Does that include those who put on a (perhaps excessively) dogmatic facade to avoid getting BLAMmed by Commissars, Inquisitors, overzealous Space Marines, Sisters of Battle, overzealous, conniving, and/or ambitious coworkers looking for an excuse to unseat them, etc. when their ideals might be (even incrementally) less dogmatic than the norm (for instance, disdaining the use of servo-skulls and servitors made from criminals as opposed to vat-grown ones, being willing to allow non-Forge Worlds and non-AdMech facilities to produce basic weapons (i.e. lasguns) and munitions (i.e. bolter rounds), etc.)?
Given the circumstances in which that sort of test is relevant, I think it’s mostly going to come down to people’s ability to remember who they’re talking to right now.
Y’know, I’ve opined before on the Empire’s general preference for long-ranged combat rather than the more traditional to the setting driving in close and hitting each other with your swords/flashlights/bolters/etc., for various reasons, but it occurs to me that the real advantage they have isn’t range.
Or superior technology (the Necrons have that).
Or the willingness to flood the battlefield with drones (the T’au have that).
It’s that most everyone else disdains the use of even human-level artificial intelligence, and that even in muddy ground engagements the Legions consider a good opening move to be “say hello to my hyperintelligent warmind advisor who considers four-dimensional go an amusing intellectual diversion for a lazy afternoon”.
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