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Why in many 40k Video Games/Cinematics/Movies show Space Marines just going full auto with their Bolters? In the HH books and the Ultramarines Novel series show Space Marines firing in disciplined bursts. Even in a scene where some DAs are about to be overrun, the DAs fire single bolt rounds in a disciplined fashion before going melee. I feel like Eternal Crusade should make Bolt Rounds rarer. This goes for any other games with Bolters.

TL;DR
Shoot less bolters in CGI

Like anything else in a large property interpreted by a number of people, bolters function differently depending who's behind the wheel of the story.In Dawn of War 2 they fire slowly with a satisfying, chunky sound, and that's how I see bolters functioning in my head. The ones in the first Dawn of War are basically submachine guns with bottomless magazines, and Space Marine was somewhere inbetween.

It's really just to give off a more cinematic and edgy feel to when you fire off a gun, since it's always more exciting and cool to have something fire rounds of deadly shots than pew-pew with a few deadly ones. Games-wise its also more of a mechanic since the bolter fulfills the main battle rifle of the game which typically is a full-auto gun since that helps balance out the more damaging semi-auto guns like plasma or melta guns.

I mean its similar to how they portray bolters themselves in artwork, there's a lot of cases where shell casings are flying out yet bolter rounds are often described as being caseless rockets, so why would there be those flying out? For aesthetic reasons rather than any real logical ones. It is 40K after all.

I agree, I think it's cooler when you have someone going one-shot-one-kill at high speed than it is when you spray and pray.

Excuse my ubernerdness, but it brings to mind the Jackson LoTR where legolas does some point-blank archery. "And you're dead, and you're dead, and you're dead," nonchalantly with a projectile weapon from close range is just better. Sometimes discipline is more spectacular than simple volume of fire. To me, at least.

I guess in DoW1, it sort of made sense, given the game mechanics. In a game where everything has lots of hit points, and weapons do little damage (for the purpose of more precise combat resolution), you do sort of need to have more bullets fired to compensate.

Well, in my personal headcanon, the reason Marines are better than equivalent troops is because they can fire on full auto... and have every shot still be a kill-shot. Sixteen round bolter magazine, squeeze the trigger, fire all sixteen shots in under a second, get sixteen kills.

That is how a Marine firing a bolter should be.

The measured, disciplined single-shot single-kill technique Ailaros describes is more how I imagine my Sisters operating. Still deadly accurate, the absolute best that human infantry can be, but not quite at that super-human level of insanity shooting that the Marines pull off.

IMO the only thing that ever depicted Space Marines firing correctly was the DoW 2 games.

If it makes you feel any better, movie depictions of real guns also fall into this trap.

Turns out blazing away at full auto with no regard for clip size looks amazing on film, but in reality would last for only a few seconds, and would destroy the gun barrel in some cases.

Hunam0001 wrote:
If it makes you feel any better, movie depictions of real guns also fall into this trap.

Turns out blazing away at full auto with no regard for clip size looks amazing on film, but in reality would last for only a few seconds, and would destroy the gun barrel in some cases.

Surely the bolter's 2 drilled holes would help a little?

Is there already a thread about this on the Eternal Crusade forums?

Also, being an intermittent player of shooter video games, I can say that I tend to suck when firing semi-auto weapons at moving targets, and I do a hell of a lot better when firing full-auto weapons at moving targets. It's because in the latter situation, I just hold the left mouse button down and move the mouse, whereas with the former, I have to click the left mouse button rapidly AND move the mouse.

The two drilled out holes wouldn't help with ammo consumption.

As well, an M60 machine gun can't fire for more than a few seconds in full auto mode without heat warping the gun barrel.

Although, we are talking about a fictional weapon, so Bolters are probably made from some frictionless wonder material that wouldn't have that problem.

DOW II I think accurately represented them - short bursts I think.

Or bolts are self-propelled, like it says they are.

My biggest gripe with any of the games was how Ultramarines scorned cover in the Space Marine game. They justified not programming cover functions on the grounds that ultras are too proud to take cover. Just plain wrong.

There where cover functions in that game, if you watch the Orks, they use them all the time.

Cover should have been the other way round - orks charging recklessly without using cover, marines picking them off from cover before they got into charge range and then going cc lol

This may also have things to do with chapter. I could envision Space Wolves going full-auto just for the lolz or something similar, but Ultramarines going full-auto? No way. I agree that DOW2 has the best bolters.

 Grimskul wrote:
It's really just to give off a more cinematic and edgy feel to when you fire off a gun, since it's always more exciting and cool to have something fire rounds of deadly shots than pew-pew with a few deadly ones. Games-wise its also more of a mechanic since the bolter fulfills the main battle rifle of the game which typically is a full-auto gun since that helps balance out the more damaging semi-auto guns like plasma or melta guns.

I mean its similar to how they portray bolters themselves in artwork, there's a lot of cases where shell casings are flying out yet bolter rounds are often described as being caseless rockets, so why would there be those flying out? For aesthetic reasons rather than any real logical ones. It is 40K after all.

Actually, bolters do have cases. For example, in the Thousand Sons book in the HH series, page 362 it says "A thunderous bang sounded and Hastar's body exploded as a single, explosive round detonated within his chest. Silence descended, and Ahriman distinctly heard the heavy tink of a monstrous brass casing striking the ground. Ahriman followed the trajectory the shell had taken, tracing a smoking line back to a giant pistol gripped in the fist of a towering giant clad in grey ceramite and thick wolf pelts." Remember how bolt rounds explode inside the target? That's what happens here.

TL;DR: Bolters have cases because the HH books say so.

"Caseless" ammunition was a fancy word in sci-fi and gunporn mags in the 80s, and so was mindlessly applied to bolters. Even then,it didn't make sense, since we had plenty of art showing bolter shells.

I believe they can switch between full auto (Space Marine) and semi-automatic (DoWII) as required. The former is good at short range and against things that need more than one round to put down, whereas the latter is very useful for long-range shots and conserving ammo.

I liked how they were in Fire Warrior;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4BD8uiTUGw

This is rapidfire. Plus it took like 3 shots to kill a Space/Chaos Marine.

In my mind the Bolter from Space Marine is the best representation of the Bolter so far. In the cinematics it was fired in a semi-auto fashion, and the sound of it was perfect, compared to the meh sound effects in DOW2 and the godawful ones in the original DOW. I think a Boltgun should have the capacity to be full auto, but in the hands of marksman or more experienced marines it is fired in bursts or single shots. Don't forget the magazines are quite large, so wasting ammo should be heresy!

You also need to consider the various patterns of Bolter across the galaxy. The Godwyn pattern is perhaps the most balanced as it is issued to most chapters, whereas ones used by certain chapters might have a higher rate of fire or are more suited to long range engagements.

G.A

 scuzz_bucket wrote:
My biggest gripe with any of the games was how Ultramarines scorned cover in the Space Marine game. They justified not programming cover functions on the grounds that ultras are too proud to take cover. Just plain wrong.

That comes from GW themselves IIRC. I'm pretty certain there was an interview in WD in 3rd edition where they said they switched to the cover save system so players would use marines appropriately: striding forth proudly ignoring cover.

As for Bolters.. My first WD was WD136. The subsequent issue was (for the mathematically challenged) WD137, which contained the weapon stats for Necromunda's precursor Confrontation (itself a rewrite of Laserburn, the game 40k inherited a lot of its tech from) wherein a Boltgun was semi-automatic only. A decade later GW released the skirmish game Inquisitor (itself perhaps something of a successor to Confrontation) which had stats for three different models of Boltgun, all three of which were semi-automatic only. So to me, that's what Boltguns are. I think the first game-book to mention them firing anything else was the 4th edition marine codex which described them firing 3-round bursts.

 Gashrog wrote:

 scuzz_bucket wrote:
My biggest gripe with any of the games was how Ultramarines scorned cover in the Space Marine game. They justified not programming cover functions on the grounds that ultras are too proud to take cover. Just plain wrong.

That comes from GW themselves IIRC. I'm pretty certain there was an interview in WD in 3rd edition where they said they switched to the cover save system so players would use marines appropriately: striding forth proudly ignoring cover.

Yet they gave everyone and their mother the tools to negate PA saves.

I prefer the Ultramarines movie depiction myself. Loud semiautomatic boom guns that could dispatch a foe in a single blow.

TheCustomLime wrote:Yet they gave everyone and their mother the tools to negate PA saves.

Not originally. Scrub away the ghastly aberration of monstrous creatures with better than a Sv4+, and power armor would suddenly become rather more useful. Terminator armor too, for that matter.

As recently as 4th edition, you had to make a conscious choice to add plasma or meltaguns to your squad, because they used to get hotter, and because Ap4 weapons were a lot more useful.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

I prefer the Ultramarines movie depiction myself. Loud semiautomatic boom guns that could dispatch a foe in a single blow.

I agree, but the Ultramarines Movie has them firing rather rapid bursts from their boltguns. Slight difference. It isn't full auto, which makes the Ultramarines movie better than most space marine depictions (that aren't pictures)

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Yet they gave everyone and their mother the tools to negate PA saves.

Well, yeah. Being the most popular army has its disadvantages, too.

Anyway, I too thought the depiction of bolters in Fire Warrior was probably the best. Didn't really like the way pulse rifles worked, though.