“What? You tell me mentally capapable soldiers won’t manage to use a gun? Man, that is wrong. He might be used to swords, but as soon as he learns the simple concept of pulling a trigger and reload, he only needs practice. You could give rather old grandpa a weapon working on a principle unknown to him, but after 3 weeks of learning what to do and practice, he can use it. He won’t need to shift out his social mindset.

“hell not even orks manage that level of technical…orkyness. they wouldnt know what a safety is, what “semi automatic” or “automatic” mean; even if you told them there and then they wouldnt possess the societal memes necessary to properly make sense of it.”

I frankly don’t understand the argument at all. Could you please clarify?”

this is the main bit you seem to have a problem with…it is probably more to do with my way of writing and such (i freely admit the way i write is not always optimal) than anything else, so ill try and be clearer.
basically, by line infantry i do not mean modern infantry units. line infantry in this case means napoleonic era soldiers from regiments of the line. at this time the most advanced weapon was the baker rifle. firstly, if you call it a gun they would assume you were talking about cannon; this is part of what i mean by societal knowledge (im not calling soldiers retards). they lack the memes and social understanding necessary (which is a vital part of how technology is understood). soldiers from the 1800′s, who were as a rule uneducated to even the basic primary level (the majority could not read and write) literally would not be equipped to understand what a modern gun (eg a p-90) is. this is at least the level of acceleration required for the end result to be meaningful….but the problem is atheism doesnt exist, modern science doesnt exist. these weapons would be considered either the product of satan (and be destroyed) or the product of god (and therefor hoarded and placed in cathedrals as relics).

society has to progress to a certain point before technology can be effectively used, and society cannot be forced.

at any rate, the long quote from mechanicum above me pretty much makes the point that the emperor did control the rate of human development, making it the best it possibly could be. not the fastest (probably), but the best.

“yep, in the beginning of the mechanicum novel, a couple of imperial knights(which are basically small titans) or on there way, to witness the arrival of the emperor, however one of the knights is complaining about his mechs knee, which is playing up but no-one can seem to get it right, however upon meeting the emperor, he places his hand on the knights knee and says “machine heal thyself” and it does”
What a pimp.