amanita wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
The original Rogue Trader description of autoguns is below. Small calibre explicitly noted, which I wouldn’t consider a .50 cal to be.

Problems: These descriptions appear to be written by someone who knows literally zero about conventional firearms. At least in the 20th Century. There was only 1 ever Caseless ammo small arms weapon system ever to make it past planning into basic development. The H&K G11. It used a Caseless 4.7mm round. About 15 or so were ever actually made, and the ammo was never actually sent into production. For obvious reasons, this weapon was a complete flop. Caseless ammo is/was a futuristic trope that never actually made it. If it gets wet, it's useless. It's fragile. It's prone to exploding when near fire (surprisingly everywhere on a battlefield).

Auto guns have since this description, had countless examples of their wielders referring to them as "Archaic slug throwers" that do a lot more physical damage, but are also prone to jamming, running out of ammo, breaking, etc.

My description of them as .50 cals is based on a very bad detail writer, (Abnett) using loosey goosey terms interchangeably. He describes Trooper Bragg "picking up an Assault Cannon" and wielding it like a flamer. He obviously means Autocannon. He also refers to an Autogun as a belt fed "point fifty" in "Only in Death". Point is, Autogun is a term to define literally anything short of a Boltgun in 40k. Depending on the Author.

Point of order about the G-11 and caseless ammo. West Germany was fully prepared to begin production after 1000 units were made but due to the reunification with East Germany and the surplus of hundreds of thousands of Kalashnikov rifles it was no longer financially expedient. The technical issues involved were never considered to be serious enough to stop production, as the issues of cook off and fragility were subsequently addressed. Russian currently uses caseless full auto grenade launchers, for example.