>>43770796
It's pretty common historically to have military units where the official numbers are a lot fewer or more than the manpower they can actually deploy.

Medieval armies often counted by the number of knights, but since most knights brought three or more squires archers and serjeants as part of their lances those numbers are deceptively low. Some Classical armies like the Persian Immortals did the opposite and claimed a constant high number of men, regardless of how many they could actually field, in order to build up a reputation.

It's not unreasonable to think that a Space Marine chapter might be intentionally over- or undercounting to hit that magic number 1000.

Yes, 1000 is more of a guideline that an actual rule.

Yes, the ultramarines themselves have more than a thousand, they also effectively are at legion size because they can order a bunch of chapters around.

Yes, no one cares if you go over 1000, unless you really pissed someone off and don't have a strong enough political pull to cover your ass.

>>43770796
Well, we know that both the company size of 100 and the Chapter size of 1000 are both rough estimates generally on the lower side, and that there are wild exceptions on both sides of the scale to either figure.

We know that the 100 and 1000 figures refer chiefly to the men in Tactical, Assault, Devastator, Scout and Veteran Squads and generally don't include the leadership, Library, Reclusiam, Apothecarion, Forge, individuals promoted to Command Squads, crews for vehicles and so on. The average Chapter listed as ten companies of 100 is thus truthfully around 115-120 men per company and the Chapter 1200 men in total as a result of this.

Personally, I always thought 150 was a better number for a Space marine company. 10 basic squads of 10, a 10-strong leadership block and 40 men in support elements. Two companies devoted to Tactical, Assault and Devastator Purposes, a Scout company and Veteran Company, then the bodies of the Forge is 75 strong, the Apothecarion, Library and Reclusium are 50 strong, fleet crew 25 strong and the high leadership and ancients 50 strong. 1500 men total.

>>43770937
didnt mongols use a tactic of having riderless horses run alongside actual horsemen to make their armies look bigger?

>>43771043
bringing spare horses is pretty much a standard thing for all armies with cavalry.

>>43771043
They also intentionally drove a big horde of refugees before them to soak up arrows and make the horde look huge.

>>43770796
>space marine drivers and pilots for the numerous vehicles
This is 7th company. The 7th ed codex made this quite explicit.

>>43772152
I still doubt that that is enough. Lets assume each company (except the seventh) has 11 dedicated transports (one for each squad and one for the command squad). You require 99 marines for those vehicles (assuming one dude per vehicle). You further need crews for tanks and aircraft. A realistic organization of a chapter would put the number of marines closer to 1200 due to the marines' obsession with doing as much direct combat work as possible themselves.

About 1066 direct combat personnel and command staff, couple dozen tech marines, apothecaries, chaplains, and librarians, about 120 for vehicle crewmen. Totals about 1200. I just interpret 1000 marines as 1000 marines organized within the company tasked with direct combat duty on the frontlines fighting on foot with a bolter. Pretty much 1000 infantry and 200 officers, support staff, and crewmen.

Actual militaries have a much worse tooth to tail ratio.

>>43772152
so what happens when the 7th company fights, everyone else is buttfucked for transports?

>>43773575
>>43772891
Should've specified, this is aircraft only. Rhinos are piloted by the squad and by machine spirit when the squad has deployed.

Errrr it's Canon that "support" staff don't effect over all manpower levels. You are allowed a thousand assault, devastator or tactical marines (and I suppose termies too!). But then pilots of vehicles, techmarines, librarian and chaplaincy branches all do not go to the overal tally. I believe leadership roles are also excluded.

But yeah, it's covered in Canon. It would be stupid that you have under strength squads because someone needs to drive the tank.

>>43771043
There were multiple purposes to all the extra horses mongols would have. It meant that they could switch out between horses to go "full speed" longer than they otherwise could, and also because a good portion of what they lived on was horse blood and horse milk it meant that they could spread that out between horses to the point that the horses wouldn't get seriously hurt.
Really "looking like a larger army" was just a bonus.

>>43770796

Use your brain and you will find the answer is quite simple. It's a multiple of 10, and thus eases logistics, which Guilliman has a lot to do with.

It was either 100 marines per chapter, 1,000, or 10,000. If you have multiple chapters 10,000 strong running around, Badab War would have literally been Horus Heresy II.

The Codex Astartes was never meant to be a holy text. If you went a couple guys over 1,000 then no big deal. The point is don't fucking try to climb to 10,000 guys/legion like Huron did.

If you knew anything about the Horus Heresy legions, you'd also know why chapters are 1,000 strong. Chapters already existed within the original legions. They simply had many chapters in each legion, and companies within each chapter.

And it's not 1,000 men period. It's 1,000 out of all the Battle Companies, Reserve Companies, and first 100 Scout recruits. Your HQ staff, Armory, Reclusiam, Librarius, excess Scouts, in-training neophytes, serfs, etc don't count towards that limit.