Zhu Bajie":vfhwgium said:
AranaszarSzuur":vfhwgium said:
Anyway, it seems you have some alternate setting in mind. Have you ever considered creating your own instead of spreading disinformation?
You seem to be the one claiming the Imperium is somehow supposed to humanity at the height of its technological and military power, rather than a crumbling disjointed wreck that's way best it's prime, and basically rubbish. Read the Timeline of the Imperium and the notes on technology.
So yeah. Power armour is crappy medeival plate, with movement penalties taken out, yes, a space-marine would get his arse handed to him on a plate by a heroic level character, and offed by a goblin with a pointy stick, the Eldar are superior to humanity in every way. The background completely supports this. That is the essence of Rogue Trader.
Power Armour isn't a medieval plate. Plate armour is a medieval plate, but possibly made with superior metals that make it an equivalent of a more advanced Mesh Armour. Power Armour is an equivalent of Carapace Armour.
There's a classification of armour in the rulebook:
Plate and Chain armour are classified as Primitive, while Carapace, Flak, Mesh and Powered armour are classified as Modern.
I've read the time-line of the Imperium and notes on technology. The Imperium is crumbling and superstitious but its technology is still way beyond stuff we have. We don't have power sources for lasguns and lascannons and power armour, we don't have power fields, power weapons, we don't have star ships, we even don't have system space ships, we don't have anti-gravity, we don't have lots of technologies they have.
The fall of technology in Imperium is mainly about losing the ability to understand and invent new technology. In Rogue Trader we don't even have the idea of technologies becoming lost and rare like in later editions with Space Marine AFVs, skimmers, etc.
Eldar are better than baseline humans but they still use STC weapons and armour just like most of aliens. And before 2nd ed they didn't have monopoly on a lot of stuff like shuriken catapults, jetbikes and hover tanks.
The background doesn't support Space Marines being weaker than non-enchanced human heroes, the opposite, it states that they are ultimate warriors of humanity.
By the way, there's also insufficient differentiation between weapons. For example a bolter fires a projectile that explodes while in flesh and Wh40k explosives are about 30x more powerful than modern ones, so it probably should do multi-wound damage, unlike many other firearms.
Zhu Bajie":vfhwgium said:
Lets have a look at the front cover, the piece that sets the scene for the Rogue Trader experience:
What do we see? Dead space marines, lots of dead Space Marines. Space Marines getting their arses kicked. Space Marines with bleeding heads.See that guy that's getting dramatically shot in the chest? You can see the shadowy figure of a space orc what did shoot him? And what's that coming over the hill? Some mega-monster robots. About to totally annihilate them. Why? Because they ain't fearsome super-heroes.
You're conflating heroes and super-human with super-heroes. That's not the same. For example an athlete on steroids and doping has super-human abilities because of using these to move past un-enhanced human abilities.
I see a bunch of superhuman heroes making a heroic last stand against overwhelming enemy forces that had to bring in multiple dreadnoughts to finish them off.
Space Marines with bleeding heads are obviously minor heroes that have lost one wound
.
Theme of martyrdom doesn't mean there's no exceptional heroic characters involved.
Zhu Bajie":vfhwgium said:
Looks to me like this Space Marine can only kill a goblin at point blank range. Goblin couldn't hit an elephant, let alone a Space Marine. This is entirely consistent wiv da roolz. What did he do, creep up behind him with his super-stealthy clanking space armour? lol!
This image just showcases the raw psychotic aggression of Space Marines. There needed to be a close up on the Space Marine and the goblin, so it's impossible to guess what the situation is supposed to be. The goblin/marine could just go around a corner of a trench or a building or something. Or maybe assault as a part of a huge horde.
Also Wil Rees is actually the guy that came up with the concept of
Space Marines being super-human:
The games workshop had a very talented sculptor create a tiny figurine of a Space Marine. I thought it was amazing but I decided to design them the way I thought they should look, bulky and covered with power armour. I wanted the Marines to be as terrifying and imposing as possible at the time. These Marines had to face incredible foes and I came up with the idea of them being really bulked up on chemicals and larger than the average human. I’m not sure if I ever explained that concept to anyone at the Games Workshop, but they loved the direction of the illustrations and I just kept going.
Zhu Bajie":vfhwgium said:
What's that? A Space Marine being offed by some unique Heroic level character? or just a run of the mill Adeptus Sororitas? Look, he can't even hit her from 2 foot away. Shurely shome mishtake! No. This is what Rogue Trader is all about.
For all we know, Adepta Sororita may be as extreme about selection and training as Space Marines, so they may even be un-enchanced minor heroes.
Also, his miss may have something to do with being hit by an exploding bolt. Then again, there are very strong limitations of art presenting a conflict between two characters.
Zhu Bajie":vfhwgium said:
It might be fun to go through the whole of Rogue Trader and tally up the number of images of space marines winning vs. the number of them getting ripped to shreds by enemy fire. Yes, these are the best humanity has, but they are the fail.
They are ripped to shreds by... something. For all we know it may be a heavy bolter or an auto-cannon or some other heavy/special weapon.
Also, note that we almost never actually get to see the enemies of Space Marines.
Zhu Bajie":vfhwgium said:
The awesome ultimate space heroes you seem to be describing is better represented by something like this:
What do we see? Fist-pumping space dudes wading though a load of orcs completely untouched. Yeah WE ROCK! Look at our super-shiney giant-size space tech! We are TEH HEROES! IMHO whole idea that a Space Marine should be Teh Awesum is summed up right there. Nothing to do with the background, presentation and rules of marines in Rogue Trader.
It has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
Note how none of them isn't even visibly wounded and none of them is blasted apart by heavy/special weapons fire, despite that each ork squad would have one and they are armed with bolters.
Also, art in Rogue Trader is hugely inconsistent, with a lot of it seemingly being drawn in different stages of design and some with some artists not getting a memo that things changed.
How about
this?
We have a statuesque heroic marine, that will probably die a few moments later. There are other marines at his feet, that got literally chewed up by enemy fire.
