Of course what would be even better from an MBT perspective is a Land Raider that sacrificed carrying capacity to mount a battle gun on the front (plus two TLLC!). I know why they don’t from a balance perspective, but I don’t see any reason why it should be technically infeasible.
Reading some of the novels out there, it seems that the Space Marines are very very very very tied to tradition. Even to the point of religiosity.
It seems that technology has essentially stagnated for millennia. (And there is always the worry about the taint of Chaos infecting even inanimate objects.)
Magic is as real a force in their universe as technology is.
An excerpt from Abaddon at the Therapist (Spoiler for Bigness)[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
Because that’s Heresy.
Seriously. All equipment in the Imperium of Man is built to exacting specifications laid down either during or before the Dark Age of Technology, and things like Land Raiders are built from Standard Template Constructs, which are essentially great big 3 printers that make lego kits for tanks and such. To alter the form of something that is built from an STC is the direst form of tech-heresy, and the Techpriests of Mars are willing to go to war to destroy heretek.
Plus altering the machine will offend its Machine Spirit, and you don’t want to know how many hours/days/months of prayer and ritual cleansing it requires to get a stroppy Machine Spirit back into line.
All of that is BS. I know the supposed reasons for it, but the real reason is game balance.
In a similar vein, everyone is fighting each other all the time, not because the authors think grimdark enhances the story, but because it gives people an excuse of why their forces can fight each other.
Yes, from an external standpoint it’s for game balance.
But from an in-universe standpoint, that is the reason.
They’ve got dozens of official and unofficial modifications. The “in-game” reality varies from pag to page, let alone book to book.
Nuh ah! 
I’ve played plenty of Necromunda to. But the old, “I can see enough of him”, “no you can’t” got a bit wearing after a while 
To me the biggest drawcard, and the main reason why I never bothered with 40k is the development aspect to BB & Necromunda.
To those not in the know, in BB/Necro your gang/team develops, your players get new skills and abilities. It’s not a simple min/max exercise based upon how many points are fighting today.
I’ve never played Necromunda, but yes, I prefer BB to WH40K not only due to the long-term-campaign possibilities of it but also because there is no arguing over measurements or LOS.
Why are they so slow, anyway? Games Workshop manages to put out something like two codexes a year. Given the actual pagecount, that’s not very much actual game material, much of which is just the same unit reprinted multiple times. Why does it take them so long to move on anything?
Plastic marked up that high buys a lot of H.
It certainly does. Of course, GW will be pissed off when their dealers start giving them New Finecast Heroin instead of the old kind..
Checked UPS tracking - Orks, Blood Angels, and Space Marine codexes should arrive today. Whee!
Heh. Did you hold up a couple of pinwheels when you did that?
If I did, you can’t prove it.
Ah yes, the Litany of Percussive Maintenance 
True. But in Blood Bowl, can you fling the other guy’s super expensive Heavy Bolter guy off a third floor catwalk with a shotgun slug ? No, no you can’t. Enjoy the trip down, bitch !
Crowd surfing Gutter Runners just doesn’t offer that kind of satisfaction :). Gang fouling War Dancers is close though.
Watching treemen trip over their own roots and explode into splinters on impact can be pretty satisfying, too.
There’s a running joke in my Rogue Trader group about the pending 40k MMO, and the potential of having a Techpriest class and the required four-hour litanies just to open a door or fire a weapon 
Dammit. UPS handed it off to the Postal Service for the last leg of the delivery - so although it was two miles from my house yesterday morning, it won’t get there until today. That’s odd, though - I see a UPS truck near my house fairly frequently. I wonder why the hand-off?
Incidentally, I finally opened my copy of Assault on Black Reach - and apparently, there’s at least one mistake. It came with two copies of the digest rulebook. Bonus?
One for you, one for your opponent maybe ?