Beeple-beep beep! How exactly is human life the cheapest resource

>>50375397
it's 40k, don't think to hard about it.

>>50375397
>In the here and now, the life of a soldier is estimated to be in the millions
The lives of western soldiers.
There's a lot of soldiers who have basically no training and are told to grab a gun, and start shooting at the enemy. That's the PDF.

It's only expensive if you use money training them and feeding them and paying them, and giving them medical care and protection, instead of executing them if they step out of line or say the wrong thing.

>>50375428
The PDF are still usually on a similar level to what you might find in a modern army. It's just that the imperial guard are the best of the best of the best.

It's just some writer being poetic. It's not really true.

>>50375627
Next thing you're going to tell me is that the Emperor can't hit someone with the force of a thousand supernovas.

Because there's only so many Forge Worlds.

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>>50375627
This. The Administratum actually gets pretty salty about being wasteful with the Emperor's manpower.

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Don't question it. Anyone who says the Imperium is actually doing it's best or trying not be wasteful has been drinking too much HFY kool-aid. The Imperium is backwards, corrupt, and abysmally retarded in almost every conceivable way.

>>50375806
>paint : 2.5mil

Please help me balance my budget, my imperium is starving

>>50375806
>Life is the Emperor's currency, spend it well.

>>50375855
>wahhh, my grimdark HAS to be maximally terribleblack

>>50375397
Life of american soldier is estimated in billons. Most other countries don't overspend on their soldiers that much and can suppress media if need be. Russia had lost estimately 10k soldiers and fuck knows how many mercenaries in Ukrainian conflict over last 2 years, and it's nothing compared to loses all the warring sides in Syria had, yet neither Russia nor Syria/ISIS are going bankrupt (the later actually THRIVE), because their soldiers are actually quite cheap.

>>50375905
>billons
millions

>>50375515
Being best of the early WW2 soviet conscript tide army aren't saying much.

>>50375960
It varies from planet to planet. One planet Bumfuck in the far reaches of the Imperium the PDF are just farmers fighting with outdates weapons. While on the sector capital in a sector close or inside the segmentum solar might have well equipped fully trained standing armies as a PDF

>>50375905
>Life of american soldier is estimated in billons

>citation needed

>>50375960
If it's relative to the planet, that stlil makes a soldier's life relatively expensive compared to the other resources.

>>50375397
40k is dumb as shit. That's the answer to your dumb questions. Now get out, because this shit is not /tg/.

>>50376923
>Now get out, because this shit is not /tg/.
you what
literally this is a question regarding the lore of a /tg/ franchise

>>50375397
The Imperium is run by idiots

>>50376965
>the lore of a traditional game is not /tg/
kek'd

>>50375397
> life of a grunt
> measured in millions
A thousand keks. What fucking world do you live in. And both you sperg I'm active military you fucks

>>50376983
4DKids is hardly /tg/, it's reddit-/v/ NARPfag memeshit.

>>50377030
>stop liking what I don't like
not even a 40kfag, but shake the sand out of your cooch.

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>>50377067
4DKids and deendee, rather, the NARPfags they attract, are responsible for 99% of shit threads like this, and a strong majority of shitposting, probably 70%.

>>50375806
>points out the exact fucking chair the idiot will sit on
I love this. The Imperium should be full of pettiness and snark despite hanging onto the cliff's edge constantly.

>>50377024
Literally google "average cost of an american soldier".
Between the training, the gear, the benefits, and the supply chain needed to keep that soldier working efficiently, the cost of keeping that soldier doing his job is in the millions. I'm sure this isn't even taking into account opportunity cost of them doing that instead of going into the workforce proper.

>>50377024
You cost us a lot, and that's not even including your payceck.

>>50377122
>stop liking what I don't like

>>50377192
That's because this "cost" is imposed on us by hypercapitalism's artificial scarcity apparatus. The amount of effort, energy, and material resources needed to create an American infantryman is absolutely trivial for an advanced post-industrial nation such as ours.

>>50377335
Not an argument

>>50377398
But accurate.

>>50377398
Fuck off Stefan

>>50377362
BAD GOY, DOWN

>>50377658
Interesting that you believe yourself to be talking to two separate people.

>>50377690
Not an argument.

>>50377658
>Fuck off Stefan
When did this throw a random name into a post shit start? Easily the worst meme of the last few years.

>>50375806
>one week of theraputic accountancy training/penance
>theraputic
Interesting "punishment" there.

It would be hilarious if the Administratum is like the General Services Administration in America, basically a really boring agency who secretly splurges on dumb shit like trips and parties etc.

Psykers are much more valuable than normal humans, and humans may be considered the inert byproduct of psyker creation.

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Excuse me Commissar, why is there a bat-faced beastman pretending to be me?

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>>50377727
>Stefan
>random name

>>50377727
I think it started around 2006,

>>50377900
Get the fuck out of here you inferior shit lord.

>>50375424
fpbp

>>50378021
Not
An
Argument

>>50380803
>>>/pol/

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>>50377067
>>50377030
Nigga this board was literally made because of Warhammer Wednesday threads on /b/

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>>50380803
>Arguments
>not a spook

>>50380829
/pol/ is a spook

>>50380863
>this old lie again

You 40kids can stop that already.
You're never going to stop with your "muh warhammer wednesdays" meme, are you?

For one thing, 40k was never banned from /b/. Can't really call /tg/ a containment board if it was never contained on that board. Really, those WW threads were not really as important as you sort of wish they were.

Secondly, D&D was big in /co/, /v/, and /b/, and there were always scatterings of other games as well on those boards (in fact, by raw numbers there were, and still are, more D&D/roleplaying threads than 40k threads by a large margin), along with random 40k threads outside of /b/. At some point, moot said "hey, there's these game threads in these boards that aren't comics or video games, maybe I should make a board for them." Hence, why it's called /tg/ and not /40k/.

If you have any evidence to support your "/tg/ was made as a 40k containment board", any evidence at all, I'd love to see it.
Until you provide some, the burden of proof is on you, and you can stop going about repeating your old lie.

>>50380936

Fuck me, what are we, Congress? /tg/ is Traditional Games. Warhammer is a traditional game. DnD is a traditional game. I'm so fucking sorry we don't talk about Monopoly and Cards Against Humanity instead.

>>50375397
Humans by themselves are 'cheap' because they are naturally occurring. It's possible they cost you nothing. Training and arming soldiers can cost something though. Properly budgeted they tend to cost much less than sophisticated and/or powerful machinery.

>>50380960
Warhammer is a traditional game. That's fine.

But, if you're going to go about and try to pretend that 40k deserves special privileges or station because of an empty myth, that's where we run into trouble.

>>50380992
What fucking special privileges or station are you talking about?

The statement isn't "imperial guardso are the cheapest resource in the imperium," it's HUMAN LIVES. Most humans in the galaxy live shitty, short lives doing a repetitive, garbage job so they can pair off, have kids, who will in turn take over that shitty, repetitive job, and continue the cycle. A single city on a primus hive world contains more people than the entire planet right now. Necromunda has EIGHT of those cities, and there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of hive world's in the galaxy. You can call Bullshit on a lot of 40k fluff, but human lives being cheap is totally consistent.

>>50377362
It costs $2.1 million per year for each soldier deployed in Afghanistan: Report. In 2014, it will cost an average of an eye-popping $2.1 million for every U.S. troop serving in Afghanistan, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA)

>>50381031
Well, for example, attempting to qualify as a traditional game purely on account of that myth, like this guy just tried to do >>50380863.

40k is indisputably a traditional game because it's first and foremost a war game. Attempting to use an old lie as justification for why 40k is on /tg/ is ridiculous, especially because using a baseless myth works against you while the simple truth (it's a traditional game) is all the justification neccesary.

It's on /tg/ because it's just like any other traditional game, nothing more, nothing less.

>>50381072
That's the cost to keep them alive, right?
Can we save money by having them killed?

>>50380992

Motherfucker. I know this may be hard for retarded crack babies like yourself, but open your eyes and read.

>Now get out, because this shit is not /tg/.

This is what started this whole fucktarded mess. You're responding with this.

>Warhammer is a traditional game. That's fine.

And >>50381163


Either you are the same anon and can't stop dribbling bullshit from your cleft lip, or you aren't the same anon and couldn't read a simple fucking thread.

>>50381207
My issue is not with 40k being here.
My issue is with you perpetuating an old lie, especially as a move in an argument.

I am not your enemy, nor are you mine. My enemies are lies and falsehoods, and as long as you don't plan on spreading either, we are in accord.

>>50381250

Except you began with "This shit (40k) is not /tg/."

Fuck off.

>>50381319
I'm a different guy, if you hadn't figured that out yet.

I can only offer you a grand total of zero fucks in regards to how much I care about your "debate" about whether 40k belongs here, as if that was even a debate, and am just here to take offense at the attempt to use a baseless myth as argument fodder.

>>50381368

Then you shouldn't have jumped in talking about something totally fucking different.

>>50375397
You might actually have autism

>>50381462
There's plenty of room for multiple lines of discussion.

Even if I agree with your sentiment about 40k having a place here, that doesn't mean I need to stay quiet when a stubborn lie tries to perpetuate itself.

>>50375806
>Dihydrogen monoxide fuel

Wow, they're THAT crazy in the future? They still use the deadliest substance known to man as fuel?

>>50381590
PERoxide, anon. PERoxide.

>>50381535
>I am not your enemy, nor are you mine. My enemies are lies and falsehoods, and as long as you don't plan on spreading either, we are in accord.
Holy shit anon you might have for real autism.

>>50381250
>I am not your enemy, nor are you mine. My enemies are lies and falsehoods, and as long as you don't plan on spreading either, we are in accord.
You talk like a faggot and your shit's all retarded.

>>50375397
Because the imperial guard doesn't win wars with surgical precision, they win them by firing therir guns until there's nothing left to shoot. They don't need highly trained soldiers, they need numbers, to that end, loss of life is almost irrelevant, loss of equipment is the problem (hence the reason they will field more men to capture a lost baneblade than they would to reinforce a position. There's always more men to replace the lost. Life is not a finite resource, as it seems with modern humanity. They don't invest hundreds of thousands of (currency) to train the men up to a standard. They take what they get, give him or her a lasgun, point it in the direction of the enemy, and put a commissar behind them.

>>50375397
Oh, you're right about that.

Human life would be relatively more important, if the Imperium didn't have Hive worlds constantly pumping out new civilians and soldiers by the billions.

>>50377030
NARP?

People are the cheapest resource because breed so damn quickly. Say a planet needs to send a million soldiers to a warzone. The issue isnt getting 1 million people for the job, the issue is arming, training and transporting them. Thats the cost. The imperium has a surplus of people

Where did this beeple-beep beep! Meme come from?

>>50375424
/thread

>>50375397
You don't understand just how many people the Imperium has. They have Hive Planets, each with multiple Hive Cities, each of which contains more people than currently live on our entire planet.

Running out of soldiers will never be a problem no matter how many meatgrinder wars they decide to engage in. Equipping these soldiers is also not a problem, because they've got assembly line sweatshop production down to an artform and that's what most of the functionally unlimited number of people are employed doing.

What IS a problem is losing big expensive things, like Baneblades or Titans or starships, because above a certain tech level everything has to be produced super slowly and overseen by the AdMech or else it might explode into demons.

>>50383963
Don't worry about it.
Don't think about it.
It's not even a meme.

>>50383963
I think it's like a tripcode for OP's not-too-serious questions

>>50375397
BECAUSE IT IS FAR MORE EXPENSIVE AND TIME CONSUMING TO BUILD THE THINGS THAT TAKE THE PEOPLE FROM PLACE TO PLACE THAN IT IS TO MAKE MORE PEOPLE, GIVEN THAT THEY MAKE MORE OF THEMSELVES WHETHER YOU TELL THEM TO OR NOT, AND THE SEED POPULATION IS SO FAR IN EXCESS OF THE NUMBER OF MANS THAT COULD EVER BE TRANSPORTED TO GO SOLVE A PROBLEM THAT ITS MORE LIKE THEIR EMPIRE WOULD COLLAPSE IF THEY EVER *STOPPED* SHIPPING THEM OFFWORLD TO GET DECAPITATED BY ORKS

>>50375397
Because it's grimmer and derpier that way. Literally nothing in 40k makes sense beyond that fact.

>>50386905
dingdingding

>>50375515
>It's just that the imperial guard are the best of the best of the best.

The Tau fought Cadians, the supposed bestest guard. They seemed like poorly rabble to the fire warriors who they outnumbered many times over.

>>50375855
This.

The Imperium isn't about efficiency. It runs almost entirely on inertia.

>>50390154
The Tau literally call everyone an undisciplined rabble. There's fluff where one of their commanders claims that Eldar lack discipline and focus or something to that effect.

They wear propaganda-tinted shades.

>>50390310
Actually, the Tau comment on how Soace Marines are honourable and skilled foes.

As for the Cadians, they were soundly defeated by the Tau even when multiple advantages were stacked in their favour. So their assessment is not far off.

>>50381072
>A solider is supported by the productive quality of 50-200 jobs
They could get it down to 10-30 if they wanted to.

So the number is inflated a lot

>>50375397
You know, 40k wasn't supposed to be grimderpy, but guess grimderp won and now book are about milions of lives being wasted pointlessly.

I prefer when it's like pic in >>50375806
We need more absurd and humor.

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>>50375397
In 40k, a hive world can have 50% of its surface covered in orks, and still house over 100 billion inhabitants in the besieged other half, while also maintaining the massive fighting force that is constantly shipped there.

This isn't even mentioning the random planet with several times more guardsmen stationed on it than there are observable atoms in the world.

>>50375915
>millions
hundred thousands

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>>50390310
Shit man, if I were go guess Cadia sends the scrubs and washouts out on crusades and keeps the actually good soldiers for themselves, given they are guarding the fucking gate to hell.

>>50390154
Eh, in some works Cadians are the shit, crak troops and natural born fighters, in others works they are undisciplined rabble. 40K tends too do whatever fits the narrative.

>>50377362
You're retarded. It takes not only a huge amount of resources and manpower to train an infantryman, but the infantry doesn't exist in a vacuum. You need cooks to feed him, clerks to process his paperwork, technicians to repair his equipment, trucks to drive him around, truckers to drive the trucks, mechanics to repair the trucks etc etc. And each of those people also cost money. I can look over my shoulder and see well in excess of 10k worth of kit laying on my bedroom floor, then taking into account that's just my clothes, helmet and the like. Then I spent the last year on a 10 man course, using 17k each welding machines, with 3+ instructors, each drawing a salary of course, to learn to do my job. Which is just to support the guys who support the guys who actually do the fighting. The army is huge, and to actually deploy a fighting contingent costs a ludicrous amount of money.

>>50394984
That's not how most of the imperial guard does. They're woefully under equipped under trained and under prepared for most regiments.

>>50395709
I don't know that that is true though. They very well aren't up the standards of the SM, nor are they quite well equipped to deal with the foes they face, but that doesn't actually say much about their objective capabilities compared to a modern military. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the average Imperial Guardsman was actually issued a lot of equipment and given a fair amount of training, only to find out that it just isn't enough to fight Orks or Necrons.

It's like how the US army isn't capable of fighting the aliens in so many movies. It says nothing about the US forces per se compared to other humans, it just demonstrates that they cannot fight a foe so vastly superior to them.

To carry this further, considering the nature of what the Imperium fights, if the Guard was not at least semi competent and well equipped they would have lost long ago. I mean seriously, if the Russians literally did nothing but meme tactics from Enemy at the Gates they would have lost WW2, and if the Guard did nothing but endlessly throw piss poor soldiers into a meat grinder they would lose 100% of all their conflicts.

>>50375397
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZxLrxgWjeI
different universe, same reasoning

>>50396583
imperial gear is pretty much made by slaves (servitors & forgeworlders), some of their officers are state property (comissars), it does not make shit free but the IG are not as costly as they would be if they were run by a humane regime

>>50397096
Yes but again let's be real here. The sheer nature of the galaxy is that raw materials, especially shit like iron, is virtually unlimited. Gas, metals and various other elements could be mined from planets and asteroids in quantities beyond our comprehension. Humans are far more valuable than any amount of raw materials, and the constant idea that we're the cheapest thing ever is laughable, even within the context of the Warhammer universe.

It's like the idea of using slave labour to power a spaceship because it's cheaper than using machines. That's fucking idiocy since the amount of energy, food, heating, water, waste disposal and everything else necessary to keep a massive slave population going dwarfs the amount of resources it would take to just make a set of machines to do that work.

My point about the cost of a modern soldier was in response to that moron who thinks everything is about some military industrial complex fat cat bullshit. With you I'm somewhat in agreement that equipping an Imperial Guardsman may not necessarily be expensive, but it doesn't exactly follow that they are poorly equipped or trained. The resources available, including manpower, is such that every soldier could be given a huge amount of equipment, and spend a considerable amount of time training without actually putting any stress on the economy.

>>50395709
What this guy said. A modern infantryman is expensive because his government gives a shit and wants to be able to deploy and lose as few men as possible. There are a few reasons for this- public image and support, the need for volunteers, complexity of modern weapons etc. The IoM doesn't have any of these reasons. It is immune to public opinion, it doesn't need volunteers, and its weapons are (mostly) incredibly simple. A guardsman is not necessarily trained to a standard even close to that of a US soldier. Hell, most guardsmen are probably trained worse than any first world soldier of the modern day, and that includes people from shitholia eastern europe.

>>50397193
>It's like the idea of using slave labour to power a spaceship because it's cheaper than using machines. That's fucking idiocy since the amount of energy, food, heating, water, waste disposal and everything else necessary to keep a massive slave population going dwarfs the amount of resources it would take to just make a set of machines to do that work.

That's true. Unless you can't build or maintain the machines because they're only produced by one factory on one planet in the eastern fringe and the last time somebody tried to see how it worked a magos shot him and used his blood to power the factory.

>>50375515
>the imperial guard are the best of the best of the best
This meme need to die.

>>50382560
>You talk like a faggot and your shit's all retarded.

Underrated post.

>>50397193
I think you're misunderstanding the logistics, though. All that stuff isn't the Guard's problem. That's handled by the planets that provide the guardsmen. It's not the problem of the people who decide how to use guard lives, not even close. Humans are essentially a natural resource, because they exist as a constant backdrop spread throughout the galaxy for the Imperium to harvest, the cost of harvest (promethium to move ships, and navigator's time) is more than the base level of unharvested humans, so they're functionally limitless for practical purposes. And in fact, they're actually limitless in that humans still breed faster than they're used up. Natural resources, meanwhile, are generally irreplaceable when used, so using manpower to minimize promethium costs makes sense, and since both promethium and machines in general are acquired (harvested or produced) much more slowly than humans, they're the limiting factor.

>>50375397
The real issue is that the Imperium's vast and ever growing population is one of the greatest threats to its stability. They need population sinks for the hordes constantly breeding on hive worlds, and the guard is one such sink.

>>50397305
Any operation that is simple enough to be powered by humans running in a giant hamster wheel wouldn't require much brains to design a machine for.

>>50398245

Again though humans are energy and resource inefficient if used that way. A lot of land, energy, and mineral resources have to be used up to grow and feed a human. They are a plentiful resource sure, but all resources have alternative uses and to simply use humans as a replacement for other resources that are more common and efficient is backwards. How much promethium for example is needed to truck out the food necessary to feed those people, how much clothing needs to be manufactured to make sure they don't freeze etc etc. The more humans you add to try to reduce waste of other resources, the more intense your supply system becomes to try to keep them moving.

For example you can get rid of a truck that used to support 10 men by using 20 slaves to carry the stuff that truck carried. But now you need to feed and clothe those 20 slaves. So you get 50 more slaves to support them and so on. Soon you have hundreds of people where you used to just have one truck. Even assuming that those hundreds of people are cheaper than one truck, it still is ineffective logistically because the space required on a ship to carry all that extra cargo is almost certainly so great as to nullify any gains made elsewhere.

I don't disagree with you at all that the Warhammer universe says that humans are disposable but that's more to do with the pure silliness of the universe itself. As long as we completely suspend all disbelief it makes no difference and I don't have an issue, but since the basis of this thread is to assume some semblance of logic within the 40k universe than we need to assume some basic understanding of economics and resource management within the Imperium.

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>>50398596
Ropes anon, not wheels, also it is a replacement for autoloaders when these break but there is nowhere to get a replacement in time for the next BIG BOOM.

If you loader breakes but you have 5k dodies lying around its just logicall to use them for the menial labor until you have a fast autoloader.

Also IIRC torpedoes and huge weapons Nova Cannon are the ones who actually need manual loading because of how massive the autoloaders would need to be, while the basic macrocannon has autoloaders

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>>50399121
Also remember that these fuckers are bigger than multiple edifices stacked, it isn't as easy as making a MG/Autocannon autoloader

>>50398596
>Again though humans are energy and resource inefficient if used that way.
Only if you think of the entire Imperium as one equation, optimized for its own efficiency. But it's not. Nothing that big could be that unified, and if it was, it would be incredibly fucking volatile. Its lifespan would be measured in the hundreds of years at best.

>to simply use humans as a replacement for other resources that are more common and efficient
Machinery isn't more common and efficient. The forgeworlds produce it at the rate that they do, and that's it.

>How much promethium for example is needed to truck out the food necessary to feed those people, how much clothing needs to be manufactured to make sure they don't freeze etc etc.
They don't truck food around, generally. The ships are five kilometers long and the underdecks are used for nothing much besides food production. They have their own little ecosystems, and the ship slaves are responsible for feeding themselves from that. And most of the energy entering that system is just waste energy from the engines anyway.

>>50380829
>>50381250
>lie
Fuck off, I was there.
And it wasn't containment it was Moot realising a topic was popular enough with the users to discuss

>>50400850
Did you reference that first one in error?

>>50400850
You're going to have to provide more evidence beyond "I was there," because I was there too.