Mechanicum

[Tynesh]

... I was equally annoyed by the fact that Mars seemed to produce little other than bolter ammunition and power armour...

Yep, weird isn't it.

Just thinking about it.  What was Mars doing before the Emperor turned up, just some 200 years beforehand? 

I am really disappointed by the 'short' timescale that GW has adopted with the conquest of Earth and the Great Crusade.

Tynesh

[Kage2020]

Well, to be fair the entire GW meta-story is beginning to look a bit threadbare.  Talk about lowest common denominator.  It really is the Dragon on Mars (not so bad), but now he has the Adeptus Mechanicus hoodwinked, the Emperor engineered everything, blah blah blah.

Yes, the Emperor's name is Mary Sue.

<sigh>

And one wonders why it is hard to stick with the modern 'fluff.'

Kage

[Lockjaw]

I don't know, i liked it personally.
the dialog was corny, and some of the characters were blah, but i still liked it
and Zeph  beleiveing her machines ran on science and not fairy farts worked for me, My interpretation of the ad-mech's always been that the higher ups at least, know a toaster is a toaster, and not some mystical item where small pixies lit fires under your bread to make toast, and that just seemed to be similar

so yeah, liked id despite it's shortcomings,
except once they got to the dragon, it's a silver tunnel? really?

[Tynesh]

My interpretation of the ad-mech's always been that the higher ups at least, know a toaster is a toaster, and not some mystical item where small pixies lit fires under your bread to make toast, and that just seemed to be similar

Interesting.  I think the whole superstition over science is quite a plausible way of the AdMech working.  Working in a laboratory, you would be surprised at how often reasonable, intelligent people end up doing things for no other reason than that they have always been done that way.  Sometime you end up changing something and nothing happens, even though you believed it was critical to the process working correctly.

I just see it as the techpriests doing something according to an ancient protocol, afraid to make changes or improvements that they think might make it better, but afraid to do so because they fear for the consequences if they do.

Tynesh

[Kage2020]

I don't know, i liked it personally.

Don't get me wrong.  Overall it was one of the upper quartile of the books that the Black Library churns out.  It's just that I'm not overtly fond of the way that the Emperor is meant to have engineered practically everything, bitch-slapped a C'tan, etc., etc.

Interesting.  I think the whole superstition over science is quite a plausible way of the AdMech working.

I believe that the difference here is whether the ritualisation makes up for the lack of knowledge, or whether it is there to obscure knowledge.  Anargo takes the latter approach, as well you know--it doesn't replace the ritualisation, but rather says, "Yeah, well we know that some of the Tech Priests use rote forms, but we're also working on the principle as you become initiated in the Cult Mechanicus that your actual ability to access true understanding also increases."  Then again, we've also got the puritan-radical divide to work with, one of the advantages of the "Philosophies" that were created a while back, and which were subsequently added to with concepts such as the "Paradigm" of a Forge world, or the specific meeting of dominant philosophy and faction (political stance towards the Imperium).

Kage