Old Space Marine equipment

[infornography]

So, I was wondering if anyone knew of any lore in 40k that explains what is being done with all the old Space Marine equipment that no longer fits the needs of the new Primaris bent of the Imperium.
I mean, these are weapons of war that have been in service for centuries or in some cases millennia, they clearly are effective enough to have been maintained and replaced for such a long time. Are they now just getting mothballed in fortress monasteries throughout the Imperium or is the Imperium finding new uses for them? Or, more pessimistically, are they just getting destroyed and replaced with Primaris tanks and power armor in the meat grinder of the current black crusade?

The bolters and other space marine guns can of course be used by regular humans, with some effort, but are they being handed out to militia/guard or hoarded by the chapters?

Space Marine power armor though wouldn't fit most regular humans and also wouldn't be usable by any but the shortest of Primaris. It seems odd and wasteful for all this gear to go unused but, who could use it?

Just some thoughts tickling my brain this morning.

[purestrain]

Dec 1, 2021 15:43:03 GMT infornography said:

So, I was wondering if anyone knew of any lore in 40k that explains what is being done with all the old Space Marine equipment that no longer fits the needs of the new Primaris bent of the Imperium.
I mean, these are weapons of war that have been in service for centuries or in some cases millennia, they clearly are effective enough to have been maintained and replaced for such a long time. Are they now just getting mothballed in fortress monasteries throughout the Imperium or is the Imperium finding new uses for them? Or, more pessimistically, are they just getting destroyed and replaced with Primaris tanks and power armor in the meat grinder of the current black crusade?

The bolters and other space marine guns can of course be used by regular humans, with some effort, but are they being handed out to militia/guard or hoarded by the chapters?

Space Marine power armor though wouldn't fit most regular humans and also wouldn't be usable by any but the shortest of Primaris. It seems odd and wasteful for all this gear to go unused but, who could use it?

Just some thoughts tickling my brain this morning.

Ill bet with retrofitted mounts or an exo skeletal latch point similar to what they have today to fill the gap, a catachan force could fit into some space marines power armor, as long as they were too big an astartes.

[infornography]

Now I am thinking it would be fun to make a Space Marine chapter that had a mutation that kept them normal human sized. They could never fill out a space marine power armor and just used scout equipment, but then, they crossed the Rubicon Primaris and can now fit... the old hand me downs of other chapters.

Just giving them all old marine armor and primaris guns and stuff. It would look comically oversized in some cases.

Seriously though, have I missed some bit of dialogue or lore saying what was being done with all the Rhinos, Razorbacks, Predators, Land Raiders, Storm Ravens, power armor, etc?

[bolk]

Dec 2, 2021 14:04:32 GMT infornography said:

Now I am thinking it would be fun to make a Space Marine chapter that had a mutation that kept them normal human sized. They could never fill out a space marine power armor and just used scout equipment, but then, they crossed the Rubicon Primaris and can now fit... the old hand me downs of other chapters.

Just giving them all old marine armor and primaris guns and stuff. It would look comically oversized in some cases.

Seriously though, have I missed some bit of dialogue or lore saying what was being done with all the Rhinos, Razorbacks, Predators, Land Raiders, Storm Ravens, power armor, etc?

I haven't read any of the like, but in the case of the Blood Angels for example, pretty much the entire chapter has been decimated. So there's not much gear and vehicles to be salvaged. The opening of the rift didn't exactly help matters for other chapters either, so Primaris are slowly phasing out the old equipment I guess.

[killercroc]

Regarding the Bolter, if I recall the bolter used by Guard is actually smaller than the bolter used by Marines so I don't think they'd just hand off the old bolters... however I'm sure they could be used by some augmented humans, servitors, pintle mounts for vehicles, adapted into sentry guns. A few other things but I doubt they'd go straight into the hands of a Guardsman. There is still the aspect of them being relics of the chapter, so the more extreme chapters would more likely keep theirs under lock and key, give them to scouts to use rather than cycle them back into the Imperium supply lines.

Power armor... this is one of the things that new marines kinda wreck in the old fluff. Power armor use to be really difficult to create and maintain, some chapters not even able to make new ones, and the Forge Worlds that made a lot of the power armor were destroyed during the heresy. So every piece of power armor was a valuable relic... now there are just, millions of giga power armor that's so much better than the old stuff. Not to mention the new giga mega power armor the heavy intercessors use. GW effectively made it so power armor is so readily available and easy to manufacture I'm surprised ganger juvies in slums aren't wearing the stuff. The only reasonable thing I could think of for power armor is to recycle the parts and use them to create new armor... but there's no point to that because the new Primaris armor is just so abundant. It'll get thrown in the storage closet to collect dust.