Genetically superior Master Chief?

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Pelranius
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Post by Pelranius »

Getting a child recruit might result in a more malleable and loyal soldier than an adult, if nothing else.

I imagined that enhancing an adult would either be too troublesome, not as effective or simply not practical.
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Post by Tanasinn »

Crom wrote:Considering the other enhancements, was it necessary to find a genetically superior child? Why not enhance an adult?
The UNSC wanted a good template to work from, physically and mentally. Highly intelligent children who are essentially the peak of human genetics will probably stand a better chance of being made into SPARTANs.

As for not using adults...well, a child can be brainwashed and indoctrinated far more effectively than an adult.
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Post by Connor MacLeod »

Crom wrote:Considering the other enhancements, was it necessary to find a genetically superior child? Why not enhance an adult?
Probably to survive the process. Depending on age, ,a child is still growing alot more than an adult does. There's also the indoctrinartion/education bit, too.

(We get back to the "Space Marines" comaprsion, which admitteldy what I first thought of when I started reading about Spartans.)

Then again Space Marines are more insanely powerful, more indoctrinated, and more propogandized. :P
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Post by Ford Prefect »

Connor MacLeod wrote:Then again Space Marines are more insanely powerful, more indoctrinated, and more propogandized. :P
I don't blame you for getting the Space Marine vibe; it's not the enhancements, which have been done far longer than the Astartes, it's the lethality. Apart from the Space Marines and SPARTAN-IIs, I really can't think of many supersoldier programs with that level of mortality.
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Post by Adrian Laguna »

Cykeisme wrote:The fact that the Sisters of Battle can wear power armour without biological enhancements always did irk me.
Their power armour is not as uber as the Space Marine's. Also, they are not the only ones who wear power armour outside the Astartes. I know for sure that Inquisitors can get access to it, and I think some Ad-Mech troops use it, of course the Ad-Mech is perfectly willing to use mechanical enhancements as outright replacements for flesh and bone.
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Post by Ford Prefect »

Adrian Laguna wrote:Their power armour is not as uber as the Space Marine's. Also, they are not the only ones who wear power armour outside the Astartes. I know for sure that Inquisitors can get access to it, and I think some Ad-Mech troops use it, of course the Ad-Mech is perfectly willing to use mechanical enhancements as outright replacements for flesh and bone.
I'd think pretty much anyone with the money and a little clout could get it in the Imperium; a fairly successful Rogue Trader could probably get a suit or two for favoured subordinates.
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Post by Rye »

Crom wrote:I find the term "genetically superior" to be kind of creepy. I guess because it reminds me of the old idea of the Nazi eugenically created supermen.

Am I overreacting here?
Yeah, since in principle, there's nothing actually wrong with that when the fate of humanity is at stake. Or do you think you can play basketball as well as those guys with tallness and natural talent for hand-eye coordination in the NBA? Genes do make a difference, and eugenics is a moral thing for lots of people, for instance, CF gene carriers.
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Post by [R_H] »

Zuul wrote:
Crom wrote:snip
Yeah, since in principle, there's nothing actually wrong with that when the fate of humanity is at stake. Or do you think you can play basketball as well as those guys with tallness and natural talent for hand-eye coordination in the NBA? Genes do make a difference, and eugenics is a moral thing for lots of people, for instance, CF gene carriers.
Weren't the Spartans trained, enhanced etc. before there was any contact? If yes, then what was the motivation behind their development, seeing as it was stated several times that the UNSC always did well in ground conflicts against the Covenant, but lost the majority of the time in space combat against the Covenant?
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Post by [R_H] »

ghetto edit

"before the was any contact" should be "before there was any contact with the Covenant".
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Post by Tanasinn »

The SPARTANs were developed prior to the Covenant invasion to deal with insurgencies in the increasingly restless colonies of the UNSC.
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Post by Ritterin Sophia »

Connor MacLeod wrote:Probably to survive the process. Depending on age, ,a child is still growing alot more than an adult does. There's also the indoctrinartion/education bit, too.

(We get back to the "Space Marines" comaprsion, which admitteldy what I first thought of when I started reading about Spartans.)

Then again Space Marines are more insanely powerful, more indoctrinated, and more propogandized. :P
Well, that was my reasoning behind this:
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Post by Zwinmar »

I always got the impression that it was something more along the lines of Universal Soldier (the movie) only after he had proven to be superior <sic> was he enhanced.
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Post by Peptuck »

Weren't the Spartans trained, enhanced etc. before there was any contact? If yes, then what was the motivation behind their development, seeing as it was stated several times that the UNSC always did well in ground conflicts against the Covenant, but lost the majority of the time in space combat against the Covenant?[/quoite]

The Spartan-IIs were recruited to deal with large numbers of small-scale insurgencies that were predicted to begin throughout the Outer Colonies within twenty years of the program's start; the only way to deal with them was to either use extremely elite surgical special forces to eliminate them, or use massive, overwhelming military force that would result in extreme civilian casualties.

Both Fall of Reach and Ghosts of Onyx show what kind of elaborate and well-armed insurgencies they were dealing with.
Considering the other enhancements, was it necessary to find a genetically superior child? Why not enhance an adult?
Survivability. They Spartan upgrades were dangerous and had a high probability of death; only the strongest and healthiest humans could stand a chance of living through them, and even then, half the Spartans died in the process.

With the Spartan-IIIs they were able to refine the techniques and thus create more Spartans from a larger pool of volunteers - mostly from the child survivors of Covenant attacks - but these had a high mortality as well. Each generation of S-IIIs had more survivors - after enhancements, of course; the second generation of S-IIIs was reduced two on their first deployment, and they were twelve years old. ONI was expecting that once the upgrading techniques were refined enough they could recruit from the general population without needing to worry about genetic screening or using children.
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Post by Crom »

Zuul wrote:Yeah, since in principle, there's nothing actually wrong with that when the fate of humanity is at stake. Or do you think you can play basketball as well as those guys with tallness and natural talent for hand-eye coordination in the NBA? Genes do make a difference, and eugenics is a moral thing for lots of people, for instance, CF gene carriers.
In answer to your question, no I don't think I can play basketball as well as a professional NBA player.

It sounds like the novels explain that MC is bigger, faster and smarter than almost everyone. These traits apparently contribute to his surviving an incredibly lethal training program.

And I understand your point. What I find is odd is that Bungie chose to emphasize that the MC is genetically superior. But, considering enhancements, training and equipment, how much does his genetic superiority really matter?
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Post by Jade Falcon »

Couldn't you compare some elements of the Spartan's developments, training from childhood and so on, to those of the Clans from Battletech?
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Post by Connor MacLeod »

Adrian Laguna wrote: and I think some Ad-Mech troops use it, of course the Ad-Mech is perfectly willing to use mechanical enhancements as outright replacements for flesh and bone.
The AdMech has servitor warriors who are the equal (or superior) to astartes. They have a surprising variety of combat troops (the "Dark Apostle" novel I mentioned elsewhere makes extensive mention of that.
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Post by Connor MacLeod »

Ford Prefect wrote:
Connor MacLeod wrote:Then again Space Marines are more insanely powerful, more indoctrinated, and more propogandized. :P
I don't blame you for getting the Space Marine vibe; it's not the enhancements, which have been done far longer than the Astartes, it's the lethality. Apart from the Space Marines and SPARTAN-IIs, I really can't think of many supersoldier programs with that level of mortality.
As I recall the reason why there is such a high mortality rate among Spacee Marine recruits is because they train the fuck out of them (which is more of a parallel of the way the Kaminoans trained the Clonetroopers.) And then there's the scouts, who are only partially augmented and nowhere near the capacity of a full Astartes (which further whittles the numbers down.)

I don't actually recall the implantation process (from human to scout, or scout to Marine) being neccesary lethal, though. (Painful and messy, yes.) Particularily since they only implant the people who actually survive the rigorous/dangerous training and their tenure as scouts.
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Post by Ford Prefect »

Connor MacLeod wrote:I don't actually recall the implantation process (from human to scout, or scout to Marine) being neccesary lethal, though. (Painful and messy, yes.) Particularily since they only implant the people who actually survive the rigorous/dangerous training and their tenure as scouts.
I didn't really mean just the surgical implantation (even if one of the tools that the Apothecaries has a bore that looks just a little smaller than that of a Leman Russ' battlecannon), but rather the program as a whole. Several SPARTAN-IIs were killed during the training as well.
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Post by [R_H] »

Wouldn't the fact that the Spartan augmentions are fairly unrefined (especially compared to the SM procedures) have something to do with the high mortality rate during the augmentations. Would make sense, seeing as the technology developed for the program only seems to be a few decades old compared to tens of thousands of years
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Post by andrewgpaul »

(off topic) How lethal is Space Marine training, anyway? The two novels I've read dealing with it are Space Marine and Space Wolf. IIRC, there are plenty of drop-outs, but most of those simply end up as Chapter servants, not corpses. The real killer is while they're Scouts (at least for the Imperial Fists; Space Wolves go straight from neophyte to power armoured Blood Claws), but that was as a result of them being in combat missions, not training fatalities as such.
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Post by Cykeisme »

From what I garner, even after biological screening, a lot of Space Marine neophytes die due to the genetic modification and organ implantation process.. either due to complications during/after the procedures, or because their bodies can't take the sheer physical trauma involved during some procedures.
By the time we see them become Scouts and such, they've already been whittled down.

What irked me about the Sisters of Battle is the fact that one of the vital Space Marine geneseed-generated organs is the Black Carapace, which is supposed to be needed for a human to fully interface with power armour. A chapter that loses the ability to grow the Black Carapace essentially ceases to exist as a chapter.

Of course, perhaps this simply means that the Adeptas Sororitas have far lower efficiency in fully utilizing power armour.


Sneaking in a question that I'm too lazy to start a new thread for in the G&C subforum, how does the AP stat on 40k weapons interact with armor saves?
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Post by Lancer »

It tells you which kinds of armor the weapon can outright penetrate.
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Post by Cycloneman »

I have a question about the Spartan program - they used the kids the program killed to make their AIs, right? I seem to remember that from I Love Bees, but I'm not certain.
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Post by Imperial Overlord »

Cykeisme wrote:
What irked me about the Sisters of Battle is the fact that one of the vital Space Marine geneseed-generated organs is the Black Carapace, which is supposed to be needed for a human to fully interface with power armour. A chapter that loses the ability to grow the Black Carapace essentially ceases to exist as a chapter.

Of course, perhaps this simply means that the Adeptas Sororitas have far lower efficiency in fully utilizing power armour.
They do. Space Marine power armour is superior to that used by ordinary humans (as bad ass as that is) and the Marines have a superior interface to even extremely advanced suits, allowing the Astartes to make full use of their superhuman reflexes and reaction time even while wearing power armour.
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Post by Peptuck »

Cycloneman wrote:I have a question about the Spartan program - they used the kids the program killed to make their AIs, right? I seem to remember that from I Love Bees, but I'm not certain.
Uh, no? They never said that.

They did use clones human brains to make Smart AIs, but they didn't use the Spartan recruits' cloned bodies for that; Ackerson did take the corpses for study regarding the Spartan-III program, however.
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