I agree, which basically brings us back to the TT Codices as the only comparison. So based on this an Orkboy is weaker and has weaker armour than a tactical marine, but has the same level of toughness, same amount of health etc. Essentially if you put an orkboy in power armour you've got a unit more powerful than a spacemarine, take a marine out of his powerarmour and put him in flak armour you've got a unit that is somewhere in between an IG and an Ork.
Never heard of that before... Orks used to be BS3 as standard until the 3rd Edition Codex: Orks in '99. =/
I think the stats from TT are important sort of larger margins for how they decide to narrow orks feel wise, but I don't think they're going to be solid translations into a third person shooter. Think of that as a sort of language, and you're trying to translate it into another, some phrases and concepts just don't exist in both, and so translators are going to have to fudge some stuff while still trying to get the jist right. Thats how 'feel' becomes a thing and the artistic endeavor comes into play. Focusing on the TT and not on the translation means the people trying to read the thing in the new language aren't going to get it. You have to make a point of taking both what you're translating it into, and what you're translating it from, and use those both as key elements to make the translation itself an accurate one...even though that means fudging things for one or the other. You're an individual ork in this concept, so some how thats got to feel good, in canon orks are like guardsmen dieing in droves and basically you have two choices with that. Create a concept that accepts that, and makes that fun, and work it into the ork race, or change how orks work so they're individually more sturdy and figure out how to make that work.
I totally agree with you, I mainly bring up the TT though as people that are expecting the lore to be translated into the game believe that the novels trump the TT. For me it's the opposite way around 40K is a tabletop wargame at it's very foundation the novels are fiction, using poetic license that just flesh the histories of the faction that are involved out. Looking at fictional novels in detail to guide how the game should work is probably the very worst thing, in my opinion, that you could do because the novels are always written from the biased perspective of who ever the protagonist is. Lore should be general histories for the factions and no specifics, I'd rather have a codex (with usable statistics) tell me how a boltgun works than an author that has waxed lyrical about the wonders of boltgun technology.
I agree that authors get a bit of free license with things and its sort of the aggregate that becomes canon. I like the lore, but honestly Orks don't get a fair shot in the 40k fiction, they need their own stories. Part of that requires a soft retcon imo. They need to get stories out there with them, that you can bare to read, so you can flesh them out enough. Enough of a retcon where you might actually handle reading dialogue. I think the DoW games did that close enough where they can actually form sentences and they're just sort of really gruff and more to the point. Orks running into walls of lead because of the WAAAGH and their orky nature to fight and that sort of collectivism of what their psyker aura thing does... could lead to a lot of value narrative wise, while still fleshing out that they're stupid and crude, but not stupid and crude to the point of boring. They need to make stupid and crude cool, and I think writing them should be doable...although apparently no one really has.
