several Paragons under him. Him falling is likely considered one of the absolute worst case scenerios. Hence why I imagine that everyone else in the Trust would be against the idea of giving him access to everyones best soldiers under him since they would actually want said elites incase Rotbart fell to chaos which is a serious issue with his people being near fanatically loyal to him leaving them to fall with him.
Again as mentioned with the Horus Heresy and Goge Vandire as really good examples for why you should avoid that kinf of thing the Trust would be even more against the idea.
That would actually be a better argument for Avernus to have never built shipyards. Because he's already such a devastating land based threat that any realistic battle plan against him would want to stop him in space instead. So if you wanted to maintain power balance and minimize Rotbart's threat, not allowing him a planetary navy would have made way more sense.
Also Avernus kills off Chaos itself, so if Rotbart fell to Chaos the planet would kill him. So it's really not that comparable.
Kinda.
Knights can only be used by members of the Questoris Familia, which requires specific genetic codes and markers that we can't currently replicate.
Even if we could it would still be political though.
That would basically be a reason to send the members with those markers to other planets and make babies.
Yes, and at Turn 99, in spite of being the third highest producer of AM, their AM expenditures on their military is rather high relative to their population. For instance, they spend a bit more AM on their army than Vanaheim does, with Vanaheim having over three times their population. Also, at T99 they were spending more AM on their army than anyone else, including Avernus, with many worlds not spending EM on their armies at all. Based on that data Svartaflheim's armies are among the best equipped in the Imperial Trust. The notion that they aren't really contributing anything to the Trust as a whole by spending on their city defenses just doesn't hold water as far as I'm concerned.
They have vastly more AM production than Avernus. And really this loops back around to the Trust would be stronger as a whole if it funneled resources to where they would be efficiently used instead of each planet building its own independent military. Svartalfheim's armies are some of the best equipped in the Trust, but not at all the best soldiers in the Trust.
Ork Defence (1 Gargantuan Hulk (75,000km),1 Huge Hulk (29,000km) 6 Large Hulks (3,500km,7,500km, 7500km, 9,000km, 9,800km), 7 Small Space Hulks (250km, 330km,690km, 690km, 1,500k, 2,000km), 19 Battleships, 147 Kroozer Squadrons, 7,245 Roks, 757 Escort Flotillas, 9,408 Attack Craft Flotillas) d100=59+21(skill)+100(Waagh)-22(Martial)-10(surprise)-25(mines)=23
I find the
negative 22 Martial amusing.
I don't really get how Hulk losses are calculated though. Small hulks in Svartalfheim we inflicted 18 +4.1+.5 "per 250km^3" on them. That amounts to 5,650 km^3. If we then add up the total they entered the system with: Small Space Hulks (250km, 330km,690km, 690km, 1,500k, 2,000km) = 5,460 km^3. We should have eliminated
all of their Small Space Hulks. Yet there's still 2.41 units of 250km^3 of Small Space Hulks left on the sheet.
Likewise Large Hulks we killed 10 + 6.0 +1.1+.2 units of 1000 km^3, so 17,300 km^3. Out of 6 Large Hulks (3,500km,7,500km, 7500km, 9,000km, 9,800km) = 37,300 km^3. So there should be 20.0 units left. Instead there's 21.66 units left on the sheet.
@Durin: Could you confirm on the Large and Small Hulk numbers?
Well that was decisive, the orks managing to enter the system in one go upped our casualties somewhat but Sarnow managed to gut the ork fleet.
Guess Sarnow didn't want this war to be decided on the ground after all.
We wiped out over half the lieutenants and their elite entourages in space, that will certainly make things easier.
We lost 82.33 shadows in the first ambush? How does that work? Is that 83rd just damaged, is there a number missing, or is that eight thousand shadows we lost?
Damage. The system represents damage to ships smoothly, so a ship at 33% damage deals 33% less damage to enemies.
Still from my brief look at things we inflicted disproportionate casualties, but the light elements took a lot of damage.
Our light elements always get wrecked, it's why we were recommended to get rid of frigates and destroyers and go to escort cruisers after the last war. The escorts simply don't have the survivability in this sort of war. Though this was actually the best our escorts have done recently. We actually have more surviving escorts than they do.
