It kinda works both ways—in order to make 4 player coop functional, you’d require so many tyranids on screen that it would be unplayable, both hardware and for the players brain.
I know fanboys would scream if the marines were squishier, but what’s always confused me is that despite the legendary invincibility of space marines, in tabletop they still feel moderately squishy. Sure not like tyranids and orcs and such, but not like super human either. I suppose terminator squads with custom gear might feel closer to that mark.
It’s important to remember that the lore books are intended to be tinged as propaganda by the narrator. Of course the imperium will say it’s angels of death are semi-gods of the battlefield, but in reality armor only stops so much and a 7ft tall slab muscle walking tank is impressive, but a carnifex is still gonna carry its weight on the field as well and fuck up some astartes
In the space hulk og board game and most video game adaptations, Space Marines die very quickly to genestealers and such.
Even in the first SM game, the resilience came from doing melee executions (akin to glory kills from doom) which triggered health regen. And you were not even immune to damage during the animation !
Yeah on table top space marines are the reference for other things. Other armies usually have a unit that is considered a SEQ (space marine equivalent)
If I put a number on them it would be 1 where as IG flashlight trooper would be 0.1 and a tank would be around 7-10
Then I guess all other games like MMOs with 4 player dungeons aren't designed around 4 players?
The original Space Marine story was largely focused on 3 Marines. It's kind of how the series is. They likely wrote the story around that, and adding another would give yiu too much advantage. It's entirely possible their vision for the story and difficulty required a balance that works well with 3.