What are considered space marines nowadays? (2024)

Beagá said:

What are considered space marines nowadays?

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Right.

I've wondered that myself.

Perhaps the Hour 25 Group Mind can help!

Alexander 'The Grape' said:

In multiplayer rulesets, it's mixing Armored Battalions (tanks) with Infantry or Cavalry battalions.

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that hasn't changed. what has is: "are light tank recon in inf spacemarines?" (most say no). and "are (heavy) flame tank support in inf spacemarines?" (opinions tend to be more split on this.

Do they still frown on 1 tank in a division? Just curious. Like here's some hypotheticals

1 tank destroyer (or tank), 4 motorized
2 tanks (or one TD / 1 tank), 4-5 motorized

In theory one or two armored batallions provide plenty of armor. I know they nerfed TDs to be almost useless (relative to just using tanks, unless you research the anti-tank path)

But one heavy tank, 8 infantry, I guess would be considered space marine? especially if you add flame tank.

Just adding flame tank and support tank to infantry is a little powerful vs AI but should be useless (pierceable) in MP

[Rant]
Space marines? Space marines? Space marines are heavily armoured infantry with APCs, i.e. mechanised infantry, with some support from medium tanks, heavy tanks and light SP artillery, as well as some air support.

Tanks with infantry? That's imperial guard. Sheesh...
[\Rant]

From a balance perspective, in HoI4, adding a single battalion of tanks or TDs greatly increases the performance of an infantry division, unless the enemy brings AT. And since they don't need speed, they are *much* easier on reliability, i.e. you can make them with earlier technology at a slightly lower cost.

I can see why some would ban it. On the other hand, piercing is easier to come by than armour, so in some sense it's "just" a case of being prepared.

I've tried to simplify the definition to, anything that goes through the new tank designer can't be in a formation that also has leg infantry or cav/cam. 'leg infantry' taking the category from the game (also known as light infantry), including typical infantry, marines, mountaineers, paratroopers, and bikes.

Like others have said, certain servers will make special exceptions like tank recon, certain tank variants, or being allowed to mix marines with amphibious tanks, or whatever other exception they want.

Low amounts of armour to have advantage over enemy infantry generally wasn't really that big of a problem, though it could still be a problem. It could generally be much more cheaply countered by having small amounts of piercing, but the bigger issue in the Before Times was that heavy TD had huge amounts of piercing, and using half the vehicle count of tanks, were extremely cheap. An 8 infantry 2 HTD3 with +5 gun and some modicum of supports could pierce/hold against even the sweatiest 40w tank formations while being a fraction of the cost, it made the eastern front super grindy and largely considered, unfun.

Now, they have since adjusted the vehicle counts for TD to make them more expensive, but the very existence of something like the super heavy cannon with its ridiculous 275 base piercing is bonkers. Make it squeezy in an HTD battalion with +40%, thats 423.5 piercing, and the 40% highest of which alone is 169.4 piercing. And while those guns certainly are expensive and eat a lot of resources, they aren't nearly as expensive or eat near so many resources as what you'd have to do to make a tank formation with more than 170 armour, we'd be in the same situation with tanks being slaughtered if we allowed space marines. Even if we step down from super heavy cannons, we can fit a high velocity 3 with 308 (123.2 from highest) piercing, or heavy cannon 3 with 261.8 (104.72 from highest) piercing onto medium TD. We can see from posts like this one how hard it can be to get a 'medium' tank formation up to 125 armour. The BFG cannons would still more or less invalidate heavy tank armour, but at least it would provide more reliable protection from MTD space marines.

el nora said:

that hasn't changed.

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What might be unclear is whether or not "space marines" includes:

-- Cavalry
-- Camels

Good point about the game muddying the waters with the addition of armored recon and flame tanks.

billcorr said:

What might be unclear is whether or not "space marines" includes:

-- Cavalry
-- Camels

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It "Should", in my mind. The point of the anti-spess mehreen rules is to hurt the cost-effectiveness of the space marines, by making them more expensive. In order to avoid the 'cheap' formations getting/denying the armour bonus, cav/cam aren't much more expensive than infantry (at least compared to the jump into mot/mek). Even with the cut in costs for mot/mek, using the 0.50 IC IE1, cav/cam costs 60/75, while mot costs 137.5 (used to be 175) and mek1, 370 (which could be -50% on the mek to 210). Infantry being 50 IC in that example, the cav/cam are a lot closer to the infantry than they are the mot/mek (+20% or +50% per battalion for cav/cam, compared to +175% or +640% for mot/mek).

I don't think 20/50% with some supply is enough of a tax for the power you might get from it (2.8x combat effectiveness), while nearly triple the IC with more resources and fuel costs, has a lot more impact.

Andrew0Red said:

From a balance perspective, in HoI4, adding a single battalion of tanks or TDs greatly increases the performance of an infantry division, unless the enemy brings AT. And since they don't need speed, they are *much* easier on reliability, i.e. you can make them with earlier technology at a slightly lower cost.

I can see why some would ban it. On the other hand, piercing is easier to come by than armour, so in some sense it's "just" a case of being prepared.

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Emren said:

Space Marines makes multiplayer more difficult. Since most player like to play on easy, I guess this is why it's banned in MP.

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Space marines aren't banned because they make infantry better at offense, or make infantry beat up other infantry without piercing. They get pierced by just one support AT, they're not overpowered against infantry. Space marines are banned because a division with 8 infantry and 1 or 2 heavy tank destroyers (and now mediums which can mount the heavy HV cannon as well, making them even cheaper) can pierce and destroy any number of big, expensive, powerful heavy tank divisions for a vastly lower cost, and in doing so make any use of tanks outside of specifically other space marines economic suicide. And since space marines are just slow infantry with a tank or two, fights between opposing space marines is effectively the same as normal infantry vs normal infantry and the game becomes WW1 simulator with very little in the way of interesting or fun gameplay.

IMHO space marines are not even good anymore for several reasons:

IC cost - TDs now cost as much as tanks so putting one in your infantry is a lot more expensive.
Piercing - You are able to pierce 99% of tank divisions with AT. Only heavy tanks with a huge investment into armor can become hard to pierce for a normal infantry division with some AT.
Fuel - making your infantry require fuel is a downside on its own. Lack of fuel can slow down the division and all the TD stats get lost.
Commander/Army Staff traits - Traits that depend on the type of a division now apply proportionally instead of all or nothing. So an infantry leader trait only gives 80% of its bonus to a division with 4 infantry and 1 tank.