Algus said:

I think the total DW numbers are a big mystery, and the math probably won't add up.  However, as of Achilus Assault they upped the old 'small group' numbers:

Since the arrival of the Achilus Crusade, the ranks of the Deathwatch have grown to accommodate an increase in their combat operations. Whereas for years each Watch Station was manned only by a handful of Battle-Brothers and a limited number of specialised vessels, now they have the ability to field entire companies should the need arise.

Remembering that a single company is 100 battle brothers, saying 'entire companies' seems to imply that they could easily field at least two companies plus support staff.  They also go into length in RoB to talk about all the amazing planet nuking ships they have that are 100% detection resistant.  Take of any of that what you will, I'm really just kind of arguing for arguments sake here, and don't really condone sending a company of DW marines in to save a kill team or to recover their armor.

Charmander said:

That is just because their Marines are not as awesome as they need to be to play their role in the fluff.

AluminiumWolf said: 

Or, y'know, it could be that with a war going on and there being multiple simultaneous missions in each Salient, there just need to be more Marines. Not even a Primarch can be in two places at once, Alpharius notwithstanding.

 Neh. They have never gotten a handle on just how few Space Marines there are, and how awesome they need to be to justify their reputation.

AluminiumWolf said:

Still trying to convince people that your personal belief that a Space Marine can literally "-consume [enemies] with fireballs from his eyes and bolts of lightning from his arse-" is right, and everyone who says otherwise- scores of GW writers, dozens of FFG designers, thousands of fans the world over- are all horribly wrong, decades of documented 40K history be damned? Sigh…

Cadians, Catachans, Tallarns, Valhallans- these guys are famous throughout the Imperium, because they are better at one or two aspects of soldering than a standard Guardsman. Proportionally, a Space Marine wears drastically better armour and wields drastically better weapons, has a superhuman physiology that allows them to survive injuries that would easily kill any normal human, has superhuman discipline, can go indefinitely without sleep, 'Knows No Fear', etc, etc. In other words, they dwarf the most famous elite regiments of the Imperial Guard. How do these supposedly 'underpowered' Space Marines not justify their reputation, compared to the other armies of the Imperium? How is your own completely arbitrary measure of 'awesome' the only standard?

If you want to make your own highly altered version of the 40Kverse where Space Marines have god-like powers, thats fine. Have fun. Go nuts. But your constant insistance that everyone who tries to stay more-or-less 'true' to the source material is wrong is… irritating…

Charmander said:

When reading DW material I can't help but think that many of the writers get carried away with populating the game-world with Space Marines.

I mean this is Crusade and there are less than 10 ongoing across the whole galaxy at any one time (and reading Dan Abnetts works other Crusades aren't so Space Marine populous as the Achilus Crusade). So we can expect to see THOUSANDS around quite happily.

But do they really need that many in the DW? After all, if it comes down to fighting Xeno's that's not only what almost all Space Marines do but also what most Guard Regiments are raised to do. If you need a whole company of Marines do you need to do it strict confidence or could you just send a company of Space Marines from any given chapter.

It leads to a level in-efficiency that I can't see being kept up in the Imperium. With Space Marines so valuable do you really need a SM watching scanners in any given watch fortress, when humans are quite capable of doing it? Do you really need a Watch Captain sitting in a fortress twiddling his thumbs until a Kill Team comes back so he can give them orders. Shouldn't even mighty Space Marine commanders be leading from the front, can't an Inquisitor sit behind a desk and send Kill teams to the right location? Do you really need a Tech-marine on every Watch Station waiting for Kill Teams to need gear repairing or could human tech adepts do most of it, could you not get Tech-Priests for most of it.

The Astartes have many, many star-ships, which need thousands of crew each, all of which are humans or servitors. The Astartes are more than used to using humans and servitors for anything that doesn't require a superhuman, and yet RoB didn't mention anyone that wasn't a Space Marine 'officer' or a Inquisitor. 

Face Eater said:

I think this lies in the idea that 'the Reach is a special place.'  The Reach is super imporatnt to the Deathwatch and the Inquisition, which is part of what they regularly use to explain why the DW spends some of its time fighting Chaos and Heretics.  They have operations going on most of the worlds in the Reach, and their Watch Commander feels without the DW getting involved in a major way.  I think the theory being that a company of Deathwatch Marines is more akin to sending in the 1st Company of another Chapter sans Terminator Armor being everywehre- the DW is supposed to consist of the elite, right?

That being said, I think you're right and the writers tend to go a little over the top- moreso than I like personally (and I don't particularly like the RoB description of 101 kill ships and things like that).  I tend to scale it back in my own setting to try and create the idea that Astartes are a rare and precious commodity.