I will always say if a faction can be done better in a different style of game, do them in a different style of game. Playing as Inquisition makes more sense from a turn based RPG style (you know the kind where you collect minions e.g. Neverwinter Nights/2 KOTOR OH OH OR LIKE JAGGED ALLIANCE that is a game I would play) I want to play an Imperial Guard FPS, just saying, it would work, we all know it. My tie to WH40K is from the DOW days, I love all the factions and want to play as all the factions, but that doesn't mean I want to play as them all in the same game. If the motto is 'Feel like an elite warrior of the 41st millennium' then that has to be the same for all factions. If you can't make me feel like an AM in the 41st Millennium in a 3rdPS shooter RPG, don't try, create another game it which I can feel like an AM in the 41st Millennium.
The premise is to fight as a soldier of the 41st milenium. I don't see a problem with that, and i don't think the AM aren't fit for a game like this, which is basically a 40k war simulator to some degree. So all military oriented forces can be present.
I was a little confused there for a moment as I thought that AM stood for Adeptus Mechanicus (AdMech), then I realised it was Adeptus Militarum (IG). bE has said that they want to implement IG/AdMili, so discussing how is fine by me as long as there are no knee-jerk reactions of "You can't!" or "Won't work." without adequate explanation.
Just give me a lasgun and a flak armor and ill shoot at anything my general points me to, no matter how many purity seals the target is sporting.
Stormtroopers are as close as baseline human can get to a Space Marine without the use of Power Armour or supernatural enhancement and/or an extensive biological rebuild. The problem is that that's not very close. All those things about the various regiments are true. They're also, still, just regiments. They're all, at the mano-e-mano level, inferior to stormtroopers. Except for their own regiment-specific storm-trooper analogues. They're definately all inferior to space marines in a mano-e-demigod comparison. The Cadians are the best sneakies in the Galaxy. So are the First And Only. So are the Raven Guard and the Alpha Legion. So are the Eldar Rangers. So are Lictors. Put them all on a planet and no-one would ever run into eachother. This is 40K, everyone is the best at their shtick, even when there are other people also best at the same shtick. I never argued that the Imperial Guard can't win against an Astartes (loyal or traitor) force. That would be false in any but the most extreme readings of the lore. They do it by having a huge amount of men, and armour (in the vehicular sense). That works fine for a Strategy game, tabletop or RTS. What it doesn't work for is a single-sharded MMOTPS. You cannot balance the fact that someone has a 1-hitpoint chump with a flashlight as a character by the fact that one-in-five of his mates gets to drive an awesome tank. You cannot guarantee greater numbers for the Guard, infact they will inherently be outnumbered when fighting the Astartes based on faction polling. You can't give them ALL tanks because they'll either be OP as hell or the tanks will be lore-breakingly bad. You can make one SM fighting one Orc and it being even work within the lore reasonably. Or ten fighting ten. Or ten fighting ten Aspect Warriors. Or a hundred fighting a hundred Aspect Warriors, or a hundred Traitor Marines. You cannot feasibly argue that a hundred Astartes infantry is equaled by a hundred Guardsmen. You could make it work in a match-based FPS like Counterstrike or Red Orchestra by simply having ten times as many guardsmen as Marines (10-1 being the one of the force-multipliers supposedly attributed to Astartes that isn't totally insane). But this is a free-roam FPS. At what point will being the guy with the lowest hitpoints, the worst armour,the weakest gun and no special flink become in any way fun?
True, going that way you won't have a nice "balanced faction", but it was an example. The balancing would be broader so to speak. Slightly better tanks, with slightly less punch with normal lasguns. But you would be able to use plasma weapons and other heavier things through progression. Give them faction buffs for joining in larger groups etc. These are just examples, but with asymmetric balance it is possible to get a correct feel for each faction without it being too unfriendly to the lore. Not saying it will be easy, but it can be done. We are just pointing out that there are ways. Ogryns could be the melee class. With as much or even more brute strength than an astartes, is just another example.
But you have been arguing that without lore-armour a Guardsman cannot stand up to a marine. In reply I pointed out that in Lore you tend to get the Movie Marine who comes across as being able to wipe out a company of IG solely on his own. My point is that if you remove the lore you must go off TT, and in that the basic SM is 133% the main physical characteristics of a basic Guardsman, except for health which is equal. Plus on TT, the only difference between a Stormtrooper and guardsman is the Trooper has better armour and skill with firearms, everything else is the same. It's like the difference between a British army soldier and a Royal Marine, both can only get so strong, so fit, but one has more extensive training than the other usually has. Now take these as two extreme representations of both SM and IG, with what EC shall achieve generally being somewhere between. One-on one, the marine will shred the guardsman in melee. The guardsman does better in ranged combat, but will lose if he doesn't utilise the abilities of a guardsman, like agility and stealth/sneakiness. Increase both sides to a hundred and the Guard get access to more tactics and abilities. If the two sides fight on a battlefield that favours the SM (which is most fields) then the IG will lose, but if the battlefield favours the IG then they at least have a good chance if are not able to win. This reflects TT players experience, a well organised IG with good tactics can table an SM army.
Just to clarify, I'm basing my ideas of the various factions etc off their Lore in terms of the setting material in the Codexes (granted, silently ignoring certain ones, Grey Knights I'm looking at you here), rulebooks for TT, the RPGs and other general "from out of game" perspective information, as opposed to the wildly varying (in both quality and consistency) novels and other peripheral media. The guardsman doesn't do better in ranged combat though. He's a worse shot with a worse gun and the Astartes' bolter ignores what little armour he has completely. Not all Astartes follow the Black Templar/Blood Angels/Space Wolves model of "must connect chainsword with face". The Dark Angels in particular, but also the Salamanders and Iron Hands focus quite heavily on ranged (although not long ranged for the Salamanders) combat. The TT does give the right overall impression, which is that an Imperial Guard army can beat a Space Marine army. That's because they have a bunch of shiney armour squadrons and a hell of a lot more men. Neither of those things can practically be used as a balancing factor in a game where the default state of the Space Marine is a Battle Brother and the default state of the Imperial Guardsman is a bog standard infantryman. You can't guarantee the numbers differential the Guard need to work against Marines, especially not given the overwhelming numerical superiority the Marines will have over everybody else. I really do have nothing against the inclusion of Guardsmen as playable entities in games where they'll work as such, this just simply isn't one unless you take the explicitly lore-breaking step of allowing Imperial Guardsmen to compete on a level footing with an equal number of Space Marines.
