Something that bothers me...

[eldargal]

Of course, I feel silly now. Nothing new there.
I do think that with an Imperium encouraging large families and basic health needs met a decent hive world could maintain a larger than 4.5% growth rate. I'm sure I read somewhere that the growth rate in some Jewish populations in Israel (ultra Orthodox or some such) was around 16%.

You were doing birthrates, not population growth rate. Birthrate = just the amount of people being born. Population growth rate = the amount of people being born compared to the amount of people dying.

[gorepants]

GW writers use two different scales for population. When talking broadly you have the teeming billions across the galaxy, but when writing about something specific this number drops to about 20 people in the whole galaxy. This is most evidient when they talks about the scale of conflict. They talk about massive Napoleonic/WWI size battles, then say that a few hundred died on a bad day. When you compare that to the sort of attrition that occured in the Napoleonic wars, a few hundred was a very good day, and a bad day was upwards of tens of thousands (nearing 10% of forces; The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes is where I got most of this, largely about the Iberian campaign, good book), or 60,000 British in the worst day of fighting in the Somme (wikipedia). Most imperial armies are listed as smaller than these!

Probably a combination of the inability of the human mind to really understand large numbers and the tendency of modern warfare to consist of much smaller battles ( the sort of thing that's been in the media for the last 20-30 years).

[AirHorse]

In general the fluff describing the imperial guard is talking about fairly elite regiments, cadians are pretty damn well trained, even gaunts ghosts and all the regiments they tend to encounter are pretty capable regiments despite the attempts to label them as fairly generic.

We never really hear much about generic *** end of space hive world no 4's 10th regiment. Massive "scumy" hive worlds whos main problems come from overpopulation and all the problems that will entail will likely send out massive guard regiments on a regular basis just for them to be shoved into fairly standard meat grindery campaigns that we will never hear about because they arent epic enough for us.

And I agree with gorepants(thats a phrase I never expected to see myself writting :P), it mainly seems to be due to the writters ability to grasp and visualise the numbers of men that 40k talks about. But its understandable, guard novels wouldnt be that interesting if there were 700 characters for you to get to know out of the 20,000 strong regiment that the novel is focused on.

It also doesnt help that in the guard novels ive read so far the basic guardsmen puts out a performance on par with your average space marine making the concept of proper meat grinder tactics kind of pass by you without any kind of actual though about the true scale of casualties that would really be taken by these regiments.

[Gnoblar with Pointy Stick]

Ewww... What if the gender disproportion is because the Imperium releases a drug in the water that makes 75% of all births male...

I don't know what's creepier, that, or the possibility that the general exclusion of females in 40K is a calculated effort by the writers...

[eldargal]

The Imperium wouldn't do that because it would destroy their recruitment base within a century. Even a relatively small increase in the proportion of males to females in a population had a dramatic effect on birth rate.

Ewww... What if the gender disproportion is because the Imperium releases a drug in the water that makes 75% of all births male...

I don't know what's creepier, that, or the possibility that the general exclusion of females in 40K is a calculated effort by the writers...

[harrybuttwhisker]

I would imagine its because the majority of there customers are male and as such a male reader would feel more able to empathise with a male character. Similar to how they do there best to avoid writing stories were the main characters are aliens, again as humans how do we empathise with an alien character and indeed how does the author portray an alien psyche so that it reads as alien yet be understood and empathised with by the reader. I doubt its quite up to tolkeins level of misogyny, now there is someone who really hated women lol

[Gnoblar with Pointy Stick]

The Imperium wouldn't do that because it would destroy their recruitment base within a century. Even a relatively small increase in the proportion of males to females in a population had a dramatic effect on birth rate.

Unless they had horrible experiment victims chained up in laboratories who were modified to to be baby factories and...

I'm going to stop this idea right there. The Imperium is so effed up that it can cause the mind to wander into icky places...

[harrybuttwhisker]

Have you not read "dead sky, black sun" lol

[Melissia]

I would imagine its because the majority of their writers are male

Fixed.

[harrybuttwhisker]

So your jumping from the assumption that they are targeting to a specific market, to the assumption that because the writers are male they for some evil reason don't want to include women?

Yes the writers are male yet have managed to portray strong female characters very well, tona criid, the inquisitor from ciaphas cain or indeed the very female cast of faith and fire, or even the adeptus arbites female lead character for a trilogy of books. So obviously they are happy to and are capable of writing about females in there work. I believe my original statement was indeed correct and its far more likely that the workers are writing to there briefs to hit there target demographic and not because being male = being a sexist pig.