like, modern day equivalents and stuff. I know it doesn't seem powerful on the table top, but from what i've read of Cain, it seems they are actually pretty powerful against humans.
Yup, the reason its weak on the table-top is because anything that can absorb heat is pretty effective against it.
It also cauterizes the wound, meaning a wound that itself wasn't fatal but would have caused death from blood loss doesn't kill the target.
The energy is only delivered in 1 form, heat. Not in shock waves that reverberate across the body, not in physical damage such as tearing or crushing, etc... Some of this damage can be caused by the water in the target's body rapidly boiling, but that is dependent on how much energy was lost getting to the flesh through any clothing and body armor.
Grey Templar wrote: Yup, the reason its weak on the table-top is because anything that can absorb heat is pretty effective against it.
It also cauterizes the wound, meaning a wound that itself wasn't fatal but would have caused death from blood loss doesn't kill the target.
The energy is only delivered in 1 form, heat. Not in shock waves that reverberate across the body, not in physical damage such as tearing or crushing, etc... Some of this damage can be caused by the water in the target's body rapidly boiling, but that is dependent on how much energy was lost getting to the flesh through any clothing and body armor.
However this is assumption. Yes I can say some lasers can cauterise. However today's surgical lasers such as those used in laser eye surgery do not. They vaporize. They hit with higher energy causing vaporization of tissue rather than authorising burns.
If the Laguna hits at this vaporization then it would just remove 'chunks' a neat hole created still capable of bleeding but without debris.
They are strength 3. Effective lasgun hits are usually enough to kill a human equivalent.
Regarding lasgun wounds, they are primarily thermal, but the flash vapouriation of the flesh also causes physical trauma due to the difference in thermal expansion between the heated site and the surrounding flesh. So cauterisation cannot be guaranteed.
Grey Templar wrote:The energy is only delivered in 1 form, heat. Not in shock waves that reverberate across the body, not in physical damage such as tearing or crushing, etc... Some of this damage can be caused by the water in the target's body rapidly boiling, but that is dependent on how much energy was lost getting to the flesh through any clothing and body armor.
The 6E rulebook has, on page 406, a fairly good description of the effects of how a lasgun operates and the damage it causes:
"A las-pulse will shear through flesh producing a cauterised hole surrounded by blister-burns. When first striking flesh, a las-pulse will cause a flash-burn effect upon impact, as the heat of the discharge causes the immediate surface area of the target to be vaporised. This can, to the untrained eye, take on the same wound aspects as those produced by high-density explosives, but there are major differences when it comes to field-dressing las-wounds. While the brief exploding flash of initial contact is highly visible, it is rarely the concern of aid givers. It is typically the continueing projection of the las-beam boring into the body that causes the most extensive damage. The beam will puncture through any internal organs and is capable of severing limbs. [...] The extreme heat cauterizes the wound, leaving minimum bleeding. However, rapid swelling will begin immediately, making later diagnosis more difficult."
As for a lasgun's power, a single shot has a chance of about 10-20% in the tabletop and GW's Inquisitor RPG to penetrate Marine-level power armour and injure (not necessarily kill!) the occupant. Alone, this may not look like much, but when you consider how many barrels the Guard can bring to bear on a target ...
Obviously, other sources of fluff (-> novels) and rules (-> FFG's RPG) may depict the lasgun differently, however, making it stronger or weaker, or even describing completely different effects upon hitting a target, all depending on the ideas of the author. As with all things 40k, everything and nothing is true - meaning, pick the option you like more.
That's GW being stupid. Any laser that's cold enough to merely cauterize a wound (instead of, say, causing the blood to flash-boil and effectively explode out of the skin in a bloody, burning mess) isn't going to be able to cut through flesh and bone much, either.
Melissia wrote:That's GW being stupid. Any laser that's cold enough to merely cauterize a wound (instead of, say, causing the blood to flash-boil and effectively explode out of the skin in a bloody, burning mess) isn't going to be able to cut through flesh and bone much, either.
"Instead"? Flash-boiling and exploding has always been part of the lasgun fluff in GW's writings, and is in fact referenced in this quote as well ("flash-burn effect", "surface area vaporised", "same wounds as by explosives").
The cauterisation is merely a side-effect of the intense heat that comes with the shot. It won't simply "disappear" together with the globs of superheated flesh that get hurled out of the wound, but melt whatever remains as it is slowly equalised with the body temperature.
A lot of how lethal firearms are depends on access to medical attention. If you can get to a competent medical center right away then you have a pretty good chance to survive anything that doesn't turn major parts of your body into mush (I think it was something like a 2/3 survival rate for shots to the heart even).
I'm guessing lasgun hits might be more difficult to treat medically, since with a traditional firearm you can generally close up the wound and expect things to grow back, but depending on how much cauterization gets done you might have to even cut away and open the wound further so that the body is capable of regrowing the damaged bits. I would imagine that a perfectly cauterized scarred over hole through (insert body part here) wouldn't heal particularly well.
From every combat scene in books like the Gaunt's Ghost's series, battles with lasgun-wielding troops are just as visceral and lethal as modern conflicts with assault rifles. The penetration seems about equal, too.
dementedwombat wrote:I'm guessing lasgun hits might be more difficult to treat medically, since with a traditional firearm you can generally close up the wound and expect things to grow back, but depending on how much cauterization gets done you might have to even cut away and open the wound further so that the body is capable of regrowing the damaged bits. I would imagine that a perfectly cauterized scarred over hole through (insert body part here) wouldn't heal particularly well.
Yeah, especially with all the swelling. Again looking at the 6E rulebook, field-dressing a las-wound sounds very tricky. You're not supposed to remove bits of clothes or armour that have melted into the flesh, you can't break blisters, and you're even forbidden from applying ointments to the burns.
The way it sounds like, if you're lucky, you'll only lose an arm or a leg (can be replaced by cybernetic limbs). If you get hit in the body, however, there's a high chance that "the swelling that follows is bound to cause catastrophic bodily failures". Medics are instructed to cover up the wound as quickly and completely as possible, though this doesn't actually help anything and merely serves to hide the lethal wound from other soldiers and "may also allow the victim some false comfort", as the text says.
Arcsquad12 wrote: Depends on who is carrying it. Is it a whiteshield or a PDF trooper? Barely a scratch. Is is Mkoll? Can destroy a Dreadnought.
To be fair, it wasn't a las-round fired by Mkoll, but rather an exploding lasrifle with a rigged/over-charged power cell. Also, the Dread' was already severely wounded from the local flora, iirc.
Arcsquad12 wrote: Depends on who is carrying it. Is it a whiteshield or a PDF trooper? Barely a scratch. Is is Mkoll? Can destroy a Dreadnought.
To be fair, it wasn't a las-round fired by Mkoll, but rather an exploding lasrifle with a rigged/over-charged power cell. Also, the Dread' was already severely wounded from the local flora, iirc.
Or more like the Lasgun blew off the sarcophagus so the plants could finish the job.
And really in-game stats shouldn't be used to compare to modern firearms. If it was a straight comparison, even orks would beat people in firefights today. Even US soldiers can fire hundreds of rounds and not hit anything in a real fight. Covering fire is something that burns through a lot of ammo. A guardsmen hitting half his targets in the heat of battle would be a miracle by today's standards.
Arcsquad12 wrote: Depends on who is carrying it. Is it a whiteshield or a PDF trooper? Barely a scratch. Is is Mkoll? Can destroy a Dreadnought.
To be fair, it wasn't a las-round fired by Mkoll, but rather an exploding lasrifle with a rigged/over-charged power cell. Also, the Dread' was already severely wounded from the local flora, iirc.
Or more like the Lasgun blew off the sarcophagus so the plants could finish the job.
And really in-game stats shouldn't be used to compare to modern firearms. If it was a straight comparison, even orks would beat people in firefights today. Even US soldiers can fire hundreds of rounds and not hit anything in a real fight. Covering fire is something that burns through a lot of ammo. A guardsmen hitting half his targets in the heat of battle would be a miracle by today's standards.
The shooting rules are an abstraction and do not equal one round fired per to-hit roll made. Guardsmen are probably firing hundreds of rounds over the course of the game and the to-hit and to-wound rolls are made to see if the fire is effective, not to see if individual round hit their target.
Really powerful lasers are actually visible, not as a beam ala 'Star Wars' but because the highly ionized air molecules will spark. Such a beam would most likely be fatal because it would superheat the flesh to the point of creating a bloody steam explosion and would cook the surrounding tissue to a fair depth. My guess is the laser carbine is a bit weaker than that. ; )
It's possible that with the technology involved in creating a viable Lasgun, the designers also added in a way for the coherent light to be visible as a color to aid in aiming, as a tracer.
If I recall correctly, the old 3rd Ed. Guard Codex said that the normal power setting was 17 "megathules" which of course is a random-word from the fluff.
If we make the (admittedly dubious) step of equating "megathules" to "megajoules" then that would place the mid-range setting on a Cadian lasrifle at about the same energy as the muzzle energy of a .50 BMG round.
Don't also forget that the lasguns can be dialed in power, as well as firing substantially more rounds with substantially less recoil from a substantially smaller platform with substantially better accuracy than a .50 BMG rifle.
They're actually quite scary weapons IMO.
EDIT: WAIT OH HOLY feth - the .50 BMG only outputs 17 KILOJOULES of energy. So either a lasgun is three orders of magnitude more powerful than a .50 BMG or "megathules" is a meaningless word.
I've always seen autoguns as being very similar to 20th century assault rifles, and the basic Las-gun has been described as having roughly equivalent stopping power to an 'Autogun', over several iterations of the table-top game, in specialist games, and third-party games. Penetrating power has tended to vary though.
So, yeah, about as strong as an AK-47 or M16, or within that ballpark of a 'modern' assult rifle.
Autogun comparison is apt. We know from descriptions the Autogun is like slightly better than modern (probably more reliable) AR.
Lasguns would be like a modern Battle Rifle, but more accurate and possibly having a better fire rate and stopping power too, but nothing that moves it onto the level of power of an HMG (heavy stubber).
A lasgun can blow off a limb and vaporize large chunks of the body, so that would be M60 round level firepower.
In terms of absolute energy? Dozens of megajoules, but lasers aren't terribly efficient kill systems.
Now microwave beams can do pretty funky stuff to an organic body. As in make you explode hilariously into a wet, gory fountain of blood, meat chunks, and bone chips.
Kain wrote: A lasgun can blow off a limb and vaporize large chunks of the body, so that would be M60 round level firepower.
In terms of absolute energy? Dozens of megajoules, but lasers aren't terribly efficient kill systems.
Now microwave beams can do pretty funky stuff to an organic body. As in make you explode hilariously into a wet, gory fountain of blood, meat chunks, and bone chips.
Yes, but the Lasgun fires more like a semi-auto battle rifle rather than fully automatic at 550+ RPM. Because of that, it averages out as the same as an Autogun as a small arm.
Even today, a battle rifle is generally more powerful per shot (in terms of energy) than an assault rifle, but both are used depending on situation.
Kain wrote: A lasgun can blow off a limb and vaporize large chunks of the body, so that would be M60 round level firepower.
In terms of absolute energy? Dozens of megajoules, but lasers aren't terribly efficient kill systems.
Now microwave beams can do pretty funky stuff to an organic body. As in make you explode hilariously into a wet, gory fountain of blood, meat chunks, and bone chips.
Yes, but the Lasgun fires more like a semi-auto battle rifle rather than fully automatic at 550+ RPM. Because of that, it averages out as the same as an Autogun as a small arm.
Even today, a battle rifle is generally more powerful per shot (in terms of energy) than an assault rifle, but both are used depending on situation.
That depends entirely on the depiction, much as how the BL can't decide if lasguns fire beams or bolts, although I'd say beams is closer to how GW envisioned them originally (and also what relic goes with).
We know the 40k stats for a Lasgun and Autogun, and we know what an autogun represents (futuristic/better version of a modern assault rifle type firearm) so we know they are in the same ballpack of weaponry.
The Lasgun is probably favoured by Guard due to the targets needing better stopping power and long range shots over Autoguns which would be for human targets, but they are similar enough to be the same class of weapon whereas a Bolter has quite a bit more power.
An M60 direct analogue is the Heavy Stubber, which has more 'killing power' (due to a mix of continuous fire, rate of fire and stopping power combined) but is much less mobile.
I see we're once again having the 'lasers in a fantasy setting' issue.
Assuming that megathuels do equate megajoules...
A single megajoule is the power of a one ton vehicle traveling 100 miles per hour. So a lasgun hits with the energy of a 30 ton tank traveling 100 mph...
Which would far exceed anything a bolter could put out as a .75 caliber solid/explosive rocket propelled anything. Though it would certainly vaporize people... and that dreadnought. And possibly the wall behind it.
Again, scifi/fantasy authors have no concept of scale.
Daba wrote: We know the 40k stats for a Lasgun and Autogun, and we know what an autogun represents (futuristic/better version of a modern assault rifle type firearm) so we know they are in the same ballpack of weaponry.
The Lasgun is probably favoured by Guard due to the targets needing better stopping power and long range shots over Autoguns which would be for human targets, but they are similar enough to be the same class of weapon whereas a Bolter has quite a bit more power.
An M60 direct analogue is the Heavy Stubber, which has more 'killing power' (due to a mix of continuous fire, rate of fire and stopping power combined) but is much less mobile.
No, an M2 is a heavy stubber.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
BaronIveagh wrote: I see we're once again having the 'lasers in a fantasy setting' issue.
Assuming that megathuels do equate megajoules...
A single megajoule is the power of a one ton vehicle traveling 100 miles per hour. So a lasgun hits with the energy of a 30 ton tank traveling 100 mph...
Which would far exceed anything a bolter could put out as a .75 caliber solid/explosive rocket propelled anything. Though it would certainly vaporize people... and that dreadnought. And possibly the wall behind it.
Again, scifi/fantasy authors have no concept of scale.
Lasers are monstrously inefficient kill mechanisms, you'd need multiple megajoules to kill a person where a bullet can subsist with kilojoules.
I've just given up hope on such a weapon system even remotely making sense in anything short of Heinlein (i.e. a dedicated sci-fi writer who did the research).
Just to clear it up for some people who might be curious. A reasonable weaponized laser would work in short pulses, and it wouldn't cut. It would direct so much energy onto the target that a localized portion of the target (i.e. a hole about fist sized more than likely) explodes into mist. Some undetermined amount of time later (long enough for the mist to clear out enough for the beam not to get distorted) the laser pulses again and another hole appears (or most likely the existing hole gets deeper since the pulses are most likely spaced out substantially less than a second).
Surprisingly, we actually have energy storage tech at present day technology almost good enough to make a laser power pack work, but they aren't rechargeable yet (this fact quite frankly amazed me, I always thought the main thing stopping laser weapons from ever working would be energy storage). And you can always direct the energy into a capacitor at the expense of slowing rate of fire (I bet you could even do multiple capacitor banks in parallel to improve rate of fire at the expense of more weight).
Sorry, I'm a "hard science fiction" nerd. Comes of being an aerospace engineer. I try to keep up with how probable "future tech" is of ever actually happening.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, a 20 megawatt laser (i.e. 20 megajoules per second) is currently the main armament of a converted Boeing 747 used to potentially shoot down missiles by overheating them. So if we go with the "thoule" actually being a reasonable unit of measurement then a lasgun is able to direct the same amount of energy as a device about the size of a 747 (the interior is full of laser components). Also our current lasers aren't actually that impressive, since they spread that energy out over the whole second rather than releasing it in a pulse fractions of a second long, so they pretty much work by just heating up the target enough to catch it on fire after a few seconds in the beam.
I honestly don't know much about laser physics/operation (I always shy away from them and use coilguns since they make more sense to me) but that seems like we have a lot of catching up to do.
Daba wrote: We know the 40k stats for a Lasgun and Autogun, and we know what an autogun represents (futuristic/better version of a modern assault rifle type firearm) so we know they are in the same ballpack of weaponry.
The Lasgun is probably favoured by Guard due to the targets needing better stopping power and long range shots over Autoguns which would be for human targets, but they are similar enough to be the same class of weapon whereas a Bolter has quite a bit more power.
An M60 direct analogue is the Heavy Stubber, which has more 'killing power' (due to a mix of continuous fire, rate of fire and stopping power combined) but is much less mobile.
No, an M2 is a heavy stubber.
Can one person pick up and hold an M2 and fire it from the hip?
Because Heavy Stubbers cover weapons that fall in that category (Necromunda).
They are probably two ends of the scale that 'Heavy Stubber' covers.
Daba wrote: Even today, a battle rifle is generally more powerful per shot (in terms of energy) than an assault rifle, but both are used depending on situation.
DPS is not yet a major factor in modern military thinking...
Unit1126PLL wrote: If I recall correctly, the old 3rd Ed. Guard Codex said that the normal power setting was 17 "megathules" which of course is a random-word from the fluff.
If we make the (admittedly dubious) step of equating "megathules" to "megajoules" then that would place the mid-range setting on a Cadian lasrifle at about the same energy as the muzzle energy of a .50 BMG round.
Don't also forget that the lasguns can be dialed in power, as well as firing substantially more rounds with substantially less recoil from a substantially smaller platform with substantially better accuracy than a .50 BMG rifle.
They're actually quite scary weapons IMO.
EDIT: WAIT OH HOLY feth - the .50 BMG only outputs 17 KILOJOULES of energy. So either a lasgun is three orders of magnitude more powerful than a .50 BMG or "megathules" is a meaningless word.
Probably the latter. My bad. Sorry lads.
thule is most likely equal to a joule. Its simply been 40kified.
Daba wrote: We know the 40k stats for a Lasgun and Autogun, and we know what an autogun represents (futuristic/better version of a modern assault rifle type firearm) so we know they are in the same ballpack of weaponry.
The Lasgun is probably favoured by Guard due to the targets needing better stopping power and long range shots over Autoguns which would be for human targets, but they are similar enough to be the same class of weapon whereas a Bolter has quite a bit more power.
An M60 direct analogue is the Heavy Stubber, which has more 'killing power' (due to a mix of continuous fire, rate of fire and stopping power combined) but is much less mobile.
No, an M2 is a heavy stubber.
Can one person pick up and hold an M2 and fire it from the hip?
Because Heavy Stubbers cover weapons that fall in that category (Necromunda).
They are probably two ends of the scale that 'Heavy Stubber' covers.
Maybe, but the in-game heavy stubber is an M2. Both visually and per the fluff.
Armor to stop energy based weapons and kinetic impacts would be totally different. Its also the same reason Kevlar does feth all against knives. A different threat requires a different material.
Flak armor is probably no better against kinetic rounds than some of our more advanced body armor today. With some additional protection against energy weapons.
Unit1126PLL wrote:If I recall correctly, the old 3rd Ed. Guard Codex said that the normal power setting was 17 "megathules" which of course is a random-word from the fluff.
Wasn't that from Black Library's Uplifting Primer?
In any way, I'd really recommend against attempts to "convert" something that detailed. Imho, it's totally cool to look for general comparisons in real life examples (I do that, too), but once you delve into stuff where you need formulas and charts, it invariably devolves into an argument between people who cling to different ways of interpretation, and you can't really move anywhere because at the end of the day "megathule" is, as you said, quite possibly just a random word.
I cringe every time I see threads where people try to come up with intricate formulas to show why an Imperial Star Destroyer would outgun the Enterprise or the other way around etc. Once you go cross-setting, all bets are off, because we just don't have a primer for accurate conversions. This includes the setting known as "real life". It's like trying to make sense of Egyptian hieroglyphs without the Rosetta Stone.
Unit1126PLL wrote:Don't also forget that the lasguns can be dialed in power
Depending on the source of fluff... Some, such as FFG's Only War, tell you that every lasgun has this feature. Others, such as GW's Inquisitor or the 5E Guard Codex, describe this to be a special feature of the Triplex-pattern.
Daba wrote:The Lasgun is probably favoured by Guard due to the targets needing better stopping power and long range shots over Autoguns which would be for human targets, but they are similar enough to be the same class of weapon whereas a Bolter has quite a bit more power.
In the books I've read, it's always been described as a logistical issue. Lasguns rarely suffer from ammunition shortage (plugging the battery into a mobile generator vs shipping in specially manufactured bullets crafted thousands of light years away from the warzone) and they are said to require very little maintenance. The latter is super important when you consider that these guns are also handed to feral worlders whose only knowledge of ranged weapons so far was focused on bow and arrow.
dementedwombat wrote:A reasonable weaponized laser would work in short pulses, and it wouldn't cut. It would direct so much energy onto the target that a localized portion of the target (i.e. a hole about fist sized more than likely) explodes into mist.
Isn't this how it's described in the sources? Mind you, I am interpreting "cutting" not as a clean cut but rather a brute punch through something. Essentially, it's just called "cutting" because it leaves a hole. After all, the fluff specifically refers to "exploding wounds", and this is the only way I could make sense of both terms being used.
dementedwombat wrote:Sorry, I'm a "hard science fiction" nerd. Comes of being an aerospace engineer. I try to keep up with how probable "future tech" is of ever actually happening.
I think I've said that before, but I can see actual scientific knowledge being a huge fun-killer when reading up on sci-fi settings. In a way, I pity you. Then again, you probably get paid even more than me, and can play Kerbal Space Program IRL.
Daba wrote:They are probably two ends of the scale that 'Heavy Stubber' covers.
Probably.
Also, hip-firing does not necessarily need to be an indicator of a weapon's damage when we consider the possibility of futurespace lightweight materials and recoil compensation.
Though to be fair, Necromunda Heavies easily look like bodybuilders.
Grey Templar wrote:Flak armor is probably no better against kinetic rounds than some of our more advanced body armor today. With some additional protection against energy weapons.
Mhm, hard to say - but of course it also depends upon which sources we'd inspect. From GW's own fluff:
"This is a common type of body armour often worn by civilians with dangerous manual jobs. It has an outer layer of ablative material. If struck by an energy weapon this will burn away, dissipating most of the damaging heat. The middle layer comprises a honeycomb of interconnected air bubbles, which absorb the energy of a physical blow. The inner lining is a special, thick plastic. Under normal conditions this is fairly pliable, somewhat like canvas, but it responds to physical pressure by becoming hard and tough. It is very effective at stopping shots already slowed down by the outer layers." - 1E Rulebook
"Flak armour comprises several layers of different ablative and impact absorbent materials which should absorb the majority of energy from a shot or blow. The protection it offers against a direct hit is somewhat questionable at the best of times, but it is more effective against proximity blasts and the shrapnel from explosions. Flak armour does have the advantage of being vastly cheap and easy to produce, requiring a very low technology base." - 2E Wargear
I cringe every time I see threads where people try to come up with intricate formulas to show why an Imperial Star Destroyer would outgun the Enterprise or the other way around etc. Once you go cross-setting, all bets are off, because we just don't have a primer for accurate conversions. This includes the setting known as "real life". It's like trying to make sense of Egyptian hieroglyphs without the Rosetta Stone.
Well... *que Mythbusters Theme*
We do have a description of the injury pattern a lasgun makes (which is described as a 'through and through' cauterized hole with little bleeding. So to know how powerful it is, we'd only need to know how powerful a weapon would have ot be burn a neat round hole in someone at 500 yards in an atmospheric pressure of about 65 N and one standard G.
We'd also need to know how to make a neat round hole in someone that burns through without exploding them.
One of the problems with the 'laser exploding flesh' idea is that the required duration is too long for be accurate at range. Remember that if your duration is too short, you can dump a huge amount of power into someone and have them survived. A direct lightening strike is survivable, for example, despite dumping tetrajoules of energy and 50k degree plasma on top that.
YAL-1, the flying 747 Laser, does NOT burn through it's targets, (nor do most anti-missile lasers) but instead causes structural failure in the missile by heating a small portion of it's exterior unevenly. In a high stress area, this causes the missile to crumple. By way of comparison, the Navy recently tested an anti-small boat laser. While it does work, it took a (comparatively) long time to set gas tanks of a fairly standard zodiac on fire
Being a noob in thermodynamics ... technically, it's just a question of energy, though, right? The beam's only required effect is that it must heat the surface of the impact area to "very very hot" within "the blink of an eye".
I have no idea if it's as simple as that, but it sounds at least theoretically plausible for me. If rather impractical, given the likely amounts of energy involved, following your explanation of a lightning bolt's impact.
Being a noob in thermodynamics ... technically, it's just a question of energy, though, right? The beam's only required effect is that it must heat the surface of the impact area to "very very hot" within "the blink of an eye".
I have no idea if it's as simple as that, but it sounds at least theoretically plausible for me. If rather impractical, given the likely amounts of energy involved, following your explanation of a lightning bolt's impact.
Well.... the problem is that the body need to be exposed to the energy for enough time to do damage. The heat generated by a lightening strike is actually enough to turn gas to plasma. But it happens over such a short duration that you'll see some internal burns, etc, but to get the sort of instant vaporization of human flesh requires either requires more time, or more energy than is required to heat a 70% nitrogen gas mix to the same temperature as the surface of the sun. Only about 20-30% of lightening strikes world wide are fatal.
The vaporization point of human flesh is 6k degrees kelvin, so it depends on how much mass you're vaporizing.
So, let's vaporize 1/4th of a human being and remember that this is against an average sized naked target standing there.
1/4 human body = 25000 grams = 4500 moles = 2.7 x 10^27 atoms
Vaporization = 6000 kelvins = 0.5 eV/atom
Vaporization 1/4 human body = 1.35x10^27 eV = 2.2x10^8 joules = 220 megajoule (some sources cite 160mj but this ignores bones, etc)
Instantly: 0.05 second = 50 milliseconds
Vaporization 1/4 human body Instantly = 4.4x10^9 watts = 4.4 gigawatts!
Seems like a ton of energy for the same basic effect that a couple grains of black powder and an ounce of lead can accomplish.
The only reason it would be efficient is because of logistics. Its easier to provide constant power to recharge a powerpack than it is to transport a bullet.
Grey Templar wrote: Seems like a ton of energy for the same basic effect that a couple grains of black powder and an ounce of lead can accomplish.
The only reason it would be efficient is because of logistics. Its easier to provide constant power to recharge a powerpack than it is to transport a bullet.
Not in these quantities. The whole 'laspacks recharge in sunlight/thrown in a fire' thing goes right out the window. Just to charge a single lasgun pack we're talking the sort of power output reserved for nuclear fission piles and theoretical fusion reactors. A leman russ engine would be expending thousands of times more energy to fire it's lascannon than it would to move the tank.
It's a weapon form 38000 years in the future, invented at least, 20 000 years prior during some techno enlighten/'dark' age..of course it is more powerful that today's weapons...I'm pretty sure autoguns and such are even stronger than modern one thanks to sci-fi materials, the only reason why they appear to suck in 40k it's because of two reasons:
1-There's more powerful, but more complicated (to an extent), weaponry available, like boltguns, Eldar shuriken weapons, Ork shootas (the ladder being merely bieng build big and loud and shooty)
2-Weaponry took a step forward, so did armour. Fire a modern M-16 at a Guardsman's flak Armour, it might only scratch the finish off it as, like the lasgun, is a piece of armour form 38 000 years in the future.
Inquisitor Jex wrote: It's a weapon form 38000 years in the future, invented at least, 20 000 years prior during some techno enlighten/'dark' age..of course it is more powerful that today's weapons...I'm pretty sure autoguns and such are even stronger than modern one thanks to sci-fi materials, the only reason why they appear to suck in 40k it's because of two reasons:
1-There's more powerful, but more complicated (to an extent), weaponry available, like boltguns, Eldar shuriken weapons, Ork shootas (the ladder being merely bieng build big and loud and shooty)
2-Weaponry took a step forward, so did armour. Fire a modern M-16 at a Guardsman's flak Armour, it might only scratch the finish off it as, like the lasgun, is a piece of armour form 38 000 years in the future.
Jex, the problem with that entire argument is twofold:
The first and simplest is that we know the stats of blackpowder muskets and knives, in setting. Since they can, if well wielded (or well rolled) puncture flak, then, no, there are no magic super materials involved.
Second, the Bolt Gun is actually much, much simpler than a lasgun. It is basically a slightly more advanced large caliber gyrojet gun. That's all it is, for all the magic importance that 40k puts on them, they're actually much simpler that the mechanics of a lasgun would be. You can build one now, if you have the money. A lasgun you cannot.
The other problem is still that to get that sort of power out of a lasgun powerpack, you wouldn't need generators, or engines, because a single powerpack would have more than enough power to move a 60 ton leman russ tank for over 100 years. However, you'd have to hook your lasgun charger up to a Starship with it's Km long plasma drives to recharge it. The whole 'throw it in the fire to charge it' thing would never work, because no normal camp fire puts out enough power to ever charge it.
The bolt's technology is not the gun per se, but the bolt proper, which is hard to manufacture.
and again, sci-fi magic material allows one to recharge a pack in a fire.
As for the muskets puncturing flak, well, it's a RPG: and besides, primitive weaponry doubles the armour rating of non primitive armour. A Mook with a musket will do 1 to 0 wounds on a average Guardsman when doing maximum damage.
Inquisitor Jex wrote: The bolt's technology is not the gun per se, but the bolt proper, which is hard to manufacture.
and again, sci-fi magic material allows one to recharge a pack in a fire.
As for the muskets puncturing flak, well, it's a RPG: and besides, primitive weaponry doubles the armour rating of non primitive armour. A Mook with a musket will do 1 to 0 wounds on a average Guardsman when doing maximum damage.
When.
*sigh* Well, yes, they're hard to manufacture in the sense that the 40k writer made the explosive in them hydrogen gas, because he didn't bother to find out what deuterium was. Effectively though, it's a .75 dumdum round. GW used a lot of fancy words to describe it, but that's really all the basic bolter round is. You can make this yourself with a solid shotgun slug and some knowledge of making your own ammo. The only time it turns sci-fi is some of the more ultra rare rounds.
And, no, it's just magic, there's no sci-fi to it. You're violating some of the most basic laws of physics without even the fig leaf of, say, anti-gravity technology. The fluff claims it's a super efficient capacitor. Ok, that's fine, but capacitors don't normally create energy out of thin air, so to speak. And if they do, why bother with plasma drives? Why not run your space ship off a huge battery of lasgun packs and a hamster in a wheel? Your explanation lacks internal consistency.
And he still does that 0-1 points of damage (out of a max of 25). Which puts flak on par with modern bulletproof vests.
Inquisitor Jex wrote: The bolt's technology is not the gun per se, but the bolt proper, which is hard to manufacture.
and again, sci-fi magic material allows one to recharge a pack in a fire.
As for the muskets puncturing flak, well, it's a RPG: and besides, primitive weaponry doubles the armour rating of non primitive armour. A Mook with a musket will do 1 to 0 wounds on a average Guardsman when doing maximum damage.
When.
*sigh* Well, yes, they're hard to manufacture in the sense that the 40k writer made the explosive in them hydrogen gas, because he didn't bother to find out what deuterium was. Effectively though, it's a .75 dumdum round. GW used a lot of fancy words to describe it, but that's really all the basic bolter round is. You can make this yourself with a solid shotgun slug and some knowledge of making your own ammo. The only time it turns sci-fi is some of the more ultra rare rounds.
And, no, it's just magic, there's no sci-fi to it. You're violating some of the most basic laws of physics without even the fig leaf of, say, anti-gravity technology. The fluff claims it's a super efficient capacitor. Ok, that's fine, but capacitors don't normally create energy out of thin air, so to speak. And if they do, why bother with plasma drives? Why not run your space ship off a huge battery of lasgun packs and a hamster in a wheel? Your explanation lacks internal consistency.
And he still does that 0-1 points of damage (out of a max of 25). Which puts flak on par with modern bulletproof vests.
This is the same setting where a god made out of people hitting things angrily craps out little red rage men wielding swords of hate riding on metal rhinos formed out of frustration who can crush a liquid.
This is the same setting where a god made out of people hitting things angrily craps out little red rage men wielding swords of hate riding on metal rhinos formed out of frustration who can crush a liquid.
Where does physics come it?
Suspension of disbelief.
Somethings that can be explained with the 'Warp' as a unifying concept in the fictional setting are far easier to accept than something that breaks the mould without any link to the Warp whatsoever.
This is the same setting where a god made out of people hitting things angrily craps out little red rage men wielding swords of hate riding on metal rhinos formed out of frustration who can crush a liquid.
Where does physics come it?
Suspension of disbelief.
Somethings that can be explained with the 'Warp' as a unifying concept in the fictional setting are far easier to accept than something that breaks the mould without any link to the Warp whatsoever.
Then allow me to change my answer.
This is the same setting where Evil Star Vampires can kill you with particles not allowed to interact with normal matter, make the equivalent of a messy room into an instant death trap, and play pinball with a black hole until an entire solar system is destroyed.
This is the same setting where a god made out of people hitting things angrily craps out little red rage men wielding swords of hate riding on metal rhinos formed out of frustration who can crush a liquid.
Where does physics come it?
Suspension of disbelief.
Somethings that can be explained with the 'Warp' as a unifying concept in the fictional setting are far easier to accept than something that breaks the mould without any link to the Warp whatsoever.
Then allow me to change my answer.
This is the same setting where Evil Star Vampires can kill you with particles not allowed to interact with normal matter, make the equivalent of a messy room into an instant death trap, and play pinball with a black hole until an entire solar system is destroyed.
This is the same setting where a god made out of people hitting things angrily craps out little red rage men wielding swords of hate riding on metal rhinos formed out of frustration who can crush a liquid.
Where does physics come it?
Suspension of disbelief.
Somethings that can be explained with the 'Warp' as a unifying concept in the fictional setting are far easier to accept than something that breaks the mould without any link to the Warp whatsoever.
Then allow me to change my answer.
This is the same setting where Evil Star Vampires can kill you with particles not allowed to interact with normal matter, make the equivalent of a messy room into an instant death trap, and play pinball with a black hole until an entire solar system is destroyed.
Where does physics come in?
Yeah, C'Tan also suck.
Without them the backstory of the Necrons flat out doesn't work. And without the Necrons you invalidate the Orks and Eldar as their backstories are inexorably tied to the Necrons as both are bioweapons made purely to fight them.
Congratulations, now the Game is just Tau, Imperials, Tyranids, and Chaos.
Actually scratch Chaos, the warp only became what it is because of the War in heaven.
So now the game is just Tau, Imperials, and Tyranids.
No wait, scratch that. The Imperium wouldn't exist without Chaos breaking DAoT mankind.
So it's just Tau and Tyranids.
Better tell 80% of the player base to destroy their models because they're no longer valid.
Without them the backstory of the Necrons flat out doesn't work. And without the Necrons you invalidate the Orks and Eldar as their backstories are inexorably tied to the Necrons as both are bioweapons made purely to fight them.
Congratulations, now the Game is just Tau, Imperials, Tyranids, and Chaos.
The Eldar and Orks existed in the game with great background years before the Necrons were introduced.
It is the Necrons who should toe the line, not the old (classic?) elder races.
Without them the backstory of the Necrons flat out doesn't work. And without the Necrons you invalidate the Orks and Eldar as their backstories are inexorably tied to the Necrons as both are bioweapons made purely to fight them.
Congratulations, now the Game is just Tau, Imperials, Tyranids, and Chaos.
The Eldar and Orks existed in the game with great background years before the Necrons were introduced.
It is the Necrons who should toe the line, not the old (classic?) elder races.
Too bad that's the way it is, and given that the Necrons are one of the most popular armies around, it's how it will stay.
Without them the backstory of the Necrons flat out doesn't work. And without the Necrons you invalidate the Orks and Eldar as their backstories are inexorably tied to the Necrons as both are bioweapons made purely to fight them.
Congratulations, now the Game is just Tau, Imperials, Tyranids, and Chaos.
The Eldar and Orks existed in the game with great background years before the Necrons were introduced.
It is the Necrons who should toe the line, not the old (classic?) elder races.
Too bad that's the way it is.
The Necrons and C'Tan could disappear tomorrow and the majority of Eldar and Ork background would remain intact and relevant.
Also, one of the C'Tan "Burning one" is likely a warp god anyway (who gave them good FTL access via hacking the Webway); the C'Tan aren't what the 3rd edition army book told you they were, and things are not as they seem with them.
Without them the backstory of the Necrons flat out doesn't work. And without the Necrons you invalidate the Orks and Eldar as their backstories are inexorably tied to the Necrons as both are bioweapons made purely to fight them.
Congratulations, now the Game is just Tau, Imperials, Tyranids, and Chaos.
The Eldar and Orks existed in the game with great background years before the Necrons were introduced.
It is the Necrons who should toe the line, not the old (classic?) elder races.
Too bad that's the way it is.
The Necrons and C'Tan could disappear tomorrow and the majority of Eldar and Ork background would remain intact and relevant.
Also, one of the C'Tan "Burning one" is likely a warp god anyway (who gave them good FTL access via hacking the Webway); the C'Tan aren't what the 3rd edition rulebook told you they were, and things are not as they seem with them.
You're right, the C'tan are much stronger than they were in the 3rd edition rulebook since everything they did before the 5th edition retcon was now done by mere shards.
And as of IA12, the Necrons have Inertialess drives that while slower than webway travel, crap on Imperial Warp drives. The Dolmen gates are now riskier but faster travel used for emergencies.
Better tell all the Necron players to burn their models because you hate their fluff.
Don't like it? Ho-hum, go write fanfiction where the Necrons don't exist.
Wonder why I'm being like this? I find opinions that X army shouldn't be in 40k to be worthy only of contempt.
Inertialess drives aren't unique to Necrons. Eldar Darkstar fighters use them too. What we have about Necron FTL isn't clear anyway - where does it say that it is faster than Warp Drives explicitly? (note that Necrons crossing the galaxy in the blink of an eye could now be attributed to Dolmens)
I don't know why you are jumping to such a hyperbolic stance of 'burning all their models' either. My distaste for that part of the background (which IMO Ward improved somewhat) doesn't extend to other people or their models (and loads of Necron models look pretty sweet IMO).
I actually like the concept of the race, but the execution of the background was flawed, though not overly so as it was to do with the C'Tan and Necron obsession with the Warp, the central aspect of the setting anyway.
What I take exception to is the claim that Ork and Eldar backgrounds are removed if you remove the Necrons. They are not; if Necrons were never invented the Eldar and Ork background would largely be similar to what it is today.
Anyway, we digress. Even if we take the C'Tan at face value, it is easier to overlook something like that as it is far removed from our real world expectations. The Lasgun and other similar projectile weapons are far closer to home, so jar more glaringly when made 'impossible'.
Physics has room because the setting is loosely based in reality, and Physics predicts a good number of ways we can expect things to behave.
The Necrons have largely taken over the role as "Lovecraftian horrors" now that Chaos has become a more firmly Abrahamic sort of evil, dropping a lot of the formerly lovecraftian traits they used to have as they evolved.
The central aspect of 40k in any case, in my opinion, is the death of goodness and hope for anything better. Because even the very emotion of hope feeds a god whom by any reasonable standards, is unrelentingly evil.
Every corner you look, humanity and other reasonable species are doomed in the face of the unreasonable tide of destruction and enslavement.
The Tau are too small to change anything and are doomed the moment one of the big unreasonable factions devotes any serious effort to their destruction.
The Eldar are all going to die and are too bound by their own pride to change that and can be wiped away by a serious effort from the Necrons, Orks, Chaos, or Tyranids.
Humanity is crumbling and decaying as the Imperium enters it's time of ending, and is doomed due to the concerted push by the Orks, Chaos, Necrons, and Tyranids.
This will leave only the truly evil factions as the last vestige of what could be vaguely called goodness dies and only unrelenting horribleness is left to rule.
Physics wise, this isn't mass effect where there's only really a single cheat in physics, this is where the rules of our reality are at most a guideline to be vaguely listened to, and at least to be completely tossed out in favor of over the top awesome.
Yes a lasgun would need dozens or even hundreds of megajoules to do what it does and slapping the law of conservation in the face to get the easy recharge ability it has. But honestly, do you care?
And if you think this is terrible and the worst disregard of physics ever. Lemme tell ya 'bout Strike Legion.
I find the (old) C'Tan kind of fail in that regard as they cared too much for mortal concerns (maybe they are more like Hastur, but that's not Lovecraft directly). The old ones may be more of that role (ironically) as they could have been viewing the races with the same indifference as someone looking at bacteria on an agar plate.
If I had written it, I would probably have had the Old ones and C'Tan fight a giant cosmic battle, but eventually both were consumed by their own creations in some way. And that's not too far from how it is now.
Daba wrote: I find the (old) C'Tan kind of fail in that regard as they cared too much for mortal concerns (maybe they are more like Hastur, but that's not Lovecraft directly). The old ones may be more of that role (ironically) as they could have been viewing the races with the same indifference as someone looking at bacteria on an agar plate.
If I had written it, I would probably have had the Old ones and C'Tan fight a giant cosmic battle, but eventually both were consumed by their own creations in some way. And that's not too far from how it is now.
The Necrons did win the War in heaven, given that they and the C'tan slaughtered all the Old ones before they themselves turned on the C'tan with "universe shaking weapons". Out of all the Old One's creations, I'd say only the Eldar and Slann haven't gone way off the rails of their original purpose, and even then for the self proclaimed heirs to all that the Old Ones left behind the Eldar do a spectacularly bad job at it.
And the Slann...well they just sit there in the background minding their own business.
Melissia wrote: Stronger than the modern assault rifle. A single shot can kill a space marine, too, if he isn't wearing his helmet like a good little boy.
I agree with this: Fluff wise. However, in game play, it is sort of as powerfull as a marshmellow gun.
This is the same setting where Evil Star Vampires can kill you with particles not allowed to interact with normal matter, make the equivalent of a messy room into an instant death trap, and play pinball with a black hole until an entire solar system is destroyed.
Who get retconned so hard that their teeth rattle every edition. Due to the changes a whole lot of stuff that happened before that point would no longer have happened. Necron starships in particular have been altered so much so frequently that you can pretty much write off anything they did in space pre 5th, because odds are their ships don't do that anymore. From the sound of things IA 12 was written as a hybrid of the 5e and BFG fluff.
Necrons are supposed to be 'sufficiently advanced aliens', which is a fairly common scifi trope. This is where you can play the 100 million years of alien super science card. With eldar you can blame the fact their technology is partially based on the warp.
The problem is that human tech is based on human understanding of the universe. Because they use revolvers still in the grim derpness of the far future. They use a knock off of a CZ-75. They use shotguns. They use the bolter which is based on a real weapon. The problem with the lasgun is that it's battery has to be based on the warp, because there's no in setting way to explain it. It's literally producing more energy than it can be taking in from these sources. That's why the 'recharges in sunlight' thing got dropped is that even Matt Ward thought that sounded too unbelievable and stupid.
It's not trying to explain it, it's thinking about it at all that kills the setting. Even the tiniest amount of thought or brain usage makes 40k crumple, but no one ever wants to talk about it. Like X-Men.
The Necrons did win the War in heaven, given that they and the C'tan slaughtered all the Old ones before they themselves turned on the C'tan with "universe shaking weapons". Out of all the Old One's creations, I'd say only the Eldar and Slann haven't gone way off the rails of their original purpose, and even then for the self proclaimed heirs to all that the Old Ones left behind the Eldar do a spectacularly bad job at it.
And the Slann...well they just sit there in the background minding their own business.
Surviving 60 million years, that is longer than anyone else; I wouldn't really call a failure, especially as the uncontested masters of the tail end of that.
This is the same setting where Evil Star Vampires can kill you with particles not allowed to interact with normal matter, make the equivalent of a messy room into an instant death trap, and play pinball with a black hole until an entire solar system is destroyed.
Who get retconned so hard that their teeth rattle every edition. Due to the changes a whole lot of stuff that happened before that point would no longer have happened. Necron starships in particular have been altered so much so frequently that you can pretty much write off anything they did in space pre 5th, because odds are their ships don't do that anymore. From the sound of things IA 12 was written as a hybrid of the 5e and BFG fluff.
Necrons are supposed to be 'sufficiently advanced aliens', which is a fairly common scifi trope. This is where you can play the 100 million years of alien super science card. With eldar you can blame the fact their technology is partially based on the warp.
The problem is that human tech is based on human understanding of the universe. Because they use revolvers still in the grim derpness of the far future. They use a knock off of a CZ-75. They use shotguns. They use the bolter which is based on a real weapon. The problem with the lasgun is that it's battery has to be based on the warp, because there's no in setting way to explain it. It's literally producing more energy than it can be taking in from these sources. That's why the 'recharges in sunlight' thing got dropped is that even Matt Ward thought that sounded too unbelievable and stupid.
It's not trying to explain it, it's thinking about it at all that kills the setting. Even the tiniest amount of thought or brain usage makes 40k crumple, but no one ever wants to talk about it. Like X-Men.
\
Actually what I just mentioned was all 5e stuff. The void dragon who fought the emperor to a near standstill?
Yeah, just a shard now.
Ward says that full power C'tan could destroy entire solar systems by just thinking about it and that it took a weapon of "universal" scale to shard them, and mind you the celestial orrery, which could destroy the entire galaxy, is merely described as "galactic."
Where does it say universal scale? All it says is they "focussed the unimaginable energies of the living universe into weapons too mighty for even the C'tan to endure" which could mean anything. The only thing about the universe (as a whole) is that they focussed energy from it.
Daba wrote: Where does it say universal scale? All it says is they "focussed the unimaginable energies of the living universe into weapons too mighty for even the C'tan to endure" which could mean anything. The only thing about the universe (as a whole) is that they focussed energy from it.
Hrmm...ah that's what I get for trusting spacebattles.com
Still, the Necrontyr military tech is leagues above anyone else's which is probably how they won the war.
After all, a mere two million Necrons utterly wrecked a Sabbat crusade sized force in the battle for Orpheus.
Unit1126PLL wrote: If I recall correctly, the old 3rd Ed. Guard Codex said that the normal power setting was 17 "megathules" which of course is a random-word from the fluff.
If we make the (admittedly dubious) step of equating "megathules" to "megajoules" then that would place the mid-range setting on a Cadian lasrifle at about the same energy as the muzzle energy of a .50 BMG round.
Don't also forget that the lasguns can be dialed in power, as well as firing substantially more rounds with substantially less recoil from a substantially smaller platform with substantially better accuracy than a .50 BMG rifle.
They're actually quite scary weapons IMO.
EDIT: WAIT OH HOLY feth - the .50 BMG only outputs 17 KILOJOULES of energy. So either a lasgun is three orders of magnitude more powerful than a .50 BMG or "megathules" is a meaningless word.
Probably the latter. My bad. Sorry lads.
17 megajoules is more energy than a 120mm tank gun used in modern tanks. Best suggestion is that it is simply made up, is absolute powerwank, or the lasgun is a really inefficient weapon, which loses energy to diffusion at an astonishing rate. The latter would be pretty funny. At point blank, a lasgun can punch through a tank, at 40 feet it can punch through power armour, at 100 feet is can't even punch through flak armour.
Unit1126PLL wrote: If I recall correctly, the old 3rd Ed. Guard Codex said that the normal power setting was 17 "megathules" which of course is a random-word from the fluff.
If we make the (admittedly dubious) step of equating "megathules" to "megajoules" then that would place the mid-range setting on a Cadian lasrifle at about the same energy as the muzzle energy of a .50 BMG round.
Don't also forget that the lasguns can be dialed in power, as well as firing substantially more rounds with substantially less recoil from a substantially smaller platform with substantially better accuracy than a .50 BMG rifle.
They're actually quite scary weapons IMO.
EDIT: WAIT OH HOLY feth - the .50 BMG only outputs 17 KILOJOULES of energy. So either a lasgun is three orders of magnitude more powerful than a .50 BMG or "megathules" is a meaningless word.
Probably the latter. My bad. Sorry lads.
17 megajoules is more energy than a 120mm tank gun used in modern tanks. Best suggestion is that it is simply made up, is absolute powerwank, or the lasgun is a really inefficient weapon, which loses energy to diffusion at an astonishing rate. The latter would be pretty funny. At point blank, a lasgun can punch through a tank, at 40 feet it can punch through power armour, at 100 feet is can't even punch through flak armour.
Lasers are an astonishingly inefficient kill mechanism.
You'd need hundreds of times more energy with a laser to do what a bullet can.
Lasers are an astonishingly inefficient kill mechanism.
You'd need hundreds of times more energy with a laser to do what a bullet can.
Apparently, it's 'possible' with a pulse laser, which will actually effectively convert the electrical energy from the power source into the beam to the target.
Unit1126PLL wrote: If I recall correctly, the old 3rd Ed. Guard Codex said that the normal power setting was 17 "megathules" which of course is a random-word from the fluff.
If we make the (admittedly dubious) step of equating "megathules" to "megajoules" then that would place the mid-range setting on a Cadian lasrifle at about the same energy as the muzzle energy of a .50 BMG round.
Don't also forget that the lasguns can be dialed in power, as well as firing substantially more rounds with substantially less recoil from a substantially smaller platform with substantially better accuracy than a .50 BMG rifle.
They're actually quite scary weapons IMO.
EDIT: WAIT OH HOLY feth - the .50 BMG only outputs 17 KILOJOULES of energy. So either a lasgun is three orders of magnitude more powerful than a .50 BMG or "megathules" is a meaningless word.
Probably the latter. My bad. Sorry lads.
17 megajoules is more energy than a 120mm tank gun used in modern tanks. Best suggestion is that it is simply made up, is absolute powerwank, or the lasgun is a really inefficient weapon, which loses energy to diffusion at an astonishing rate. The latter would be pretty funny. At point blank, a lasgun can punch through a tank, at 40 feet it can punch through power armour, at 100 feet is can't even punch through flak armour.
Lasers are an astonishingly inefficient kill mechanism.
You'd need hundreds of times more energy with a laser to do what a bullet can.
But lasers hit instantly, or near as damnit. I wonder what a whole life energy-per-hit assessment would come up with considering all the wasted energy dropped into bullets that never hit anything
But lasers hit instantly, or near as damnit. I wonder what a whole life energy-per-hit assessment would come up with considering all the wasted energy dropped into bullets that never hit anything
A laser 'hits' instantly, but has to stay on target a lot longer to transfer energy to the target.
To make a comparison based on factory energy consumption: the power required to charge a lasgun power pack once could power the Springfield Arsenal for a little over 6 weeks of around the clock shifts.
Psienesis wrote: ... it should also be noted that a lasgun does not use "megajoules", which is a real-world unit of measurement, but "megathules", which is not.
It would need megajoule level energy output to replicate the feats it does. Does the term "calcing" mean nothing to you?
For all we know, a megathule is a thousand megajoules. We don't understand the basic science the Imperium has built its lasgun on. It may be that the AdMech discovered some new element/material/law of physics, in M7, that permits them to do this.
We, in M3, are too stupid to understand how the AdMech makes it work. It is enough that they did.
Psienesis wrote: ... it should also be noted that a lasgun does not use "megajoules", which is a real-world unit of measurement, but "megathules", which is not.
It would need megajoule level energy output to replicate the feats it does. Does the term "calcing" mean nothing to you?
What is a feat?
Does it clash with the description in Codex: IG / Main Rulebook / 2nd edition Wargear book?
Because novel authors are unreliable and inconsistent with each other (and often themselves). They may be a good read, but I would be really wary of using it as a guide on how 40k or anything works.
Psienesis wrote: ... it should also be noted that a lasgun does not use "megajoules", which is a real-world unit of measurement, but "megathules", which is not.
It would need megajoule level energy output to replicate the feats it does. Does the term "calcing" mean nothing to you?
What is a feat?
Does it clash with the description in Codex: IG / Main Rulebook / 2nd edition Wargear book?
Because novel authors are unreliable and inconsistent with each other (and often themselves). They may be a good read, but I would be really wary of using it as a guide on how 40k or anything works.
A feat is something in a book that is then analyzed, studied, and then number crunched.
And everything in 40k is equally canon.
Of course, calcing out a multimelta's power after it fried a bunker gave it terajoule (little boy/fatman sized nuclear bomb) level yields.
Desubot wrote: I wonder though would it be possible to make a more reasonable lasgun at this time? something that can punch a hole the size of a fist into flesh?
Theoretically possible, although such a thing would be inefficient. We can achieve the same effect with a normal bullet. Why waste research time and effort figuring out how to do what really amounts to a different way of killing someone. Shot with a bullet or fried by a laser is equally dead. So the laser would have to offer an advantage over the bullet.
The lasgun relieves logistics by eliminating the need to transport billions of rounds of ammunition. Instead a few portable generators will do. Leaving room for more soldiers, tanks, or other larger more valuable ammunition. Like battlecannon shells.
This advantage doesn't exist with current, or projected, laser weaponry. Transporting bullets isn't a huge concern currently. So lasers are stuck where they are useful, shooting down missiles, marking targets for guided bombs, etc...
Psienesis wrote: ... it should also be noted that a lasgun does not use "megajoules", which is a real-world unit of measurement, but "megathules", which is not.
It would need megajoule level energy output to replicate the feats it does. Does the term "calcing" mean nothing to you?
What is a feat?
Does it clash with the description in Codex: IG / Main Rulebook / 2nd edition Wargear book?
Because novel authors are unreliable and inconsistent with each other (and often themselves). They may be a good read, but I would be really wary of using it as a guide on how 40k or anything works.
A feat is something in a book that is then analyzed, studied, and then number crunched.
And everything in 40k is equally canon.
Of course, calcing out a multimelta's power after it fried a bunker gave it terajoule (little boy/fatman sized nuclear bomb) level yields.
Yes, it's equally canon, but it's an unreliable source.
So you have novels that are canon but also wrong, due to unreliable narrators or in-universe perspective.
Psienesis wrote: For all we know, a megathule is a thousand megajoules. We don't understand the basic science the Imperium has built its lasgun on. It may be that the AdMech discovered some new element/material/law of physics, in M7, that permits them to do this.
We, in M3, are too stupid to understand how the AdMech makes it work. It is enough that they did.
This is the biggest pile of horsegak anyone on this thread has yet spewed, and is frankly insulting to anyone who ever passed high school science.
We know very well how lasers work. And the fluff makes it very clear the the lasgun is, in fact, a laser.
We also know, at this time, what the vaporization point of human flesh is. So, we know how it works, and what it has to do, This makes finding how much power it has to have easy, and one thing that 40k makes clear is that conservation of mass and energy are still in effect (unless the warp is involved).
Since we can all agree that one thing the lasgun is supposed to universally do, regardless of writer, is make a hole in a person, we're using that.
The problem with the idea that there is a new element/law/etc is they use it for absolutely nothing else. Lasgun powercells are creating energy out of thin air. Yet this technology is not use in, for example, tank engines, or aircraft, or cybernetics, or starships. Yet the small electrical current in a human body is able to charge one enough, in 24 hours, according to FFG, that it can power a 220 megajoule laser. We know that a lasgun is at least that, since that's about the bare minimum to burn through human flesh in the tiny timeframe that the laser is hitting them,.
So why use plasma drives, etc, when you have amateiral that lets you get nearly the equivalent of the output of a nuclear reactor out of a single human being? It's not because the Imperium places any value on human life, that's for certain.
Psienesis wrote: For all we know, a megathule is a thousand megajoules. We don't understand the basic science the Imperium has built its lasgun on. It may be that the AdMech discovered some new element/material/law of physics, in M7, that permits them to do this.
We, in M3, are too stupid to understand how the AdMech makes it work. It is enough that they did.
This is the biggest pile of horsegak anyone on this thread has yet spewed, and is frankly insulting to anyone who ever passed high school science.
We know very well how lasers work. And the fluff makes it very clear the the lasgun is, in fact, a laser.
We also know, at this time, what the vaporization point of human flesh is. So, we know how it works, and what it has to do, This makes finding how much power it has to have easy, and one thing that 40k makes clear is that conservation of mass and energy are still in effect (unless the warp is involved).
Since we can all agree that one thing the lasgun is supposed to universally do, regardless of writer, is make a hole in a person, we're using that.
The problem with the idea that there is a new element/law/etc is they use it for absolutely nothing else. Lasgun powercells are creating energy out of thin air. Yet this technology is not use in, for example, tank engines, or aircraft, or cybernetics, or starships. Yet the small electrical current in a human body is able to charge one enough, in 24 hours, according to FFG, that it can power a 220 megajoule laser. We know that a lasgun is at least that, since that's about the bare minimum to burn through human flesh in the tiny timeframe that the laser is hitting them,.
So why use plasma drives, etc, when you have amateiral that lets you get nearly the equivalent of the output of a nuclear reactor out of a single human being? It's not because the Imperium places any value on human life, that's for certain.
Except it doesn't at all work the way that we think that it does. Lasguns are, one, not beam weapons. They are, at least in some patterns, pulse weapons. It fires a "bolt" of laser energy, not a beam. It should be noted that lasweapons are capable of burst and automatic fire (and not just the multi-barreled multilas) and also have kinetic recoil . Two, las shots are known to have kinetic force behind their heat force, as demonstrated in a number of sources that have targets knocked down, but not injured, by the las shot. Three, las weapons provide very little cauterization to the injuries caused by them. At the point of impact, certainly. Radiating out from that? Flash-cooked flesh, blood turned instantly to steam, great, gory chunks blown out of you by the rapidly-expanding gases that was the water in your flesh.
And you're right, the IoM is using some space-age material that somehow does all of this in a case roughly the size of a small book. This is why we are too stupid to understand how this happens, we don't know how they are creating the energy to do this. We're also not even sure if what *we* classify as a laser is what the AdMech classifies as a laser in this usage. For all we know, it's more like the blasters of Star Wars, which are technically plasma weapons.
@Baronlveagh - your 220MJ is to vapourise 25kg of human. Thats not really a fair comparison to the effects if a bullet, or even the described effects of a lasgun. Some part of the surface of the target will be vapourised but its more likely that thermal shock and differential thermal expansion would cause most damage. 6kW industrial lasers can cut through 10mm of steel at a rate of 1cm/s and they are allegedly only 15% efficient and run on a continuous beam. I see no reason why magical future tech for batteries and focussing arrays couldn't develop an effective laser rifle.
Also remember that the 747 YAL1 noted above somewhere was specified to cripple targets at a range of 300 to 600km, again a rather unfair comparison to an infantry small arm.
We're still going on about how a fictional weapon from the far, FAR future fonctions on concepts that even the citizens on that far, FAR away future doesn't know as it is taboo and heretical to even look at the inner workings of any technological device?
No seriously, that is like trying to explain how a light saber from Star Wars works; it works because it does.
It does X because they wrote that it does X, not because of real SCIENCE.
Why don't we talk about how a Leman Russ engine can works on fuel composed of any or all following liquids at any time, ever.
potato oil
gasoline
Kerosene
prometium
lamp oil
pitch
whale fat boiled to liquid form
factory grease cut with water
I'm way more interested in that real life situation (dependence of gasoline is rather current event, what with the prices fluctuating every time a Saudi prince farts in the wrong direction) than how a laser rifle works.
Psienesis wrote:
Except it doesn't at all work the way that we think that it does. Lasguns are, one, not beam weapons. They are, at least in some patterns, pulse weapons. It fires a "bolt" of laser energy, not a beam. It should be noted that lasweapons are capable of burst and automatic fire (and not just the multi-barreled multilas) and also have kinetic recoil . Two, las shots are known to have kinetic force behind their heat force, as demonstrated in a number of sources that have targets knocked down, but not injured, by the las shot. Three, las weapons provide very little cauterization to the injuries caused by them. At the point of impact, certainly. Radiating out from that? Flash-cooked flesh, blood turned instantly to steam, great, gory chunks blown out of you by the rapidly-expanding gases that was the water in your flesh.
And several other sources claim they're recoiless. So we attribute that to the GW 'unreliable narrator', along with the 'great gory mess' because other authors describe it as a 'distinctive through and through wound' that bleeds very little due to the cauterization. So, we try try to find common elements Universally, they make a hole in someone, so this gives us a starting point,.
A laser 'beam' firing for 50 milliseconds would appear to be a 'pulse' or 'bolt' to the naked eye, assuming it was visible, so claiming it's not a laser beam because someone 'sees' it not being a beam does not actually mean it's not a beam.
Flinty wrote:@Baronlveagh - your 220MJ is to vapourise 25kg of human. Thats not really a fair comparison to the effects if a bullet, or even the described effects of a lasgun. Some part of the surface of the target will be vapourised but its more likely that thermal shock and differential thermal expansion would cause most damage. 6kW industrial lasers can cut through 10mm of steel at a rate of 1cm/s and they are allegedly only 15% efficient and run on a continuous beam. I see no reason why magical future tech for batteries and focussing arrays couldn't develop an effective laser rifle.
Also remember that the 747 YAL1 noted above somewhere was specified to cripple targets at a range of 300 to 600km, again a rather unfair comparison to an infantry small arm.
The industrial lasers work because they're burning through a very small amount of actual mass, and also require a much longer time to burn through that material than would be practical for a laser infantry weapon (burnign throug ha much, much thicker target in about 50 milliseconds). Remember that the extreme short duration of the shot increases the required power output to achieve the same result. (Again, the point should be mad that YAL-1 does not actually burn through anything, which is what makes it's output a poor comparison.)
While I'm sure with enough fancy focusing arrays you could compensate for atmospheric dispersion, which is the real killer for beam efficiency, you can't overcome the fact that the laser has to impart on the target enough thermal energy to reach 6k degrees kelvin. If you're not worried about penetrating bone or clothing or anything, you can get away with 0.42kJ/cm3 of target being vaporized, but since no one who's not a space marine seems to have a lasgun round deflected by their unaugmented skull, it's probably safe to assume something in the 23.1kJ/cm3 range,
Someone ran the numbers once upon a time for the energy required to vaporize a 1969 Ford Mustang, but it makes a poor comparison for lascannon fire because we don't know how much steel or iron is in a Leman Russ, though both those metals are used in it.
Inquisitor Jex wrote:
No seriously, that is like trying to explain how a light saber from Star Wars works; it works because it does.
It does X because they wrote that it does X, not because of real SCIENCE.
The only thing I've never been clear on is why they have shadows...
Inquisitor Jex wrote:
Why don't we talk about how a Leman Russ engine can works on fuel composed of any or all following liquids at any time, ever.
potato oil
gasoline
Kerosene
prometium
lamp oil
pitch
whale fat boiled to liquid form
factory grease cut with water
I'm way more interested in that real life situation (dependence of gasoline is rather current event, what with the prices fluctuating every time a Saudi prince farts in the wrong direction) than how a laser rifle works.
Well, promethium is, afaik not real, and the last three it won't burn, but a Heracles Multi fuel engine will burn a pretty broad spectrum of fuels, including, IIRC, kerosene, ethenol, heating oil, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and probably lamp oil, but I don't know if anyone ever tried that one.
You know to me the only reason to use lasers in the future as oppessed to more conventional weapons would be because of shields. use the lasers to take down shields then spray and pray with missiles and bullets (probally the mechwarrior in me lol) also sinse a laser beam or even a laser pulse would move at the speed of light it would be inpossible to dodge the actual shot, if you were to try to dodge it would have to be before the triggers pulled. Also i once watched on science channel about how to build your own light saber, and it is realisticly possible in the near future to build one of close faxcimily, it would be plasma based though. But the relavent part is nano technology can be used to make the power source, by making basicly millions of miniture battaries and capaciters. of course this technology currently needs 0 gravity enviroment to create, but hey they are in the future in space. But still lasers are very ineffecient weapons. I much prefer the basic troop weapons of the starcraft universe marines the inpaler rifle.
Yeah like that plasma scalpel will be a meter in length.
and I think they called it a welding torch in another field.
So it is not a light saber, not even close.
Besides, they wrote that Leman Russes work on any and all fuel types, even things that are not fuel, partially why it is the main battle tank of the Guard, despite being slow a rock. so yeah those last 3 will burn in a leman russ engine.
And several other sources claim they're recoiless. So we attribute that to the GW 'unreliable narrator', along with the 'great gory mess' because other authors describe it as a 'distinctive through and through wound' that bleeds very little due to the cauterization. So, we try try to find common elements Universally, they make a hole in someone, so this gives us a starting point,.
You could attribute it to that, but you'd be wrong to do so. You're cherry-picking data to make it conform to the idea that you can quantify how it functions while ignoring all of the additional data that doesn't fit with your hypothesis. That's simply bad science.
A laser 'beam' firing for 50 milliseconds would appear to be a 'pulse' or 'bolt' to the naked eye, assuming it was visible, so claiming it's not a laser beam because someone 'sees' it not being a beam does not actually mean it's not a beam.
Except they can and do deflect off certain metal surfaces, and are described as a ball or short rod of light bouncing around in the air, and characters can and do dodge them. Can't dodge a beam by weaving around it.
Yay! Someone else linked Project Rho...I was going to but I figured I better not for common decency's sake. I credit that website for about 75% of what I know about potential spacecraft tech. Spent an entire weekend binging on that site because I wanted to write a realistic near future sci-fi story for a creative writing class. The rest of the class absolutely hated it because of all the tech detail I put in, but there you go
Interesting to know about the YAL's method of operation. I always assumed it worked similar to the Navy proposed laser (I prefer the railgun project personally, but lasers are cool and they get funding). Good to hear they figured smaller spot size would do the job better.
Complete side note, but one of my teachers at university is actually doing a ton of research about how to account for laser distortion in turbulent air to maintain a consistent beam. I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear he had something to do with that project. Apparently the guy worked for NASA and the Air Force quite a bit over his career (he has space shuttle programs on punch cards in boxes in his basement...)
At the moment I am satisfied that some kind of personal laser weapon has the potential to exist with near future tech, but it will not be more practical than kinetic weapons without some major scientific breakthroughs, and even then it will almost certainly never work as well as a lasgun.
And several other sources claim they're recoiless. So we attribute that to the GW 'unreliable narrator', along with the 'great gory mess' because other authors describe it as a 'distinctive through and through wound' that bleeds very little due to the cauterization. So, we try try to find common elements Universally, they make a hole in someone, so this gives us a starting point,.
You could attribute it to that, but you'd be wrong to do so. You're cherry-picking data to make it conform to the idea that you can quantify how it functions while ignoring all of the additional data that doesn't fit with your hypothesis. That's simply bad science.
A laser 'beam' firing for 50 milliseconds would appear to be a 'pulse' or 'bolt' to the naked eye, assuming it was visible, so claiming it's not a laser beam because someone 'sees' it not being a beam does not actually mean it's not a beam.
Except they can and do deflect off certain metal surfaces, and are described as a ball or short rod of light bouncing around in the air, and characters can and do dodge them. Can't dodge a beam by weaving around it.
But you could dodge the actual pull of the trigger giving the illusion that your dodging something that moves at the speed of light.
You could attribute it to that, but you'd be wrong to do so. You're cherry-picking data to make it conform to the idea that you can quantify how it functions while ignoring all of the additional data that doesn't fit with your hypothesis. That's simply bad science.
Not really. Whether or not it has recoil is inconsistent, occasionally in the same book, if not on the same page. Science depends on consistent, reliable data, which we have very little of for this subject. What we do have that is consistent is that it will make a hole in a human being, apparently regardless of hit location. So we use the energy requirements to do that as our 'low end', since we cannot test the actual burn properties of their armor or clothing.
Further, you mention knock down, but this could also be attributed to shock, as happens with small caliber real world projectiles, where it is not the kinetic energy, but rather the body's response to the shock, that knocks the subject prone.
Except they can and do deflect off certain metal surfaces, and are described as a ball or short rod of light bouncing around in the air, and characters can and do dodge them. Can't dodge a beam by weaving around it.
Characters also jump between space ships tens of thousands of kilometers apart who are not matching orbital velocities and manage to land on their target while 'eyeballing it' and weave between the fire of a HMG firing full auto, and survive orbital strikes in the gigaton range within a hundred yards of ground zero, when they would have been reduced to a carbon smear and water vapor, no matter how badass their armor is, because they were not wearing their helmets. (No amount of genetic engineering makes the bonds between your water molecules tougher, as that's not controlled by DNA...).
And since all these things are inconsistent within the setting, we go with what we know to be consistent.
I can tell you guys that in surgery, electrocautery has two different settings: cut, and coagulate. Coag is used to quickly cauterize bleeders without doing excessive damage to surrounding tissue. The cut setting is more intense and is used like a knife to cut through tissue (muscle, fat, fascia, etc.). It does not cauterize very effectively as it's cutting.
The scalpel is typically only used to cut skin (because skin blisters under cautery and would ruin the incision, making suturing ugly.) Although, there is a more expensive alternative called a Plasma Knife which can cut skin without blistering and, in fact, does equivalent residual tissue damage to the scalpel's mechanical crush zone, while cauterizing. But as far as I've seen, surgeons still prefer the bovie for faster, more wide-spread cauterization.
What I'm saying is that despite what light sabers show us, cutting through tissue with heat is not necessarily going to effectively cauterize at the same time. Certainly not the larger blood vessels in any case.
Flinty wrote:@Baronlveagh - your 220MJ is to vapourise 25kg of human. Thats not really a fair comparison to the effects if a bullet, or even the described effects of a lasgun. Some part of the surface of the target will be vapourised but its more likely that thermal shock and differential thermal expansion would cause most damage. 6kW industrial lasers can cut through 10mm of steel at a rate of 1cm/s and they are allegedly only 15% efficient and run on a continuous beam. I see no reason why magical future tech for batteries and focussing arrays couldn't develop an effective laser rifle.
Also remember that the 747 YAL1 noted above somewhere was specified to cripple targets at a range of 300 to 600km, again a rather unfair comparison to an infantry small arm.
The industrial lasers work because they're burning through a very small amount of actual mass, and also require a much longer time to burn through that material than would be practical for a laser infantry weapon (burnign throug ha much, much thicker target in about 50 milliseconds). Remember that the extreme short duration of the shot increases the required power output to achieve the same result. (Again, the point should be mad that YAL-1 does not actually burn through anything, which is what makes it's output a poor comparison.)
While I'm sure with enough fancy focusing arrays you could compensate for atmospheric dispersion, which is the real killer for beam efficiency, you can't overcome the fact that the laser has to impart on the target enough thermal energy to reach 6k degrees kelvin. If you're not worried about penetrating bone or clothing or anything, you can get away with 0.42kJ/cm3 of target being vaporized, but since no one who's not a space marine seems to have a lasgun round deflected by their unaugmented skull, it's probably safe to assume something in the 23.1kJ/cm3 range,
Someone ran the numbers once upon a time for the energy required to vaporize a 1969 Ford Mustang, but it makes a poor comparison for lascannon fire because we don't know how much steel or iron is in a Leman Russ, though both those metals are used in it.
I was thinking about this more last night and I still think the requirement to vaiourise the flesh is too onerous. given that we're 70-80% water, all you need to do is flash-boil the water and that would cause all sorts of explosive and thermal damage to a human target. Flash boiling a kg of water would appear to take about 2.5MJ and the 1600x expansion from water to steam would cause plenty of damage to the target. Vapourisation of smaller volumes of water would requite proortionally less energy and still likely cause sufficient damage to disable a person.
Orks are regularly described as having small arms fire bounce off their skulls.
Also to those who wonder why we're not developing laser weapons for infantry at this time, I remember reading somewhere that anti-infantry lasers contravene the Geneva Convention as they are much more likely to blind than kill. Weapons that are expressley designed to disable but not kill are banned. If you're having a war you need to at least be trying to kill the opponent's soldiers
Inquisitor Jex wrote:
Why don't we talk about how a Leman Russ engine can works on fuel composed of any or all following liquids at any time, ever.
potato oil
gasoline
Kerosene
prometium
lamp oil
pitch
whale fat boiled to liquid form
factory grease cut with water
I'm way more interested in that real life situation (dependence of gasoline is rather current event, what with the prices fluctuating every time a Saudi prince farts in the wrong direction) than how a laser rifle works.
Well, promethium is, afaik not real, and the last three it won't burn, but a Heracles Multi fuel engine will burn a pretty broad spectrum of fuels, including, IIRC, kerosene, ethenol, heating oil, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and probably lamp oil, but I don't know if anyone ever tried that one.
I'm also pretty sure that a lot of modern tanks with diesel engines can burn a wide range of fuel types, down to wood spirit in an emergency. Sure it will knacker the engine, but it might just give you enough movement to be useful.
Archonate wrote: I can tell you guys that in surgery, electrocautery has two different settings: cut, and coagulate. Coag is used to quickly cauterize bleeders without doing excessive damage to surrounding tissue. The cut setting is more intense and is used like a knife to cut through tissue (muscle, fat, fascia, etc.). It does not cauterize very effectively as it's cutting.
The scalpel is typically only used to cut skin (because skin blisters under cautery and would ruin the incision, making suturing ugly.) Although, there is a more expensive alternative called a Plasma Knife which can cut skin without blistering and, in fact, does equivalent residual tissue damage to the scalpel's mechanical crush zone, while cauterizing. But as far as I've seen, surgeons still prefer the bovie for faster, more wide-spread cauterization.
What I'm saying is that despite what light sabers show us, cutting through tissue with heat is not necessarily going to effectively cauterize at the same time. Certainly not the larger blood vessels in any case.
Unless a light saber is basicly a handle that when turned on releases a super tough heat resistent nano carbon tube filled with plasma, then in fact it would burn and cauterize very effectivly. It would basicly make it a industrial grade blow torch in the shape of a sword.
I was thinking about this more last night and I still think the requirement to vaiourise the flesh is too onerous. given that we're 70-80% water, all you need to do is flash-boil the water and that would cause all sorts of explosive and thermal damage to a human target. Flash boiling a kg of water would appear to take about 2.5MJ and the 1600x expansion from water to steam would cause plenty of damage to the target. Vapourisation of smaller volumes of water would requite proortionally less energy and still likely cause sufficient damage to disable a person.
Orks are regularly described as having small arms fire bounce off their skulls.
Sadly, we can't test an ork skull to determine why that is, though the implication is that it's because of bone density, but it could be due to ork having a different chemical composition to their bone structure.
Otherwise....first, that number is for pure water. Remember that the boiling point of water changes depending on what you add to it, and the target is only 70-80% water. That remaining 20-30% will throw the numbers off. Also, I've been avoiding clothing, because we don't know what 'average' far future clothing is made of, but it would mean that even a white cotton t shirt would provide measurable protection from a lasgun (to use an example from an old IG joke) and since I can't find any examples of someone's unenhanced dungarees stopping a lasgun round..
One of the more interesting injuries from a lasgun in 40k fiction that I've been able to find is Jinxie Penlan's injury in the first CC novel. A near miss gives her a flash burn on the side of her face strong enough to give her a noticeable scar, even several years later as the series progresses. I haven't been able to find an example that contradicts this, but definitely sounds like there's a small amount of beam dispersion going on, because the shot would be too short lived for convection to cause enough heating to burn someone. We can't say for sure, because we don't know how close the shot was, but it's interesting.
Archonate wrote: I can tell you guys that in surgery, electrocautery has two different settings: cut, and coagulate. Coag is used to quickly cauterize bleeders without doing excessive damage to surrounding tissue. The cut setting is more intense and is used like a knife to cut through tissue (muscle, fat, fascia, etc.). It does not cauterize very effectively as it's cutting.
The scalpel is typically only used to cut skin (because skin blisters under cautery and would ruin the incision, making suturing ugly.) Although, there is a more expensive alternative called a Plasma Knife which can cut skin without blistering and, in fact, does equivalent residual tissue damage to the scalpel's mechanical crush zone, while cauterizing. But as far as I've seen, surgeons still prefer the bovie for faster, more wide-spread cauterization.
What I'm saying is that despite what light sabers show us, cutting through tissue with heat is not necessarily going to effectively cauterize at the same time. Certainly not the larger blood vessels in any case.
Unless a light saber is basicly a handle that when turned on releases a super tough heat resistent nano carbon tube filled with plasma, then in fact it would burn and cauterize very effectivly. It would basicly make it a industrial grade blow torch in the shape of a sword.
Your abundant use of the word 'basically' betrays the fictitious substance of your point.
Philosophical conjectures aside, I'm talking about something real as a comparison for how something hypothetical might work.
In surgery, for cutting, a continuous single frequency sine wave is often employed. Rapid tissue heating leads to explosive vaporization of interstitial fluid. If the voltage is sufficiently high (> 400 V peak-to-peak) the vapor sheath is ionized, forming conductive plasma. Electric current continues to flow from the metal electrode through the ionized gas into the tissue. Rapid overheating of tissue results in its vaporization, fragmentation and ejection of fragments, allowing for tissue cutting. The vaporization is why a hotter electrode doesn't cauterize.
For coagulation, the average power is typically reduced below the threshold of cutting. Typically, sine wave is turned on and off in a rapid succession. The overall effect is a slower heating process, which causes tissue to coagulate. (Coagulate = cauterize, btw.)
The following calc probably needs checking as I'm not a laser expert.
Coming at it from the other way, incident radiation of 150kW/sq.m has been proven to cause full depth skin burns in 4s (testing that must have been fun...). Bump the power up an order of magnitude to compress the time required for serious damage to human flesh (and for fun) and put the target at 1km (a reasonable assumption for maximum effective range for firearms).
According to the calculation method for laser safety, you would require a 12kW laser (measured at aperture) to get a target irradiance of 1.5MW/sq.m, provided the beam spread is low enough that it strikes a 0.01sq.m area of the target. This level of irradiance is more than enough to ignite solid materials and punch through clothing/armour on a target (Piloted ignition of wood, for example, only needs about 12.5kW/sq.m). Atmospheric losses would need to be taken into account.
This actually puts it inabout the right ball-park if you consider that the Tactical Airborne Laser that was tested a few years ago that is in the 100kW range and "defeated a ground target" at a range of 20km.
In terms of energy consumption, if we call our magical future laser systems 50% efficient (rather than the 25-30% efficiency in modern lasers) and call an individual shot 0.5s long (to get a similar amount of energy into the target compared to the 150kW/sq.m for 4 s), then we need 12kJ per shot. This is enough energy to flash boil approximately 5g of water. For battery storage for 100 shots we would need 1.2MJ storage compared to modern lithium ion battery energy density of 0.9 to 2.63MJ/litre.
So I'm not sure what I've proven with all of this, but it looks like if we could get a small enough and efficient enough laser then modern battery technology would be sufficient to power something that would cause harm to a person at about 1km range. Add in a few magical space materials and the effectiveness of the system goes up.
lord of corn wrote: It always amused me that a guardsman can punch just as strong as his lasgun fires.
This is when the rules abstractions come in again. Over a given (relatively short period of) time, a guardsman is just as likely to kill an enemy with his rifle as he is with his close combat abilities. This seems reasonable as you usually have to fire quite a lot of rifle ammunition before you get an effective hit on a target at range as opposed to stabbing them in the face.
Flinty wrote: The following calc probably needs checking as I'm not a laser expert.
Coming at it from the other way, incident radiation of 150kW/sq.m has been proven to cause full depth skin burns in 4s (testing that must have been fun...). Bump the power up an order of magnitude to compress the time required for serious damage to human flesh (and for fun) and put the target at 1km (a reasonable assumption for maximum effective range for firearms).
According to the calculation method for laser safety, you would require a 12kW laser (measured at aperture) to get a target irradiance of 1.5MW/sq.m, provided the beam spread is low enough that it strikes a 0.01sq.m area of the target. This level of irradiance is more than enough to ignite solid materials and punch through clothing/armour on a target (Piloted ignition of wood, for example, only needs about 12.5kW/sq.m). Atmospheric losses would need to be taken into account.
This actually puts it inabout the right ball-park if you consider that the Tactical Airborne Laser that was tested a few years ago that is in the 100kW range and "defeated a ground target" at a range of 20km.
''
You're not raising power enough to compensate for time. The time that it has to delver that energy is measured in milliseconds, because the natural movement of the human body, both at of the firer and that of the target, even at rest, will mean the laser does not stay on target long enough.
Some interesting video.
This is a 15kw laser weapon firing, so smaller by an order of magnitude. Notice how long it takes to ignite the target at range.
Archonate wrote: I can tell you guys that in surgery, electrocautery has two different settings: cut, and coagulate. Coag is used to quickly cauterize bleeders without doing excessive damage to surrounding tissue. The cut setting is more intense and is used like a knife to cut through tissue (muscle, fat, fascia, etc.). It does not cauterize very effectively as it's cutting.
The scalpel is typically only used to cut skin (because skin blisters under cautery and would ruin the incision, making suturing ugly.) Although, there is a more expensive alternative called a Plasma Knife which can cut skin without blistering and, in fact, does equivalent residual tissue damage to the scalpel's mechanical crush zone, while cauterizing. But as far as I've seen, surgeons still prefer the bovie for faster, more wide-spread cauterization.
What I'm saying is that despite what light sabers show us, cutting through tissue with heat is not necessarily going to effectively cauterize at the same time. Certainly not the larger blood vessels in any case.
Unless a light saber is basicly a handle that when turned on releases a super tough heat resistent nano carbon tube filled with plasma, then in fact it would burn and cauterize very effectivly. It would basicly make it a industrial grade blow torch in the shape of a sword.
Your abundant use of the word 'basically' betrays the fictitious substance of your point.
Philosophical conjectures aside, I'm talking about something real as a comparison for how something hypothetical might work.
In surgery, for cutting, a continuous single frequency sine wave is often employed. Rapid tissue heating leads to explosive vaporization of interstitial fluid. If the voltage is sufficiently high (> 400 V peak-to-peak) the vapor sheath is ionized, forming conductive plasma. Electric current continues to flow from the metal electrode through the ionized gas into the tissue. Rapid overheating of tissue results in its vaporization, fragmentation and ejection of fragments, allowing for tissue cutting. The vaporization is why a hotter electrode doesn't cauterize.
For coagulation, the average power is typically reduced below the threshold of cutting. Typically, sine wave is turned on and off in a rapid succession. The overall effect is a slower heating process, which causes tissue to coagulate. (Coagulate = cauterize, btw.)
You do relize we are all debating a fictious weapon so i dont get your point. Also I did not mean to say that was what a light saber was (a light saber is basicly a handle that when turned on releases a super tough heat resistent nano carbon tube filled with plasma) what i meant was that is my theory on how to make one with modern day materials. And that if that was how it was made then it would indeed cauterize a wound since plasma is just super heated gas.
Regardless of *how* it does it, the lasgun of M41 is analogous to the modern assault rifle, in function, application and ubiquity, even though equivalents to the modern assault rifle still exist in M41. Whether firing a solid slug or a beam/bolt/bar/ball of concentrated thermo-kinetic energy, their results on the body of an average human or xeno is pretty much the same.
Archonate wrote: I can tell you guys that in surgery, electrocautery has two different settings: cut, and coagulate. Coag is used to quickly cauterize bleeders without doing excessive damage to surrounding tissue. The cut setting is more intense and is used like a knife to cut through tissue (muscle, fat, fascia, etc.). It does not cauterize very effectively as it's cutting.
The scalpel is typically only used to cut skin (because skin blisters under cautery and would ruin the incision, making suturing ugly.) Although, there is a more expensive alternative called a Plasma Knife which can cut skin without blistering and, in fact, does equivalent residual tissue damage to the scalpel's mechanical crush zone, while cauterizing. But as far as I've seen, surgeons still prefer the bovie for faster, more wide-spread cauterization.
What I'm saying is that despite what light sabers show us, cutting through tissue with heat is not necessarily going to effectively cauterize at the same time. Certainly not the larger blood vessels in any case.
Unless a light saber is basicly a handle that when turned on releases a super tough heat resistent nano carbon tube filled with plasma, then in fact it would burn and cauterize very effectivly. It would basicly make it a industrial grade blow torch in the shape of a sword.
Your abundant use of the word 'basically' betrays the fictitious substance of your point.
Philosophical conjectures aside, I'm talking about something real as a comparison for how something hypothetical might work.
In surgery, for cutting, a continuous single frequency sine wave is often employed. Rapid tissue heating leads to explosive vaporization of interstitial fluid. If the voltage is sufficiently high (> 400 V peak-to-peak) the vapor sheath is ionized, forming conductive plasma. Electric current continues to flow from the metal electrode through the ionized gas into the tissue. Rapid overheating of tissue results in its vaporization, fragmentation and ejection of fragments, allowing for tissue cutting. The vaporization is why a hotter electrode doesn't cauterize.
For coagulation, the average power is typically reduced below the threshold of cutting. Typically, sine wave is turned on and off in a rapid succession. The overall effect is a slower heating process, which causes tissue to coagulate. (Coagulate = cauterize, btw.)
You do relize we are all debating a fictious weapon so i dont get your point. Also I did not mean to say that was what a light saber was (a light saber is basicly a handle that when turned on releases a super tough heat resistent nano carbon tube filled with plasma) what i meant was that is my theory on how to make one with modern day materials. And that if that was how it was made then it would indeed cauterize a wound since plasma is just super heated gas.
The lasgun is a non-existent weapon based on existing technology. A lightsaber is pure nonsense.
MY point is that cauterization occurs when you apply heat BELOW cutting threshold. Heat ABOVE cutting threshold does not cauterize, it vaporizes.
In a nutshell: If it's cutting through you, then it is not going to cauterize the wound. (This is why the bovie has 'cut' and 'coag' settings. Because you can't do both at the same time.) The same physics would apply to lightsabers if their concept were possible.
Umm pretty sure a lasgun is not based on any existing technology whatso'ever. The creaters of the concept just says its a laser, they did no reaserch on how lasers work in real life and frankly probaly did not care so they make up a few turms and says it does stuff that they think lasers should do from watching old space movies. And also you have to think about this in 40k no one realy knows what most of the tech does in the imperium. They may call it a laser but for all we know it could be concentrated microwave beames. Because they most likely dont know themselves. Than you have to think about this even in modern day earth lots of things names are actually misnomers and are not actually technicly what they are called its just eaiser sometimes to call it an apple sometimes when its really a melon.
starraptor wrote: They may call it a laser but for all we know it could be concentrated microwave beames.
Actually we know it's not that. Because the weapon produces light in the visible spectrum. The radiation spewing gun is a totally different weapon.
As far as the nonconstructive comments...
"Yet now that manifest experiences and necessary proofs have shown them to be well grounded, persons exist who would strip the author of his reward without so much as looking at his book, and add the shame of having him pronounced a heretic." - Galileo Galilei, from a letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615.
starraptor wrote: Umm pretty sure a lasgun is not based on any existing technology whatso'ever.
The Lasgun is based on laser technology... Which exists... Right now...
It's not a science fiction term. It's an acronym. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. They are used today in many forms.
We currently use lasers in surgery to burn off warts, turn kidney stones to dust, remove unwanted body hair, slice eyeballs to correct vision, etc.
Somebody even posted a video of a weaponized laser in this very thread.
Grey Templar wrote: Yeah, we could make a lasgun right now. It would just be the size of a Boeing 747 and require tons of power.
The laser itself is the simple part, the power source is the problem. Its neither portable nor super efficient.
If you need a laser with a 600km range, then yes you need something the size of a 747 currently. A weaponised laser effective to 20km has been demonstrated in a Hercules and the US Air Force is now looking for an effective laser small and light enough to fit to a fighter jet as a weapons pod.
If you need something effective out to 1km it doesn't have to be that big.
Happyjew wrote: Of course, there is the fact that if a lasgun is a laser it does not follow the rules for laser for example:
It is slower than the speed of light
It is visible in a vacuum
It could be similar to SW Turbolasers in which case a laser is used to stimulate whatever it is that is shot (Tibanna Gas in SW).
QFT
And this is what i mean the people of games workshop created a gun that shoots "lasers" but they have no actual knowledge of how lasers work so the lasgun may be called a laser but cant be from every fluff and game play angle they have ever released of its inner workings. A laser would move at the speed of light which means it can not be seen or dodged, if it was ever weaponized in the future it would still be more expensive no matter what kind of tech they have than to arm them with conventional weapons i.e. slug throwers. Which means either games works shop has no clue what they are talking about or they made the imperium like are modern day goverment who would spend $50,000 on a hammer instead of $5 to do the same thing. And when you are talking about billions of hammers well thats just a waste and no wonder they are losing to the dark powers that be.
... the government doesn't actually spend $500 on a hammer, that's just what the receipts say. They spend $5 on the hammer, the other $495 funds the NSA or even more-shadowy organizations for which acronyms don't exist yet.
But, yes, that's pretty much it. It's a sci-fi weapon in a sci-fi game from an era where the ideas of weaponizing a beam of light was still very much a fictional scenario for the vast majority of people. It's called a laser weapon because lasers are sci-fi and sci-fi is cool. They don't even attempt to explain how they work beyond the most basic "E-cell goes here, squeeze trigger, killy-light comes out here". There's absolutely no scientific consideration given to its actual functionality, and they even made up a word to sound sciency, as Gene Roddenberry did, because it sounded good. As we see in other places (especially the cellular and personal computing industries) our science is starting to catch up to our dreams.
But maybe someday there might actually be something like a lasgun for real who knows? I mean 40,000 leagues under the sea was published in 1870 way before they actually knew how to make anything like a nuclear sub. But you know what if they ever did make a lasgun that worked I would rather take couple of flashlights and tape them together because then it would be the same str but twin-linked.
starraptor wrote: But maybe someday there might actually be something like a lasgun for real who knows? I mean 40,000 leagues under the sea was published in 1870 way before they actually knew how to make anything like a nuclear sub. But you know what if they ever did make a lasgun that worked I would rather take couple of flashlights and tape them together because then it would be the same str but twin-linked.
We can't change physics no matter how hard we try, so better to use a Microwave gun and make people combust and explode into a beautiful fountain of meat chunks, blood, and bone chips (ever put a bug in a microwave?) than fiddle with anti-personnel lasers.
Unless the Geneva conventions comes in and ruins all the fun and denies us our people exploding weapons.
Although it is said that death by microwave beam is perhaps the single most agonizing demise possible.
Although the power pack would make a better bomb as a weapon, and standard firearms are going to be more efficient for small arms, it's not the absurd numbers people have been quoting earlier in this thread.
And when you get to larger weapons, particle beams and lasers are not in the realms of fantasy, but actual science fiction.
Also, energy is energy. A laser delivering 17 kilojoules applies the same damage as a BMG .50 cal delivering the same, as all it is doing is transferring energy. If the projectile weapon goes straight through, it isn't even applying that energy fully to the target; if it knocks the target down, it's energy is going into knocking it down.
It would take a 130 kJ weapon to have the same effect as 31 grams of TNT, or equivalent to an anti-personnel landmine.
Although the power pack would make a better bomb as a weapon, and standard firearms are going to be more efficient for small arms, it's not the absurd numbers people have been quoting earlier in this thread.
And when you get to larger weapons, particle beams and lasers are not in the realms of fantasy, but actual science fiction.
Also, energy is energy. A laser delivering 17 kilojoules applies the same damage as a BMG .50 cal delivering the same, as all it is doing is transferring energy. If the projectile weapon goes straight through, it isn't even applying that energy fully to the target; if it knocks the target down, it's energy is going into knocking it down.
It would take a 130 kJ weapon to have the same effect as 31 grams of TNT, or equivalent to an anti-personnel landmine.
Simple, a Microwave causes immense, all consuming pain and then rapidly boils all the water in your body until you and your friends near you explode, causing a tremendous morale hit.
Of course the killjoys at Geneva will probably ban it.
Just saying, a laser beam powerful enough to cause damage would refract in air, so if you fired it in dim light you would actually see a light beam from gun to target. No idea if it would be visible enough to see in sunlight though.
And I agree. The previous post answers the question. I'm done here.
Here is some stats from the Inquisitor Rule book which is a lot better at putting fluff into rules than 40K.
All normal las weapons (ie pistols and rifles) have a damage of 2d6, they are all have between 30 - 60 shots per clip and are whole more accuate at range than an autogun.
The autogun holds 30 rounds and does 2D6+2 damage so a little better.
"Las weapons work by firing a blast of highly charged light which transforms into heat and KINETIC energy upon impact, causing tissue damage and burning"
"Las weapons work by firing a blast of highly charged light which transforms into heat and KINETIC energy upon impact, causing tissue damage and burning"
Retconned,
"Lasweapons work by emitting short, sharp pulses of laser energy from high storage, fast discharge capacitors with a flash of light and a distinctive snap like the cracking of a whip." Only War, page 175
Probably because photons don't pack a lot of kinetic punch.
3rd Ed had yet a different description again for it, IIRC that was the 'blast chunks off'' description.
GW don't invalidate old publications and only war's description does not contradict the 2ed one, as 'energy burst' is a vague description that could refer easily to a pulse laser.
3rd edition was done to a much more imperial in-universe perspective compared with the omniscient narrator in the 2nd book so the 2nd edition wargear book is still more true, as the 3rd ed description is closer in the scale to the uplifting primer, this is less reliable.
The 2nd ed book clearly states its power is on par with a tradition bullet firearm or small shell.
GW also doesn't care much for this level of detail in various licensed products. If you go by Only War, the Vostroyan Firstborn suddenly also recruit women, yet I very much doubt their description will change in the next Codex. The same goes for the Deathwatch's organisation, the proliferation of lasgun power settings, or the nature of the SoB's powers.
The same also goes for Black Library's Uplifting Primer, which (in spite of me loving the book for its style and humour) I still find hilarious in regards to the level of standardisation it suggests for the Guard.
"Blasting chunks off" is also contained in the 6E rulebook description, which I have quoted on the first page of this thread (and which is newer than Only War).
tl;dr: for a "retcon" there must first be a continuity, but 40k as a franchise works by merely presenting lots and lots of different options for us to pick from.
"Pulsed Energy Projectile or PEP is a technology of non-lethal weaponry currently under development by the U.S. military. It involves the emission of an invisible laser pulse which, upon contact with the target, ablates the surface and creates a small amount of exploding plasma. This produces a pressure wave that stuns the target and knocks them off their feet, and electromagnetic radiation that affects nerve cells causing a painful sensation. The technology can also be used as a lethal weapon, and indeed an early name was Pulsed Impulsive Kill Laser (PIKL)."
"Pulsed Energy Projectile or PEP is a technology of non-lethal weaponry currently under development by the U.S. military. It involves the emission of an invisible laser pulse which, upon contact with the target, ablates the surface and creates a small amount of exploding plasma. This produces a pressure wave that stuns the target and knocks them off their feet, and electromagnetic radiation that affects nerve cells causing a painful sensation. The technology can also be used as a lethal weapon, and indeed an early name was Pulsed Impulsive Kill Laser (PIKL)."
Except that they couldn't get it to do that (the kinetic knockdown part), and instead it did this:
"According to a 2003 review of non-lethal weapons by the US Naval Studies Board, which advises the navy and marine corps, PEPs produced "pain and temporary paralysis" in tests on animals. This appears to be the result of an electromagnetic pulse produced by the expanding plasma which triggers impulses in nerve cells." New Scientist, March 2005. Meaning it functioned as a more precise version of another mothballed (supposedly) project, the Active Denial System
In 2008 wired ran an article on it again, with the following quote:
"For the past 5 years, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program has been supporting PEP bioeffects work to better understand the PEP mechanism of effect. The research finally concluded that the PEP laser could not reproduce the required waveform characteristic of a non-lethal weapon. The initiative was terminated with respect to this specific laser and laser waveform parameters. However, the JNLWP will leverage the work accomplished in the PEP project for other potential initiatives."
According to some sources, the 'other potential initiatives' apparently include an effort to use it to shoot down drones, according to SFC's 2009 budget, though nothing 'official' has been heard on this since then, so this may be a dead effort.
... Only War is also not even a GW publication, it's an FFG release, and to take all of FFG's stuff into consideration, you would have to consider that a bolt-pistol is, while superior in armor penetration to a las-pistol, not significantly superior to a las-pistol in actual stopping power (bolt pistol: 1d10+6 Pen 4, las-pistol: 1d10+2 Pen 0). By any standard, though, the man-portable lascannon is a superior weapon for killing any kind of target (5d10 +10 Pen 10).
Psienesis wrote:[...] that a bolt-pistol is, while superior in armor penetration to a las-pistol, not significantly superior to a las-pistol in actual stopping power
... unless you look at FFG's Space Marine "+1" gear, which for some reason (and contradictory to the stats released by GW themselves) is notably superior even to the stuff that Inquisitors are lugging around. Right up to the flamethrowers which also seem to burn a couple degrees hotter.
But to be fair, the stats in those games, in spite of using a largely similar ruleset, change all the time anyways, which may actually be intentional as they largely seem tied to the theme that one game is portraying, rather than attempting to preserve a continuity across the different game lines. It's why I keep recommending against droing crossovers between, say, DH and DW without serious houseruling.
I think Space Marine bolt pistols had three different statlines for raw damage so far - one in a DH adventure (2d10), another one for the DW core rules (2d10+5), and then its errata (1d10+9).
Oh, indeed. Completely OT... but in our DH games, we've established that all bolt weapons do 2d10 Pen 4 (Tearing) with the Heavy Bolter doing 2d10+6 Pen 6. Astartes weapons just get a bit of a "Best Quality +1" trait to them.
... I also changed the Sisters gear from IHB to more closely match that of the Astartes from DW. Their PA now matches that of a Space Marine, less any bonuses the Marine gets from the Black Carapace or other genetic modifications. It's worked out rather well, as our Sister player learned that she cannot wade into a Horde with just her PA and an Eviscerator and escape injury.
But, definitely agreed on the games being (somewhat) internally balanced, but not really intended to be mixed together.
Psienesis wrote:Oh, indeed. Completely OT... but in our DH games, we've established that all bolt weapons do 2d10 Pen 4 (Tearing) with the Heavy Bolter doing 2d10+6 Pen 6. Astartes weapons just get a bit of a "Best Quality +1" trait to them.
That sounds cool. I've been thinking of something like this myself, though more along the lines of 1d10+7, maybe 1d10+9. This is gut feeling only, though. In any way I agree that the difference should lie in the quality of the equipment, reflecting the manufacturer's skill and knowledge, and/or the user's means to get their hands on it.
Psienesis wrote:... I also changed the Sisters gear from IHB to more closely match that of the Astartes from DW. Their PA now matches that of a Space Marine, less any bonuses the Marine gets from the Black Carapace or other genetic modifications. It's worked out rather well, as our Sister player learned that she cannot wade into a Horde with just her PA and an Eviscerator and escape injury.
Sounds cool, too.
I would have otherwise offered up my own take on SoB power armour, which is a bit like a compromise between the "low end" DH gear and the beefed up Astartes stuff, mostly in terms of additional qualities / special features. In DW, the list of special traits alone takes up an entire page or so, after all...
Psienesis wrote:But, definitely agreed on the games being (somewhat) internally balanced, but not really intended to be mixed together.
It's kind of a shame. I understand why they did it and would say it's just a matter of preferences, but personally I just like it when things tie into each other, and I think that a lot of crossover potential went to waste with this form of "tiered gameplay". There are many stories from various sources of fluff that are nigh impossible to "replay" without significant tweaks.
That being said, the good thing with P&P is that you can tweak, and with the right system it can even be fun, too.
The irony is that the Deathwatch as a whole was originally created in part to support mixed groups of SM and normal humans, as GW tells us in the "Using Space Marines" PDF in their Inquisitor resources page.
lasguns arent that bad but judgeing that in the novels the ammunition can explode on the user is what would put me of from using a lasgun
on the table top game lasguns are good but they are underestimated and need better rules and strengths considering it can burn holes into walls but cant penetrate a grot
You have to actually set the las-cell of a lasgun to explode, it's a booby-trap of sorts. It's not a "gets hot!" rule or anything translated into a novel.
Of course, if you happen to have a boltgun in your hand and get hit with a flamer, the ammo in your boltgun is likely to cook off as well, so having your ammo payload blow up in your face is not reserved to las or plasma weapons.
Psienesis wrote: ... Only War is also not even a GW publication, it's an FFG release, .
Games Workshop's Allen Merritt (sp?) has started for the record that FFG's stuff is just as canon as any of GW's. (The canonization of FFG's material became a very hot issue with the release of Rogue Trader and the overturning of quite a bit of longstanding BFG canon written by Chambers. )
So, while a lot of the fanbase may or may not agree with it being canon, according to GW's rep it's as canon as any Codex.
Still, I'd be interested in a source! From experience, a lot of statements concerning such hotly debated topics are transported via word of mouth or transcripted from memory, occasionally with critical parts being lost or "paraphrased" in a way that falsifies their original intention.
Not saying this is the case here (and it wouldn't really change anything anyways), but I'm still curious as to what exactly Mr. Merrett really said.
Lynata wrote: Which of course means not "canon" at all.
Still, I'd be interested in a source! From experience, a lot of statements concerning such hotly debated topics are transported via word of mouth or transcripted from memory, occasionally with critical parts being lost or "paraphrased" in a way that falsifies their original intention.
Not saying this is the case here (and it wouldn't really change anything anyways), but I'm still curious as to what exactly Mr. Merrett really said.
Ok, went back and sadly do not have the actual quote, though I do have Sam Stewart and several other FFG connected persons including playtesters making reference to it.
I also found my response to the whole thing, from nearly 4 years ago, which makes me look a bit hypocritical in hindsight re FFG as canon: Mind you, this is my personal view on it, not if it is or not.
BaronIveagh wrote:
"But keep in mind, is that what really matters is that the status quo will be forever changed until the story is quietly retconned out of existence." - Cyclops, House of M, Part 4.
Let's see:
Zoats, Squats, Malal, Starchild, Illuminati, imperial jetbikes, human/eldar hybrids, slaan, IG beastmen, fimirs, the entire Empire in Flames Campaign, brainboyz, AdMech robots, Psychaneuein, actual space vampires, Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau, the Sensei, any random Imperial tank in any given edition (currently Conquerors), Space Wolf Leman Russ tanks...
Do you guys want the whole list or just the abbreviated version? Be cause the whole thing is gonna take all night...
The point is that saying 'FFG says GW says that it's OK." means that they talked to a licensing drone who may or may not have ever read a book in his life at a company that even under ideal circumstances has a hard time carrying continuity in a bag. It's rather like how in the DH book it shows the local sector bordering the Scarus sector, and in the RT book that's removed because FFG now wants to claim ships are rare in the surrounding sectors. Despite previously showing it boarders the home of one of the Bastion fleets that has so many ships that they sit in huge mothball yards because the Imperium cannot find enough men to crew them all. (please reflect on how many ships that would have to be, if you cannot press gang enough grunts to crew all your ships in the Imperium of Man.)
Considering that GW is apparently not following any retcons FFG is doing, (see the newer codices) I think it would be better to view FFG's work as an alternate continuity. I suspect that will be GW's eventual stance on it.
Psienesis wrote: You have to actually set the las-cell of a lasgun to explode, it's a booby-trap of sorts. It's not a "gets hot!" rule or anything translated into a novel.
Of course, if you happen to have a boltgun in your hand and get hit with a flamer, the ammo in your boltgun is likely to cook off as well, so having your ammo payload blow up in your face is not reserved to las or plasma weapons.
in the novel "cadian blood" a guardsman trys to charge his lasrounds when one almost exploded
I'm not sure if you've read my excerpt of collected quotes from people working on the franchise, but from how I understand it, GW's stance seems to lie between how you interpreted it back then and from what you are saying now - in that it's all equally official and valid, just not necessarily "true" with one source being capable of overriding another.
Even the playtesters were supposedly told something like that by FFG themselves, going by this review over at Warseer, although the wording "it's only canon for the RPG" is still a bit muddy for my taste. With how fluid this "canon" is, I'd rather they would avoid using this term at all, as it just evokes false feelings of a consistency that does not really exist.
Distilling such statements, one could say that we all have our own "alternate continuities", their contents based on whatever material we have read. It is of note, though, that these continuities do not run parallel to one another like alternate dimensions, but rather that this term merely applies to 40k as we read it from the various books. Kind of like you get two alternate continuities when reading about some ancient war based on the texts of two different philosophers.
... which ties directly into the explanation Marc Gascogne once wrote, and which Aaron Dembski quoted in this thread.
Also, don't worry about the "hypocrisy" - four years is a long time, and my own stance on the topic has changed in it as well, as a result of some debates on dakka as well as discovering the quotes I linked.
I was operating on hearsay for a very long time, which is why I'm tackling this topic so "aggressively"; I'm still miffed by how the fandom's urban rumours have led me astray.
the problem is that it gets even muddier since, contrary to what I wrote above, GW seems to have started adding things from the RPGs to 'Codex' canon. Granted, it's not a whole lot yet, but it's no longer the 'nothing' that it was.
Aye, but even the codices are not "canon". That's what I meant with the equality between sources. It's all equally optional.
Gav Thorpe touched upon that exact subject in his blog. GW has always occasionally added bits and pieces from non-studio sources into studio books when they thought it would fit - just like they would ignore stuff that doesn't. For example, I for one do not believe that the Vostroyans will become mixed gender in the next Guard Codex just because that's what FFG liked to print in Only War.
Lynata wrote: For example, I for one do not believe that the Vostroyans will become mixed gender in the next Guard Codex just because that's what FFG liked to print in Only War.
No, they won;'t become a mixed gender unit because GW still struggles to sculpt women. Have you seen the female catachan? Brrrrr....
i dont think they would but mixed gender in squads because men are aparently better at every thing then women
Ithink women could be used for elagant purposes like scouting or the storm trooper corps
The israeli army tried out mixed gender squads. They found that the men start doing really stupid things to impress/protect the women. So segregated units it was!
Heh, I could see that. I'd like to think I would be immune to stuff like that, but you never know.
I personally have no issue with mixed gender stuff. As long as everyone is qualified for their job I don't particularly care if the other people in my fire team are guys or girls, but it seems like the logistics of that is more difficult than otherwise.
On a less serious note I really want to make a female space marine army some day. I will give them all helmets and make no model conversions whatsoever, then just say they're all female. After all, under power armor and with all the future-steroids they've been filled up with there's probably not much difference.
On a less serious note I really want to make a female space marine army some day. I will give them all helmets and make no model conversions whatsoever, then just say they're all female. After all, under power armor and with all the future-steroids they've been filled up with there's probably not much difference.
That's a hotly debated subject right there. Depends on the mechanics of their strength enhancement. Steroids would do some, sure, but they're actually pretty weak sauce compared to what a SM needs. If you rig their dna to improperly produce myostatin or have them naturally produce something like Follistatin that binds up it's receptors, however, it looks to be on the right track.
However, while you would see increased muscle size and strength, you wouldn't see the other morphological effects you see with steroids, so, no, they wouldn't look alike.
This thread has made me sad... It's that ultimate realisation that scifi tech wouldn't work in he real-world.
However, upon saying that, what I really like about the Imperium is that their tech is all backwards facing and archaic and pretty much technosorcery. Instead of the Imperial Guard being a super advanced army with active-camo, caseless smart rifles, AI controlled drones, and a computer inside each soldier's head, lets face it, they're essentially an army from the 1960s; boots, helmet, radio, and instead of an L1A1 or M14, they've got a lasgun.
In my opinion it adds a nice flavour to the Imperium. Their whole tech tree is controlled by cyborgs from Mars. It's all so archaic and shrouded in lost history and mixed in with region that even the Mechanicum doesn't know how it all works, yet this tech is more advanced then 21st Century tech. I just think that's cool and geeky and neat.
While I personally prefer firearms, being a member of the NRA and an avid target shooter, I like that the Guard have a scifi, direct energy weapon.
Even though real tech cannot produce a lasgun, and we know that the physics of lasers defy what a lasgun is, I choose to believe and accept that my beloved Imperial Guard have a working, direct energy lasgun.
As to the strength of a lasgun? Pfft, pick an author and choose your own ideas, in my mind, it's like being hit by a full-power rifle bullet, like a 7.62 NATO or .303 round.
The Lasgun is based on laser technology... Which exists... Right now...
