Because for the Inquisition to fight Space Marines, they need to declare them traitors. If the Inquisition declares 4 Space Marine Chapters traitors at the same time, they're going to be killed. The Inquisition could probably barely hold their own against Ultramarines and Space Wolves, let alone throwing Dark Angels into the mix. They would need help from other Astartes to even start to deal with that issue. You don't just kill off 2 Primarchs because you have the willpower. That will backfire tremendously and it is really lore breaking. The issue that is presented isn't that Sisters of Battle fighting Space Marines will be lore-breaking. That is obvious and isn't going to happen. The problem is that adding Sister of Battle will bolster the already high Space Marine numbers to almost completely overtake the other factions more than they already are (which is a massive lead ATM). I say no to Sisters of Battle at launch because we don't know how the numbers are going to add up. We don't know if the Space Marines end up with double the numbers of any other faction what repercussions that will have, either via "alliances" or Tyranids whittling them down. Wait until launch to throw the Sister of Battle out there. Then again, we are dealing with Matt Ward. He will probably come in on Sanguinius' wings and throw something out like the Inquisition calling the blindly devoted Sister of Battle to whittle down the Space Marines so the Inquisition itself doesn't have to declare them traitors until they see fit. I could see that happening. If it does, I'll be most displeased...
I completely and wholeheartedly disagree with you on that point. Again it's a game and it's got to be viewed through that light, if it were correct as per lore then you wouldn't have 4 different chapters of Space Marines taking comands from a single War Council, they would all be individual factions (probably allied) as there is no way that any of the 4 chapters will take orders from the other 3.
Where has it been said that all of the chapters will be under the command of a single entity? The War Counsel idea has been brought up, but nothing has been put to light as to what it is and how it is deployed. For all we know, the War Counsel could just be the 4 highest ranking personnel from the last campaign (one from each faction) who determines the resource pooling for each of the factions. The lore there is fairly easy to speculate and draw out an affirmative plan as to what it could be without destroying almost half of the able-bodied Space Marines in the process. DoW is an example of bad lore. The original DoW was good. The Winter Assault expansion, again, was good. Dark Crusade was so-so because of the fickle nature they placed on the empires (Tau, Eldar, and Chaos in particular). Soulstorm was just horrible for lore. The game was fun (minus the imbalances) but the lore was horrible. The concept that Sister of Battle would ride ahead of the Inquisition to purge the sector in a way that preserves the planets before the warp storm hit made no sense. The Dark Eldar engaging in a linear way with every major race in the galaxy made no sense. That lore right there had to be ignored completely. That's not something I would want for this game. I want to feel like I'm actually playing in the 40k universe, not some filler that's going to be ignored and grossly inaccurate in the long run.
The 4 chapters are subfactions in the Space Marine faction in this game they are not stand alone factions, there are only 4 factions in the game; Space Marines, Orkz, Eldar and Chaos. Each faction will have a war council voted from it's own faction (thus they will be a mix of the subfactions or could all be from a single subfaction if they turn out to be the most popular leaders of the faction). Faction strikeforces and groups/units will contain multiple chapters as they are subfactions. Personally I don't really care about what other 40K computer games have done (although I've played a few) and don't/haven't bothered with the Black Library books very much, I've been into 40K for years because I was a hardcore table top player for a long long time.
Can you quote where the war counsel will be determined from votes? Each of the videos I've seen and quotes I've read have had no imput as to what it is. There is speculation as to what they want to gear it towards, but nothing official has come out to my knowledge on what it is. If you don't care about the lore, then why are you making an argument based on lore from video games? The lore there is butchered beyond belief (DoW especially). Meanwhile, as of recent there have been quite a bit of supplementary codex that paint the lore completely different than what it was a decade ago. There are so many instances of good games that are created from existing lore (vanilla DoW). Then there are games that are created from lore that doesn't exist in books/campaigns which are then completely ignored because of the butchering they do to fit the video game cinematic (every DoW expansion). There is no reason to do things just to fit that small amount of people who are on the fence for cosmetic reasons (I.E. female Space Marines). It destroys the lore and will drive away the considerable player base who will probably stay locked in just because this is a 40k game. If they want to add things like that, they need to wait until the game is launched at the least. Let the game settle after the original design (which is a good one) of Space Marines, Orks, Eldar, and Chaos Space Marines fighting one another on a planet is set in stone. There is plenty of time to do other things after the initial concept sets in. It is good lore right now and has the makings of a good game right now. Tossing the lore out the window, taking time away from the original designs/balancing, and splitting the initial player base to more radical levels than it is now is not worth the implementation of Tau, Necrons, Sisters of Battle, or what have you.
I don't remember doing that at all. I completely agree, I like to hold onto lore to give each faction their individual feel and build a history to this game etc, but the moment the lore gets in the way of enjoyment or playing a popular faction or balance then the lore needs to be ignored for the sake of the game. That's my position on it.
I think you have to take some things into consideration. Well, look... you're apparently of the opinion that inter-Imperial warfare is an impossibility. But it isn't, it has happened in a myriad of different ways before and can certainly happen again. The question you should have asked is whether such a conflict may be feasible for a game like EC, how it might play out and only then whether it is acceptable. Dismissing this idea out of hand without supplying any convincing proof serves no purpose. First of all, your view of how such a conflict might go seems flawed. Let's go with the Inquisition example. The Inquisition on site might declare the Astartes at hand traitors and enemies of the Imperium if they see a need. They certainly have the authority to do that. However, they would never do so without good reason or proof. They wouldn't do it lightly as dealing with even the "smallest" Chapter of Astartes is not a small issue. This is where the writing comes into play. You can't dismiss the possibility out of hand before even knowing anything about what's going to be happening on Arkhona. Looking at the evidence, which is a planet that 4 major factions deploy to in significant numbers because there's something important as fuck there, it might be very easy to write a believable conflict between the LSMs and the Inq. The next problem I see with your view on how this might go is the notion of the Inquisition getting promptly rofl-stomped by the Astartes. I mean no offense, but you do sound like a blinded fanboy when saying things like that. Astartes do tend to win wars by default due to their plot armor, but that doesn't mean we can readily dismiss any other faction's ability to beat them or even dare to attack them. Let's take an example from the lore about how such a conflict went on. If you're familiar with the "Months of Shame" you'd know that the Space Wolves and the Inquisitorial forces deployed to deal with them fought each other into what would have been mutual destruction. The whole of the Space Wolves Chapter against a portion of the Inquisition's manpower. This example shows that Astartes don't just simply stomp the Inquisition into oblivion if they feel like it but also shows us the willingness of the Inq to start a fire upon LSM that get in their way. It is entirely conceivable that something similar might happen at Arkhona if there is a need for it. Also... umm, just going to quote this particular bit: Along with the fact that I don't agree that there'd be any tossing of the lore out of the window there's the fact that they have already confirmed that they'll add new factions into the game. In fact, they're supposed to add a 5th faction for launch. Edit: There will not be a 5th faction for launch. It seems there was a misunderstanding somewhere and I repeated false information without checking it out more thoroughly. That's quite embarrassing, I do apologize. I asked the devs whether they could give us some information on new factions and Brent was kind enough to clear this misunderstanding up. Also, he said that different Imperial factions are a possibility but that it's way too early to say how they could work out.
My understand was it would be 5th subfactions for the 4 factions, rather than a 5th playable faction. Although things may well have changed recently on that score without me noticing.
