# The drawbacks of bionics...what are they?



## MontytheMighty (Jul 21, 2009)

In Wrath of Iron, the Iron Hands' bionics seem to improve their performance with almost no drawbacks...why don't all chapters improve their combat effectiveness with bionic augmentations?


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

not sure if a metal prostectic is an enhancement.

Being able to feel and not rusting are two advantages of flesh I can think of. You'd also have some power supply problems


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## Serpion5 (Mar 19, 2010)

It's psychological. 

Most sources will state that bionics provide no real advantages over flesh when applied to a space marine. For a human perhaps, but most astartes only resort to bionics because they've lost their original... bits. 

So, the iron Hands may be deluding themselves into believing they're being improved in some way. Or maybe they've got refined bionics?


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## Rems (Jun 20, 2011)

There's an elements of ritual and custom as well.

The Space Marines are gene-wrought from the hand of the emperor, made in the image of their holy primarchs. To tamper with that form is not something you voluntarily do (Iron hands excepted it being a part of their culture from the begging). You do not improve on the Emperor's work, you merely fix what's broken. Added to this is 10,000 years of tradition and doing things a certain way. Those are not habits to be easily broken. 

It's like how the Wolves prefer to fight with their boots on the ground to the point of tactical detriment. 

There's also the fact you then have to make and maintain all those bionics, expensive and laborious process.


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## Sangus Bane (Jun 17, 2009)

One huge advantage of Bionics is that they are more resilient than flesh.
A las pistol might burn the skin of a space marine but it will only scratch the paint off of a metal arm.

Serious injuries with loss of blood can also be prevented with the use of bionics, though SM bodies tend to fix themselves fairly fast.

A disadvantage is an EMP, if all power sources are rendered useless, then so is the bionic.


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## Lost&Damned (Mar 25, 2012)

Its been a while since i last read "feat of iron" however if i remember correctly the Eldar devised ways to nullify the iron hands augments, their bionic components were rendered useless and became naught but cumbersome liabilities, ironically it wasn't the flesh that failed, but what they replaced the flesh with (the eldar also poisoned Ferrus manus through his augmented hands.), my guess is the eldar used some sort of EMP.

furthermore, in a short story wherein a Raven guard and a iron hand work together to discover some form of intelligence (if my memory serves correctly) the iron hand was loud, slow and encumbered by his bionics.

also a quote from "wrath of iron":
they are not my hands.
This fact is forgotten by my brothers – inexplicably, it has always seemed to me. The hands are strong, to be sure, and have created great things for us all, but they are not mine. And that counts for something.
They forget that the silver on my arms comes from a beast that I vanquished. It is the mark of a great evil that I ended, and yet it persists within me. It is alien, artificial; an uneasy corollary to the superlative physical frame given to me by my father.
I would struggle to remove it now. The problem is not one of surgery, for I have no doubt my father’s chirurgeons could remake me entirely if he gave them the command. No, I will not remove the silver from my flesh because I have learned to depend on it.
The fault is with my mind. I rely on the augmentation given to me by my metal gauntlets, so much so that the flesh beneath them is now little more than a memory.
It is a crutch, this silver. A day will come when I will strip it from me, lest I lose the power to master myself forever. Already my Legion’s warriors replace their shield hands with metal in my honour, and so they too are learning to doubt the natural strength of their bodies. They must be weaned off this practice before it becomes a mania for them. Hatred of what is natural, of what is human, is the first and greatest of the corruptions.
So I record it here: when the time comes, I will strip my hands of their unnatural silver. I will instruct my Legion to recant their distrust of the flesh. I will turn them away from the gifts of the machine and bid them relearn the mysteries of flesh, bone and blood.
When my father’s Crusade is over, this shall be my sacred task. When the fighting is done, I shall cure my Legion, and myself. For if fighting is all there is, if we may never pause to reflect on what such devotion to strength is doing to us, then our compulsion will only grow.
Already I see the madness that path leads to, and so I shall excise the silver from my hands. In doing so I shall weaken myself and my sons, but nonetheless it must be done.
The hands are strong, and have created great things, but they are not mine.


EDIT: however i should also point out im not trying to portray them in a purely negative light, they have their uses aswell, just trying to answer OP.


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## MEQinc (Dec 12, 2010)

Sangus Bane said:


> Serious injuries with loss of blood can also be prevented with the use of bionics, though SM bodies tend to fix themselves fairly fast.


Which ironically makes bionics somewhat more vulnerable than marine flesh. A marine can clot a bleed very swiftly (depending on the depth of the cut, minutes or less) but a bionic cannot be repaired during battle. If a control wire or fluid feed is severed than the marine will have no way of fixing themselves.


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## cragnes417 (Jul 22, 2010)

Another drawback i see in books of space marines is that its slightly harder to fight daemons with bionics.


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## JAMOB (Dec 30, 2010)

Then again isn't there that S6 guard guy because of bionics? That'd be pretty awesome for rines...


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## khrone forever (Dec 13, 2010)

Sangus Bane said:


> One huge advantage of Bionics is that they are more resilient than flesh.
> A las pistol might burn the skin of a space marine but it will only scratch the paint off of a metal arm.
> 
> Serious injuries with loss of blood can also be prevented with the use of bionics, though SM bodies tend to fix themselves fairly fast.
> ...



however if the power sources are rendered useless then so is the armour, meaning they have a very hard time moving, so the bionic going isnt that much of a problem


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## Garrak (Jun 18, 2012)

The bionic is not powered by the power armor.


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## Matcap (Aug 23, 2012)

If I remember correctly in one of the Iron hand novels it showed that one of the main drawbacks of becoming more and more bionic is losing your touch with reality and abillity to properly cooperate with other people. 
In the novel the Iron Hands are besieging a hive together with several IG regiments and Titans. In the course of the siege there are more and more problems between the Iron Hands and their allies because the Iron Hands can't really understand why the IG don't keep up with their attacks and why they can't endure the same punishment resulting in several critical operations (almost) failing.


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## MEQinc (Dec 12, 2010)

Matcap said:


> If I remember correctly in one of the Iron hand novels it showed that one of the main drawbacks of becoming more and more bionic is losing your touch with reality and abillity to properly cooperate with other people.
> In the novel the Iron Hands are besieging a hive together with several IG regiments and Titans. In the course of the siege there are more and more problems between the Iron Hands and their allies because the Iron Hands can't really understand why the IG don't keep up with their attacks and why they can't endure the same punishment resulting in several critical operations (almost) failing.


But how much of this is due to the bionics and how much is due to the Iron Hands personal philosophies (Flesh is Weak) and general super-human-ness. We`ve seen examples of non-augmented marines having difficulty understanding the limitations of the human body and mind.


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## khrone forever (Dec 13, 2010)

Garrak said:


> The bionic is not powered by the power armor.


what is it powered by then? nuclear batteries?


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

khrone forever said:


> what is it powered by then? nuclear batteries?


Internal batteries of some sort?

You see the bionics function when marines aren't in their armor and you see humans who've never been in power armor also running around with bionics, too.


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## Matcap (Aug 23, 2012)

MEQinc said:


> But how much of this is due to the bionics and how much is due to the Iron Hands personal philosophies (Flesh is Weak) and general super-human-ness. We`ve seen examples of non-augmented marines having difficulty understanding the limitations of the human body and mind.


Fair enough, it's true that augmented humans (for example Yarrick) don't seem to have this problem.


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

It's a Space Marine problem - there's some fluff somewhere explaining that Imperial Guard regiments fighting alongside the Astartes have their own command structure because the Ultramarines tried having Guardsmen integrated into the Astartes command chain, and the Captains and Chapter Masters woefully misjudged the Guardsmen's fighting ability and used them in the wrong way. They would use Guardsmen as they would use Space Marines, and obviously failed catastrophically.

Midnight


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

MidnightSun said:


> It's a Space Marine problem - there's some fluff somewhere explaining that Imperial Guard regiments fighting alongside the Astartes have their own command structure because the Ultramarines tried having Guardsmen integrated into the Astartes command chain, and the Captains and Chapter Masters woefully misjudged the Guardsmen's fighting ability and used them in the wrong way. They would use Guardsmen as they would use Space Marines, and obviously failed catastrophically.
> 
> Midnight


Perhaps some Chapters (like the Iron Hands), but I doubt the Ultramarines would make such a mistake.

They're masters of strategy--and that means knowing what all your men and materiel can and can not do. Secondly, we know that the regiments Ultramar raises sometimes fight alongside the Ultramarines.

From the second edition Ultramarines codex, "As a result regiments [from Ultramar] have fought all over the galaxy, often in campaigns alongside the Ultramarines themselves."

I mean, theoretically, they could be under their own command, but the Ultramarines strike me as a Chapter to take complete control over the theater. Their specialty being strategy and logistics, after all.

Then we see Papa Smurf leading Maccrage's PDF in the fight against Hive Fleet Behemoth.


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## piemelke (Oct 13, 2010)

I would say it depends on the complexity of the organ it should replace,
if it is a relatively simple organ, say a heart which is essentially an electrically driven pump, it would seem logical to replace this with a mechanical counterpart, I would think wrath of iron gives us a nice example of this. 
Regarding the eye, since it is in principle a system shaping and partially processing a light field, this should also be simple to replace,
human nerves should also be rather simple to replace by a fiber like technology greatly increasing the response speed (I guess power armor already does this).
Regarding strength, I guess the PA is the limiting factor.
More complex organs on the other hand like special glands, that is another thing to replace these, and probably it is by far not efficient to do this, furthermore the SM body should be the ultimate in genetic engineering.
I agree with MECinq that certainly the autorepair functionality is nearly unreplacable, as is the adaptivity of biological engineering (nids vs necrons ?),
As such I would say it depends on the funcionality but besides some simple processes, it does not seem logical to replace everything (mmh an IH would shoot me for this, but he would probably anyway so screw him)


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## raider1987 (Dec 3, 2010)

Read storm of iron, it defines the issues with bionics really well, plus it's awesome. An arch magos of the mechanicum even states that they are incapable of improving on the body of a space marine. Bionics don't heal naturally, they need a tech priest to repair, plus deminishment of the soul.


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## Old Man78 (Nov 3, 2011)

Everything mechanical/electrical WILL at sometime fail or have a glitch no matter how advanced. Remember a bionic implant or limb is to replace what was the desired original limb/organ. A bionic may enhance you or replace lost part and maybe superior however the fact it needs a power supply and needs to be maintained lets it down. Look at the Germans in Russia in WW2 as a perfect example of how military hardware fares in the cold.


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## Cronkonium (Feb 6, 2018)

As a point of Biology and Bionics or well Mechanical Devices of today (approximately the year 12'000 or 2'000 of the Holocene and Gregorian Calendars respectively). We have scientific studies on the inputs and influences of neurons (from a rat or mouse I believe), on a mechanical device with a programme. The programme is a flight simulator and basically the neurons learned over time how to manoeuvre the plane through electrodes in the device. IF IN 40k there was a way for biologic energy to re-initialise a bionic eye or general body-part or (because WE MUST still have a human brain), we have human neuronal RESTANDARDISATION techniques that would alter the neuronal activity to a bionic part to better control and interface with it. Then there should be next to no real problem for human control of the devices.

But for boons to having bionics, I would imagine that even for astartes a bionic eye for instance would add potential customisation AT LEAST.


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