u/Fried_Shrimp_Enjoyer

https://preview.redd.it/evnraw685eah1.png?width=368&format=png&auto=webp&s=09f69fef601e0f1b8eba8b74abd0c76352a98862

My friends were all like "aah man aah!! roach mode!! aw man it's soooo hard aw man !!"
Then I played it and it wasn't that bad.

In fact, I think I PREFER it to normal mode. You can sprint in vents, making delta labs a breeze. You can cheese both shortcuts by rabbit jumping. And if you get ligament restructure or profit motive you basically just win the game. Not to mention that moon rocks + the beta basically offsets the roach debuffs, leaving you with the insane size and inertia reduction. Abyss is basically instantly skipped if you get the gauntlet. You win the game early if you reach grub mummy.

Am I missing something? Roach mode just trades some slight early game discomfort for a guaranteed late game win.

Picture a smaller Militarum deployment. Mopping up orc remnants, crushing renegades, restoring order on a disloyal tithe world. Not as catastrophic as the fall of Cadia or a Tyranid swarm, but leagues deadlier than sentry duty on a pleasure world (Barring Amasec related fatalities).

I'm not actually into the war stuff. If I had my way, I'd kick my feet up at some billet shuffling papers around for some commissar. I'd be unimportant enough to be free of actual responsibility, but not so replaceable he'd kill me. 'cause then he'd lose the greatest karkin' recaf-boy in the regiment.

Thankfully, an odd fellow promised to fudge some records for me. I get to choose any specialty I want. It would be rude to turn down a favour from a friend, no matter how many eyes or mouths he has.

What is the best job for me? Is there even a non-combat role available to a lowly trooper such as myself, or am I going to have to sham my way out of combat duty?

Armourer? Mechanic? Grox-Inspector? I'd say some sort of engineer, but I might end up somewhere dangerous. Throne forbid, I might even actually have to fix something. How would I explain to the Commissar that I can't fix his radio because I don't have any actual skills or education?

Once I get into that job, how easy would it be to keep up that lie? Can I get away with telling my boss that I've got an appointment with the Barber-Chirugon, or am I going to have to bust out the big guns and walk around the motorpool with a clipboard?

What's the worst that could happen? A week on latrine duty? It's a no-brainer. When they ask me where I was, I'll tell them I was scrubbing the septic tanks. Who's going to check I was there? The commissar sure as hell isn't. And if he asks why I was absent for that shift's roll-call, I'll tell him that I was doing latrine duty for the other commissar. And if that commissar asks me where I was, I'll tell him I was with the first commissar.

Those who work with money make lots of money, right? So I reckon the best place to be is around where the supplies come in. The earlier in the chain, the better. Ideally one depot down from whatever spaceport they fly the stuff in. Nobody would notice if some food or liquor went missing, right? Who's keeping track of all that stuff, anyway? Whoever's in charge gets a bottle of Amasec to look the other way, and I get to keep a little to myself for the trouble. If it's some Tech-Priest, I'll give him some sacred unguents instead. And what work would I have to do, really? Stack some boxes every now and again whenever a shuttle comes through? Pfft, this Astra Militarum shit is easy.

There seems to be a lot of lampshading with the Mechanicus' duties. A lot of "Oh they do engineering and research", but what does this actually entail?

Do the Logis get up after a power-nap to oil their joints and brew a cup of recaf for a hard day at the think-tank? Do Enginseers just spend all day digging through the scrap heap for the next old appliance they can bolt onto themselves? We see a lot of Tech-Priests with combat implants, does this imply the existence of Tech-Serfs who have foregone the shoulder-mounted melta gun for a shawarma maker?

Like in most 40k books, pretty slim pickings when it comes to the slice-of-life stuff. I get this impression that most work in the Mechanicus is like trying to bugfix somebody else's code one mystery one-letter variable at a time, with only a tenuous grasp of the intended output. Sometimes you have to add all that code that you thought did nothing but actually breaks everything if you delete it. Perhaps if whatever junior was writing up the STC for the Leman-Russ 20,000 years ago could be fucked to add some code comments, we wouldn't have forgotten it had an energy shield. The Imperium's entire industrial output probably hinges on the Manufactorums on Mars being able to find a single 200x200 jpeg of a Squig.

Going off that metaphor, is all the ritual and ceremony the Mechanicus does just the grimshart techno-religious equivalent of crossing your fingers and going "Please Please PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WORK" while waiting for your code to recompile?

One wonders what their workspace looks like. We've seen glimpses of big cogitator arrays that look like a gothic office space, where the Logis spend all day being air traffic control or a targeting computer.

...which makes me wonder how much free time the average Tech-Priest has and what they choose to do in that free time. As we all know, programmers don't tend to program for fun in their spare time. And there's no shitheap like a mechanic's car. The knee-jerk answer is "they play with implants", but I'm sure even the most passionate engineer gets tired of solving puzzle-boxes and making Rube-Goldberg machines eventually. There may even be Tech-Priests that are less mechanically inclined making computerised tabletop games on their personal cogitators, god forbid.

There's plenty implication that Tech-Priests experience more emotion than they show. We've seen Tech-Priests experience love in Know No Fear and Vorbis Conspiracy, after all.

Thinking about this has me convinced that being a Tech-Priest is actually a sweet deal. They work in some of the most guarded places in the Imperium, so the threat of violence is comparatively miniscule. Most of their work does not involve endless hours of crushing physical toil like the average soldier or labourer. They are both wanted and needed, which gives them freedom to negotiate that few others have, and are accountable only to their Magos.

I haven't seen much on the Menials, but one has to wonder that even though they do most of the wrench-twisting, welding and plumbing, being a tradie on Mars has to be leagues ahead of being a farmer on an agro-world or a scummer, right?

I have read about a few run-ins between the Guard and Space Marines. Mkoll planting an explosive trap that kills three Marines, one of Cawl's out-sniping a marine, that mother running alongside Marines with her child, that one guardswoman mistaking a Blood Angel(?) for a Khornate Chaos-Marine.

Those that aren't quietly indifferent tend to be pretty boisterous and competitive about the whole experience. I would expect a lot more reverence for one of the Emperor's angels. I assume that wherever Marines show up in the books, people are either in a rank where they're familiar with them already or have bigger problems to worry about.

I always figured most people kind of knew about the Astartes, but only through stories and legend. Considering how many people there are in the Imperium and how few Space Marines exist in comparison, the average person would probably not even recognise one when they see them. What's to say that beyond their triumphal entry, a Space Marine is nothing more to a guardsman than just another walker or suit of armour? One with a higher rank, sure, but so is everybody when you're a lowly guardsman.

I thought this had been asked before, but apparently not. Are there any examples of normal people seeing marines for the first time? Possibly where we get to see their internal monologue? Civilians, guardsmen, administrators, tech priests.

I go to log in. Oops! I made a typo. Aw shucks, I ran out of password attempts.

Good thing I've got my 2FA

"We need one more verification method"

Simple enough.

"That verification method isn't working right now. Please try another method."

Bugger! Let me use my recovery code.

"There's a temporary problem with the service. Please try again. If you continue to get this message, try again later."

Okay, time for me to call support.

"We don't handle these on call anymore, go to the Microsoft website." "Go to the support tool." "Go to the recovery tool." "Useful? No? Try watching this short video." "Was that video useful? No? To get access to support, sign in."

"We need one more verification method." "That verification method isn't working right now. Please try another method." "There's a temporary problem with the service. Please try again. If you continue to get this message, try again later." "Go to the support tool."

And again, and again, and again. I'm starting to think you can't even get to the end of it. It's designed to not let you do anything, just lead you around in a circle forever. It's not even subtle about it, it's like those business cards that say "Idiot test! If you'd like to know how to keep an idiot busy, flip the card over!" on both sides.

How do I fix this? Can I fix it? Please tell me I can fix it. Or that I can at least wait a while for it to unfuck itself and that it's some temporary block because Microsoft thinks it's suspicious that... I have access to all my security tools. This couldn't have happened at a worse time. This time I'm really going to fucking do it.

This one is quite esoteric. Rapidly blinking blue LEDs and benign computer problems mess with my head. I immediately feel a sense of immense dread and terror, and often depersonalise. A couple times this has triggered a manic-depressive episode which has resulted in hospitalisation.

I'm sure this is the result of me generalising the stress and anxiety associated with technical problems to the stimulus of throbbers and blue screens. The strange thing is I'll never have these issues in the moment. A problem in private that I have the power to fix? I'll simply fix it. Blue LED sign on a storefront? Dry retching, fetal position, shivering. Big mess. It's humiliating, having a seizure from a random blinking blue light like I'm witnessing an Ophanim. I feel like that video of the guy crying at the Star Wars trailer when it happens. I have to plan around it with friends and family because despite it happening for years they think I'm a psycho.

I never thought I'd say it, but Psychiatrists think I'm crazy. They don't believe me when I say Bill Gates psychically raping me is the cause of my seizures. I'm serious. I used to control them with alcohol and benzodiazapines, but quit when I realised I hadn't remembered anything from the last 12 months of my life.

What next?!!