40 thousand years into the future, in a world where technology borders with magic, one of the most popular ways to kill someone is running up to him and whacking him over a head with an axe/sword/hammer.
It's also strange how anything can actually get close enough to use melee weapons before being evaporated by superior firepower.
I understand that orks like melee combat because war is just a big party for them, but the Eldar, a dying race at the verge of extinction have whole squads devoted to melee combat (banshees).
Tau seem to be the most logical and efficient of all races, since they have no actual close combat non-sense. (Excluded alien allies)
But, yeah I get it. The fluff would be boring without heroic battles involving close combat.
Because many armies like Nids and Orks are almost without numbers, and tends to swarm their enemies. When dealing with such foes you need to be abel to figth in close combat. That and the fact that combat is rittualized, and battels can be won or lost with the outcome of a single duel between leaders or champions.
Trondheim wrote: Because many armies like Nids and Orks are almost without numbers, and tends to swarm their enemies. When dealing with such foes you need to be abel to figth in close combat. That and the fact that combat is rittualized, and battels can be won or lost with the outcome of a single duel between leaders or champions.
This, and also coupled with the fact that Power Armour can withstand a bolter/pistol shot. A clean swipe with power claws however...
Seems to be based on planets and the way offensives are planned a lot too. On Armageddon or Cadia, most of the time you will be fighting in urban terrain or trenches. Therefore its easier to use melee weapons to clear out enemy forces. Guns make such cramped and confusing conditions a whole lot worse. Off course this might not be too viable against Orks, but the main enemy of the Imperium still seems to be human rebels/Chaos rebels. Its not helped that the Lasgun isnt the SMG you might want for such actions, which leaves the regular guardsman with little more than his bayonet.
For the Space Marines it makes more sense than the IG. They drop down right in the middle of enemy resistance, like trenches or fortifications. Marines are not meant as a static force, they keep pushing forwards which means that you wil encounter an enemy that will hold its ground once in a while. Using melee weapons is much easier in such cases. A single lasgun round might not kill you inside a bunker, but a ricocheting bolt shell just might.
Off course that is coupled with the posts above. On the part of Eldar Im a bit unsure, it might be that melee works better on Necrons and Deamons. Or it could be a cultural thing that they are unwilling to abandon, with the phoenix-lord and whole aspect warrior temple.
After thirty thousand years, warfare had come full circle. The sheer scale of humanity's conflicts disregarded the corrupt reliance on automation as seen in the Dark Age of Technology. Mankind was back down to swords beating against shields and men entrenched with their rifles, where the gods of myth were titan war machines and baneblade tanks. In his calmer moments, Kharn felt honoured. He was living through a second age of legend.
Essentially the conflict in 40k is more mythological and epic rather then pragmatic and scientific. There are moments of "current day" thinking (using the navy to full effect, infiltrating explosives, information warfare etc...)
I'm sure there could also be some amounts of special/magical/high tech defensive devices to counter the fire power. Shields and all that type of stuff, maybe melee is the best option to get around some of that. Also, if you were a giant space marine with huge armor wouldnt you want to smash a smaller enemy with a giant hammer? I'm sure that would feel empowering and fun compared to shooting.
40K is a space opera of future fantasy, not science fiction. If melee is so ridiculous for a way of settling differences 40,000 years into the future, why aren't soldiers with rifles just as stupid? One could argue that even tanks are borderline obsolete now; you expect them to roam battlefields in the distant future?
Orbital weapon platforms vaporizing ground targets just doesn't make for as interesting a game, I'm afraid.
amanita wrote: 40K is a space opera of future fantasy, not science fiction. If melee is so ridiculous for a way of settling differences 40,000 years into the future, why aren't soldiers with rifles just as stupid? One could argue that even tanks are borderline obsolete now; you expect them to roam battlefields in the distant future?
Orbital weapon platforms vaporizing ground targets just doesn't make for as interesting a game, I'm afraid.
Sometimes you want the stuff on the ground, and vaporizing it from orbit doesn't really do that trick to well.
Ultimately, it's fairly difficult to track the progress of warfare forty thousand years into the future, because a measure will always be followed by a countermeasure, until you reach a measure which is too powerful to be practical.
We've already seen it with nuclear weapons. Technology raced ahead to the point where we figured out how to more or less erase a city from the map. Then we decided that we didn't want to just erase cities off,the map, so military technology reset back a bit, and resumed. And this is just in the last half century. The entire time, we've had the ability to erase cities, and chosen not to, for a variety of reasons.
However, there are certain things we know about the universe of 40K. They still use more or less conventional tactics. They do this because GW can't sell us toys without it. However, assigning some kind of fluffstification to that idea, we assume that it is because obliterating everything from orbit is generally not preferred as it means there is nothing left to win, or conquer, or exploit for natural resources. If there was no need to actually have planets, everybody would just wander around Exterminatusing everything. The reality is, somebody wants the planets. And it's good to have them in some kind of state where they are still useful as planets after the fact. to put people on. And to put people on planets owned by different people, you need your own people to take it away from them.
That given, we know the battlefield is full of weapons more or less analogous to modern day, just futurized. If 40K has Future Rifles, and Future Tanks, and Future Artillery, and Future Airplanes and Future Grenades and Future Bombs, then contextually Future Swords seem somewhat questionable to use, since it means crossing Future Open Space to get Future Shot At.
That's why melee combat is seen as "silly" by some people. Context.
Because it provides flavor, along with other unusual aspects like cathedral-crowned spaceships, church organ-shaped fire support vehicles, dudes wearing robes over their power armor, and an imperial war machine that despite thousands of years of time still has its most elite warriors fighting with sometimes irreplaceable technological relics.
That said, one could stretch some non-literary justifications:
- Combatants like space marines are capable of such superhuman maneuvers(or can use of jump packs, etc.) that tactics completely unfeasible for normal human armies become possible for them.
- The above, combined with extremely deadly melee weapons(force swords, power fists) provides an edge in sheer ability to eliminate a target(of course, there's nothing stopping someone in 40k from using a plasma gun or melta gun instead...).
- Melee-focused units serve as useful counter-assault elements against the likes of tyranids and orks, the former of which at least it makes more sense to be heavily melee focused in the first place.
I don't personally believe the above justifications are completely defensible, but they're enough to suspend disbelief(or maybe melee combat in 40k is just cool).
Non-fluff reason. Becouse when GW made it so you could not play cross over games between Warhammer and 40K, they forgot to leave behind the focus on CC. Shorter answer, 40K is a fantasy setting.
My theory has it that armor, numbers, tactics, first aid, and countermeasures 40,000 years in the future have made it so that a bullet or two aren't so entirely effective that it can put a warrior off the battlefield for good. It seems from the fluff that a guardsman hit in the heart can be put in an induced coma, brought back to a first aid station, have an artificial heart placed in, and be brought back from the brink of death, all within 15 minutes, and he/she will be pushed back into the heat of combat, just as effective as they were before losing their heart.
In real life, guns have much longer ranges and are much more powerful. In real life hitting a tank with a sword does nothing no matter how strong you are. Real life is not fun.
Because, as others have said, the battlefield is not the same as it is today.
In Halo, for example, you are quite capable at charging around and pummelling many a foe to death. Your energy shields are not only capable of taking serious punishment, but also self-replenishment. Compare this to 'realistic' shooters, or even Halo on a much higher difficulty setting. You can't break cover under fire without dying. Melee is no longer viable. Your shields are no longer sufficient.
In modern combat, no soldier is capable of withstanding more than a couple of rounds, and is especially not capable of surviving against intense fire without cover. In 40k, various factors eliminate this - power armour, teleportation, innumerable and suicidal enemies that you will inevitably end up in close quarters with. As well as this, technology has made melee viable in the form of power weapons, sophisticated systems that are capable of ignoring most armour.
Another reason is efficiency. Bullets are very efficient, and do not do very much damage. They put small holes in just the right places to kill - which is perfectly deadly when you're fighting normal humans. Compare the damage done to a soft target with a bullet to a bladed weapon of any kind. It is not necessary to cleave a man in half to kill him. In real life, guns of any kind are deadly at extreme range (relative to melee) and even if they don't kill, a hit is almost guaranteed to incapacitate. Not true in 40k.
It is not that it's "fantasy sci-fi and it's to be interesting". Using the rules of the game, see how effective a unit of ten Guardsmen is at killing things in close quarters with chainswords out in the open with no cover. Now compare that to Assault Marines, suddenly leaping into a group and tearing them apart in seconds with lightning claws.
Guns are fine vs other humans, but when fighting Orks or Crons where they can take 10 times the damage a human can, you want to make sure it dies. Cutting/crushing/annihlating something with your own bare hands or weapon means you can.confirm the kill.
Khorne does it as a matter.of honour. Any cheesy backstabbing Slaaneshi asshat can shoot a guy in the head like abcoward,.or he can man up and put his life on the line in a (usually un-)fair fight. Eldar do it as a matter of tradition. Necrons do it for the same reason the Imperium does, they need to confirm the kill and the difference is that they are tough enough to break cover and fight. Orks cuz its fun. DE for the same reason Joker in Batman uses a knife. Guns are too quick and don't allow you o savour the emotion and pain.
Nids do it out of practicality and resources. Every bullet is a living creature. 1 firefight's worth of ammo can.go into making 10 new fighters to win the war. Plus, you don't have to worry about casualties because you have the numbers to keep going, and even casualties are literally recycled, all the while wasting enemy ammo reserves. And at the very end it means you closer to the dinner.
Tau don't do it because they are simply too weak physically to stand toe to toe with even humans.
Marines do it because they favour rapid assault and drop pod assaults, so when they end up 3 feet from the target, its simply more resourceful and practical to punch than shoot, particularly if he can measure up in CC (Ors, Nid Warriors, Assault Crons).
Olly wrote: For me there's a great quote from Betrayer
After thirty thousand years, warfare had come full circle. The sheer scale of humanity's conflicts disregarded the corrupt reliance on automation as seen in the Dark Age of Technology. Mankind was back down to swords beating against shields and men entrenched with their rifles, where the gods of myth were titan war machines and baneblade tanks. In his calmer moments, Kharn felt honoured. He was living through a second age of legend.
Essentially the conflict in 40k is more mythological and epic rather then pragmatic and scientific. There are moments of "current day" thinking (using the navy to full effect, infiltrating explosives, information warfare etc...)
and when in doubt...rule of cool
This. Hope I'll get to reading "Betrayer" soon, Kharn seems to be the guy who's always an inch from headbutting through the fourth wall.
Most battles in the 41st Millennium are probably boring firefights between two foes (IG vs Rebels) who are at such ranges they can't see each other most of the time. That sort of combat a good war game does not make. What we play are the most spectacular engagements where heroes are born, mettle is tested and exotic warriors come to blows.
It makes more sense to keep it than people say, however. It makes sense if you're in confined spaces, we don't see more melee currently because we don't fight on a scale to warrant it. If we fought on a higher scale, with increased mobility, we'd be into hand to hand distance fairly often.
Now, it would not make sense in a place with open fields unless the foe loved close combat(monsters with claws that act as fodder, things that are just too dumb to understand the advantages of range or too poor a shot).
Against those foes, or in situations of jungle, true city, or shipboard fighting, you'd see a utility in melee if you were able to close the distance without dying. Also, if you look at insertion methods. if you are able to insert into a close distance it is very disorienting to suddenly have enemies in the middle of your line, or squad, or anything else.
In short, beyond the "it's the game", it can make sense, it's plausible. It's not fact, it's fiction. Science fiction makes best guesses, and 40k is a mix of science and fantasy fiction(aspects just don't have as much scientific backing as much of modern sci-fi does). Close combat is not something relegated to fantasy, however, as another person claimed. It shows in numerous sci-fi settings, including well researched ones.
The truth is though, when you consider the universe, most warfare is at range.
With the exception of the Orks, Tyranids and some kinds of Marines (Black Templars, Khornate, Emperor's Children, Blood Angels), and the aforementioned Eldar Aspects, and their Fallen equivalent, most people shoot each other.
Only those with some inherent advantage in lethality can fight in melee as their primary means; Orks are hard to kill, fight in large numbers, are individually very strong, and don't take the whole war business all that seriously, Tyranids are numberless, but still use large amounts of ranged firepower, Marines have power armour, which while not much on the tabletop these days, in-setting, it is extremely durable. A marine can wade through enormous firepower to kill things in close combat, and as has been said by others, a sword or other close combat weapon is extremely lethal, moreso than a ranged weapon in many cases, it just needs to be able to get close, power armour and other technological devices allow this.
To use a historical analogy, during the Satsuma Rebellion in Japan in 1871, the rebelling Samurai of the aforementioned region managed to inflict enormous casualties on the advanced Imperial Army by use of terrain, allowing them to close without overt exposure to cannon and rifle fire; each swordsman can kill several times his number of ranged combatants if he can close. By use of terrain and advanced technologies, Marines of both Loyalist and Traitor variety can use their super-human abilities to their fullest extent in close combat, but even then, most marines spend more time using their boltguns than a chainsword.
For the Eldar, the Aspect system means their two close-combat specialists, Banshees and Scorpions, are a support and shock centric force. Scorpions are there to go after deadly ranged combatants, strike from the shadows, eliminate those who can not defend themselves and withdraw. The bulk of Eldar armies still rely on their advanced firearms to do the heavily lifting, with Banshees and Scorpions merely acting where they can open an advantage.
Most of the fluff in 40k is focused on ranged warfare, it's more a nature of the artwork and tabletop which accentuates close-combat, being heroic and mighty and epic and so forth. Truth be told, the only force that really bothers me is Black Templars when it comes to close combat; by rights, their own limited approach to fighting should see them beaten more often, as they basically do just charge at the enemy relying on their armour to protect them. Blood Angels at least make use of jump and other more mobile forces to close the gap quickly, and still make good use of tanks, aircraft and other ranged forces, Orks and Nids have numbers, Eldar have Eldar shenanigans, Templars just kind of run around on righteous fury.
I think part of the issue is confusing what is prevalent in the 40Kgame with what is prevalent in the 40Kuniverse.
Unless you play BFG, you don't play games with space ships shooting at each other at massive distances. Unless you play Epic you don't use much in the way of Titans. But the Imperial Navy and the Titan Legions are important, significant parts of warfare in the 40K universe.
Long range bombing, orbital bombardments, prolonged shelling, and the like all occur in the universe, and in the novels, but aren't the focus of the tabletop game or the novels. Why would they be?
What kind of novel would introduce two thousand individual characters, then wipe out 1995 of them in a bombing run? The novel would focus on the five who survived.
Who would want to play a game of Warhammer 40K where you set up three thousand Imperial Guardsmen two thousand feet away from enemy macrocannons and then removed most of them in several hours of sustained bombardment? The game focuses on the troops that survive to engage in close range combat.
Look at the Gaunt's Ghosts novels. More Tanith died in the first book than died in all the other books put together. All the Tanith that didn't get evacuated died on their home world. You can't argue that the few Ghosts that died in melee constitute the majority of the Tanith casualties.
Most of the deaths in 40K are long-range and impersonal, but being long-range and impersonal, means that they are not particularly a good focus for a novel or a tabletop game. In 40K, you are assumed to be 'playing out' a conflict where close range fighting makes sense (such as taking an objective, or securing a location). If it doesn't make any sense for your army to be fighting the enemy army on the tabletop, because they would just bomb them or something, then don't play the game if verisimilitude is that important.
Now, I can see valid questions about the very limited range of shooting weapons, but I think that that falls more under gameplay considerations. You could possibly create a version of the game where ranged weapons had more 'realistic' ranges, but given the constraints of a d6 based armor save system, no hit locations, and very rudimentary line of sight rules, I think it would tip the balance too much. If you had realistic ranges, but also had a way for, say, power armor to shrug off small arms fire as it seems to do in the novels, and rules for ammo capacity, and rules for taking cover, then you might have something that would work, but it would be much more complex than 40k.
Despite a general default to "Rule of Cool" and "Because Grimdark" it actually makes a lot of sense when you consider it.
The argument of melee vs range has gone back and forth since the bronze age. It's a rock-paper-scissors game between armored infantry, cavalry, and archers. The archers reign supreme until armor lets melee fighters get in range to do damage.
In the late medieval period, the english were the best at this, taking large numbers of archers who could cause complete havoc against french cavalry, allowing english cavalry and infantry and infantry to mop up afterward. This lasts until plate becomes sophisticated enough to withstand storms of arrows again. Once the French get a hold of Milanese plate, archers become significantly less effective and the pendulum swings back in the other direction.
Of course the answer to this comes in the form of gunpowder. guns were cheaper than arrows and easier to train than skilled longbowmen. This is a small issue at first, but armor has to respond and become heavier and heavier (The phrase "Bullet proof" comes from the mark in a breastplate showing that it had been tested against a gunshot).
Of course, this being 6th edition renaissance rules the focus becomes less on highly mobile and elite expensive troops and more on massed, footslogging infantry. Cavalry becomes less important than huge pike blocks and muskets.
As guns get better, pikes disappear and become bayonets and the weight of armor required to stop musket fire becomes slowly not worth the weight, inconvenience, and point cost of armor. It gradually disappears.
Civil war is men shooting off at long distance. Cannons and rifles rule the day.
WWI sees melee come back because of trench fighting. Close quarters.
WWII sees machine guns becoming everyone's best friend and war gets more mobile - back to guns.
modern warfare is now mostly close quarters urban fighting, but you also see the return of body armor.
Now plug in the tech from 40k. IG stick to the WWI/II doctrine - armor is practically irrelevant, but range is the order of the day. They are practically modern.
Space Marines and others though are a step in the other direction. Armor is now powerful enough to withstand almost any weapon. Weight isn't even an issue at this point, and social structure is now back to the point where it is worthwhile to train soldiers from birth/specifically engineer them. Space Marines engaging in melee makes perfect sense for the same reason that both Bronze-clad Hoplites and Steel-plated French made sense. You stand a good chance of charging through their fire and an overwhelming advantage once you do. This is doubly applicable when you realize that the reach of ranged weapons in 40k is laughable compared to their real-world equivalents.
Add to that the ability to carry melee weapons that can rip through tanks and sheer through the heaviest armor, and the close engagement distances most 40k scenarios take place in? Melee combat in an age of power-armor and personal force fields is one of the few things in 40k that strike me as totally plausible.
TLR Version Melee combat works in 40k because armor is effective enough to allow you to get in melee combat.
Except armor isn't effective enough, as we can see from power armored troops dying just fine against proper shooting. Melee combat in 40k exists for three reasons:
1) The scale of the tabletop game is completely broken. Distances and movement speeds are not at the same 28mm scale as the models, and the alternating turn structure prevents proper reactions. So you get guns that struggle from one end of a tank to the other and assault troops that can cover an entire city block of movement while the defenders sit there doing nothing while waiting for their turn. If you remove the constraints of trying to play a company-scale 28mm game on a 6x4 table those assault units get shot to death long before they can cover the distance to their target.
2) GW constantly ignores how deadly heavy weapons are and removes WMDs entirely. In a "real" war you aren't going to have millions of guardsmen defending their trenches with bayonets and frag grenades against millions of orks, you're going to have an artillery unit hundreds of miles away launch a single nuke and kill all of the orks. Assault units aren't going to gain cover from magic indestructible ruins, a demolisher shell is going to bring the whole building down and kill everyone inside. Etc. This allows the horde of idiots with swords to be a viable strategy instead of just an efficient way of getting your own troops killed.
3) Because GW wants it to happen. This is why you have things like Tau, an army that wants nothing to do with melee combat fluff-wise, getting "bonuses" to staying in combat and continuing to fight instead of stepping back and shooting the idiot with a sword. Or, in the case of jetpack units, hovering out of sword reach and shooting. Over and over again you have GW making rules that encourage or even force melee combat to happen no matter how little sense it makes fluff-wise.
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kazian wrote: Armor is now powerful enough to withstand almost any weapon.
Except even if the armor is strong enough to stop an impact the person inside it isn't. The only benefit to a suit of power armor stopping a direct hit from a tank shell is that maybe you can hose out the remains of the wearer and give it to the next guy. Impact force alone is going to kill whatever is inside the armor, just like people figured out that the easiest way to deal with plate armor is to just hit it with a hammer until the guy inside is dead.
Weight isn't even an issue at this point
Only because GW doesn't understand thermodynamics and declares that everyone has magic infinite power sources to keep that power armor moving and not overheating.
and social structure is now back to the point where it is worthwhile to train soldiers from birth/specifically engineer them.
Only because GW doesn't understand the scale of a real war and thinks that a dozen marine can win a battle involving millions of troops instead of just dying anonymously in an artillery barrage. But even GW admits that there are nowhere near enough space marines to win the Imperium's wars, and the only real advantage they offer is propaganda stories about the Imperium's greatest heroes.
This is doubly applicable when you realize that the reach of ranged weapons in 40k is laughable compared to their real-world equivalents.
Fluff =/= game mechanics. 40k weapons have laughable range because if you give them realistic range every weapon has infinite range on a 6x4 table. For range to matter for gameplay purposes you have to scale it down a lot. Arguing fluff based on this makes about as much sense as arguing about how big space marines are based on the fact that you can't fit ten of them in a Rhino model.
This is actually a somewhat complex question. To get a complete answer to this question you have to consider a lot of factors.
1) The game represents a microcosm of the total battlefield that is laughably small compared to the whole thing. I like to think this is the "pivotal" moment in that battle but that is pure egotism.
2) Most of the battles in the 40K universe are probably settle as Peregrine and a number of other posters have pointed out. If you ever played the rebelion of krieg it would be over in ~10 sec as you just hit a button and nuke/virus bomb the entire planet into a wasteland. There is actually not a lot of melee in the lists of major battles if you actually read between the lines.
3) The battles are played on the wrong size board for the sake of convenience. If you played IG the battles should all be played with >240" between the deployment zones.
4) We have trouble envisioning the 40K universe but really look at some of the art. Hive cities are huge with massive underground areas which are filled with mutants and gangs. Forge worlds are literally entire worlds where most of the surface is covered in factories and tunnels for the workers. This means that many of the fights may take place in complex environments with important assets that you cannot destroy. This means you have to shoot your weapons only in their most accurate ranges (why basilisks are limited to such small ranges). Some of these worlds also have extremely bizarre ecosystems so there may be very limited methods to spot enemies. This could allow enemy forces many more opportunities for stealth than we could imagine.
What all of these points mean is the battles we play are those select few where the armies have managed to come within a very close range of each other. This can be for a variety of reasons;
-Tunneling; this could be a variety of things such as coming up from a sewer system where the orks/nids are spawning from, tunneling into an enemy fortification or city, or an invasion of a hive city. Their are a lot of underground regions in 40K which are poorly defended, monitored, and often going to ruin.
-"Drop in" this could be orks "landing" (ie crashing) their ships right into a hive city or factory world and going to town. SM like the rain of death and in general shock and awe tactics using drop vessels (falcons, waveserpents, vendettas, drop pods, mycetic spore are all examples of vehicles that by fluff can enter through an atmosphere). We don't play the drop the planetary defenses battles very often but this has to be done at some point either through guile or battle fleet. This could even be daemons summoned from the warp by cultists.
-Sacrifice: if you can't win by finesse just ram a million gaunts down the throat and then a million more into the breach. There are actually aliens capable of spawning fast enough to manage such tactics (ie orks, tyranids, and necrons to a degree)
-Subterfuge: You sneak up on them or make them come to you. This is probably the eldar way as they either get the opponent to come near a webway portal or sneak up on them. That or they would drop from the sky. Just remember that we don't know all the prep that goes into these battles.
Now as for why people carry around swords...
-SM: These guys use boltguns and are part of the IoM. This means they have an infamously unreliable supply line but yet use a matter projectile weapon they have to continuously resupply. This is a famous premise in the fluff where they run out of bullets and have to use their swords. The fact is the IoM is just has bad supply lines due to their poor travel methods and bureaucracy.
-Chaos: These guys are off their rockers and don't seem to fight to "win" per se but rather to please their god. So they fight with the weapons that allow them to please their god best.
-CWE: This is partly ceremonial and partly due to the close quarters they prefer to fight in. CWE mostly fight in close to the enemy where less of the opponent's army will be able to shoot them. They also fight in space ships and ambushes more than most. CC in general is not a bad place to be for a race with the reflexes of the eldar as there is less chance of stray mortar round killing them with no recourse. It also explains why their weapons tend toward the short range fire support rather than the stand off fire fights.
-DE: similar to the CWE but they like pain. People that like to inflict pain usually like to do so in close gory detail. Probably similar to why chaos gods like CC.
-IG: Their weapons are mostly ceremonial or a mark of extreme egotism. They bring a power sword to a fight because the officer has more money, zealotry, or just idiocy than he does sense. IG uses whatever it can wherever it can as it is fighting more battles in more places than it can supply to a carapace/plasma gun standard. Heck some of them are little better than stone age "cavemen". They also fight in trenches so this is why they get their bayonets and knifes. Not to mention like all IoM troops they may not get resupplied.
Hopefully this gives some sort of relevant thoughts and info to people who read.
As a recap there are situations even in advanced high tech war where you just have to get out a knife and slug it out.
Peregrine wrote: Except armor isn't effective enough, as we can see from power armored troops dying just fine against proper shooting.
Define "proper shooting".
Except even if the armor is strong enough to stop an impact the person inside it isn't. The only benefit to a suit of power armor stopping a direct hit from a tank shell is that maybe you can hose out the remains of the wearer and give it to the next guy. Impact force alone is going to kill whatever is inside the armor, just like people figured out that the easiest way to deal with plate armor is to just hit it with a hammer until the guy inside is dead.
Yet for some reason in the actual fluff that isn't the case. Hmm.
Except even if the armor is strong enough to stop an impact the person inside it isn't. The only benefit to a suit of power armor stopping a direct hit from a tank shell is that maybe you can hose out the remains of the wearer and give it to the next guy. Impact force alone is going to kill whatever is inside the armor, just like people figured out that the easiest way to deal with plate armor is to just hit it with a hammer until the guy inside is dead.
Yet for some reason in the actual fluff that isn't the case. Hmm.
This makes me laugh. There is big money going into developing methods of circumventing this. There are already results being shown but the basic concept is to redirect the energy away from the wearer, waste the kinetic energy or disperse it, or have a counter energy to cancel the incoming energy. You can already see that the dragon skin armour already does a pretty good job of dispersing energy and the modern tanks and APC show some decent ability to protect the occupants from attacks which should shake them to death.
Better than "a few barely-trained conscripts with lasguns/autoguns". Power armor is great at stopping small arms fire as long as you aren't stupid and stand around out in the open waiting for everyone to shoot you. That doesn't mean it's going to stop plasma/krak missiles/etc.
Yet for some reason in the actual fluff that isn't the case. Hmm.
Unfortunately the fluff is stupid about a lot of things. But there's no getting around this one, as long as you have biology that is even remotely close to human (and marines do) a sufficiently powerful impact will kill you even if your armor isn't breached.
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ansacs wrote: This makes me laugh. There is big money going into developing methods of circumventing this. There are already results being shown but the basic concept is to redirect the energy away from the wearer, waste the kinetic energy or disperse it, or have a counter energy to cancel the incoming energy. You can already see that the dragon skin armour already does a pretty good job of dispersing energy and the modern tanks and APC show some decent ability to protect the occupants from attacks which should shake them to death.
Except that armor is still dealing with small arms fire, which means energy levels low enough that it won't kill you with impact shock. The important part is stopping the impact without injuring the person wearing the armor, not preventing them from being turned into a red puddle.
I think melee is more prominent because its not necessarily correct to simply 'scale up' the efficiency of firearms against human targets and expect it to apply with bigger firearms against bigger targets.
We use guns in war because guns are designed with the weaknesses of human physiology in mind. We are slow, vulnerable to punctures that can rupture vital organs etc, and have a very low 'resiliancy' to injury. Ergo, a gun that can do enough 'damage' to incapacitate a human at 300 yards is much better than say, a chainsaw that can do enough damage to kill a human ten times over at melee distance.
But if your opponent is a resiliant Ork, or a supernaturally agile Eldar, or a Daemonic entity... who says that these weapons are ideally suited for killing such opponents?
Also, rule of cool, applying equally to both melee and shooting - because the vast tides of men you see in 40k artwork are simply not viable, no matter what the hell they're equipped with, when the other guy has a space fleet filled with space lasers.
120mm anti-tank sabot round = ~9kg, 1500m/s = 13500 kg*m/s of momentum. Using this estimate of ~500 kg for a power armored marine that means the marine hit by the tank shot will be flung backwards at 27m/s (about 60mph).
Now here's the fun part: the marine has to stop the round almost instantaneously (if it doesn't the marine gets a 120mm depleted uranium spike through their chest and dies instantly). Let's generously assume the ~10' tall marine is also ~10' thick. The tank shell will cross that distance in 0.002 seconds. So let's very generously assume that this is sufficient. To accelerate to 27m/s within 0.002s the marine will experience over 1300 times the force of gravity. Compare that the the ~200g maximum that a human has ever been recorded surviving.
And then remember that this was the insanely generous version. In reality the impact forces would be many orders of magnitude higher, so it's safe to say the space marine is dead even if their armor somehow magically survives.
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Dakkamite wrote: But if your opponent is a resiliant Ork, or a supernaturally agile Eldar, or a Daemonic entity... who says that these weapons are ideally suited for killing such opponents?
It doesn't matter. Who cares if a lasgun isn't the most effective weapon against an ork, that's what heavy weapons are for. It doesn't matter how "resilient" you are if a heavy bolter shell blows off your leg and leaves you unable to move, or an artillery barrage/nuclear weapon/etc turns you and your entire army into a bloody mist. Running a horde of orks at the enemy only "works" because the distances are not to scale and GW doesn't accurately portray how powerful heavy weapons are.
Better than "a few barely-trained conscripts with lasguns/autoguns". Power armor is great at stopping small arms fire as long as you aren't stupid and stand around out in the open waiting for everyone to shoot you. That doesn't mean it's going to stop plasma/krak missiles/etc.
Yet in the fluff power armour can hold up pretty well to direct impacts from bolter or even assault cannon salvos, hmm.
Krak and plasma missiles aren't exactly the most common thing seen on the battlefield, and the former isn't an effective anti-infantry weapon.
Unfortunately the fluff is stupid about a lot of things. But there's no getting around this one, as long as you have biology that is even remotely close to human (and marines do) a sufficiently powerful impact will kill you even if your armor isn't breached.
I'm afraid not. Given the choice between going with how you think the setting should work, and how it actually does work within the fluff, the latter is obviously the more correct choice.
Space Marines can survive being hit by barrage bombs, big bombs shot from starships that can take out the shields of other starships or pulverise city-wide+ areas. Because their armour protects them.
40k does have Nukes, their called Orbital Barrage, Deathstrike Mkssiles and Exterminatus. But as already pointed out, in general the guys who can use these things usually want to planet afterwards so wasting it is bad.
As for the maths you have done, based on what we do know, that would be correct. But there is a lot we don't know. For example, just how resilient a Marine is, the density and resilence of adamantium and ceramite, the damage control systems of the armour, the impact compensators in the armour and who knows what else that isn't as commonly mentioned. Not only rhat, your talking about a 120mm AT round, which is not commonly ised against marines, and when they are, such as Lascannons, Meltaguns and Battlecannons, of course the marines go splat. But a common firearm like a Lasgun, or even a .75 Bolt round with explosive core, barely anything. Even heavy weapons like Heavy Bolters, which I think are like 105 calibre, arn't that effective.
Dakkamite wrote: But if your opponent is a resiliant Ork, or a supernaturally agile Eldar, or a Daemonic entity... who says that these weapons are ideally suited for killing such opponents?
It doesn't matter. Who cares if a lasgun isn't the most effective weapon against an ork, that's what heavy weapons are for. It doesn't matter how "resilient" you are if a heavy bolter shell blows off your leg and leaves you unable to move, or an artillery barrage/nuclear weapon/etc turns you and your entire army into a bloody mist. Running a horde of orks at the enemy only "works" because the distances are not to scale and GW doesn't accurately portray how powerful heavy weapons are.
I know, and I mentioned that in my post. But it doesn't just apply to melee - a crapton of guardsmen also only works for and despite of the exact same reasons. An army of any kind as depicted in 40k (the 'endless tide of men') is ridiculous in the face of even WW1 level artillery, let alone what we have today or what there would be in 40,000 years.
GW doesn't depict *any* weapon in realistic accuracy. A Lasgun is described as being able to easily take off a mans arm - yet a guardsman can just tank those shots 50% of the time *without armour*. The entire 40k experience is based around a suspension of belief in the pursuit of a more cinematic experience. The same reason a Guardsman can tank such a shot or a horde of Orks is viable is the same reason that space lasers don't just erase an Imperial Guard Tank Battalion from existance - so its not just melee thats effected, its the entire shebang.
Except that armor is still dealing with small arms fire, which means energy levels low enough that it won't kill you with impact shock. The important part is stopping the impact without injuring the person wearing the armor, not preventing them from being turned into a red puddle.
Actually from the initial tests of dragon skin light body armour they released to the public ~2010ish that would stop a grenade from point blank with relatively little damage to the person or a 50 caliber. The secret being the layered curved disordered alloys used in the armour. The energy of impact is absorbed into these plates and both dissipated through the surface and are partially reflected back along the line of the force vector.
Your math assumes no deflection, energy dispersion, or energy storage. Interestingly you could incorporate advanced piezoelectric devices into the armour to generate electricity. If the fluff is to be believed you could power a small house off the bullets hitting a spacemarine.
Im still with Kharn (such a swell guy). Offtopic:
"Compare that the the ~200g maximum that a human has ever been recorded surviving"
HOLY G-FORCE, BATMAN, what kind of person survives this? A rough estimation says that in that situation your EYEBALLS WEIGH ROUGHLY 5.6 KG / 12 POUNDS EACH! Not to speak of other organs.
Can you point me to where you got this from?
EDIT: EACH FETHING EYEBALL!!
Well this thread was inevitably going to turn ridiculous, and well, here we are.
I do have to love the people trying to figure out rationalizations for it.
The reality is, the 40K tabletop game is not an accurate representation of the universe, and never will be. It's just a way to sell plastic toy soldiers that you can then use with a predetermined set of unrealistic limitations of equal forces, equal terrain, and alternating turns, and resolve these battles within a short time frame.
Veteran Sergeant wrote: Well this thread was inevitably going to turn ridiculous, and well, here we are.
I do have to love the people trying to figure out rationalizations for it.
The reality is, the 40K tabletop game is not an accurate representation of the universe, and never will be. It's just a way to sell plastic toy soldiers that you can then use with a predetermined set of unrealistic limitations of equal forces, equal terrain, and alternating turns, and resolve these battles within a short time frame.
Just leave the Tabletop aside then, and concentrate on the fluff. Fluff orks and space marines are still CC heavy enough.
In short, beyond the "it's the game", it can make sense, it's plausible. It's not fact, it's fiction. Science fiction makes best guesses, and 40k is a mix of science and fantasy fiction(aspects just don't have as much scientific backing as much of modern sci-fi does). Close combat is not something relegated to fantasy, however, as another person claimed. It shows in numerous sci-fi settings, including well researched ones.
So you don't know how 40K started, Warhammer in space, they didn't even bother creation a new rules set. Until 3rd, but they never left behind the fantasy, CC, magic(psy), demons from hell, epic heros wade across the feild killing 100s or 1000s single handed, orcs, elfs, do I need to go on. Even Tau came in to being becouse "gaint robot were cool at the time", not becouse GW realised you should be shooting in the future. Becouse it is dumb to walk up to a 10ft human tank and hit it with a sword. Hell in 40K trained soilder, just now figured out you should shot the guys charging you (6th ed), so maybe everybody in the 40K setting were just to dumb until now.
Its is foolish and outright stupid to think that there wont be an enemy that will overcome your biggest strength! Thus my question... when will there be close combat battlesuits for the tau? Massive shields and some form of powerweapons... anyways...
You can always run out of ammo... what the f will you do then? Throw your bolter? And as stated... yes Orks... Orks will swarm you.. before the second wave hits you WILL have run out of ammo,,... orks waves are massive.. all you got then is your guts, sword and the brother beside you...
You can always run out of ammo... what the f will you do then? Throw your bolter? And as stated... yes Orks... Orks will swarm you.. before the second wave hits you WILL have run out of ammo,,... orks waves are massive.. all you got then is your guts, sword and the brother beside you...
..said bolter-armed combatant would reload. We would expect soldiers, especially ones with power armor, to be carrying quite a lot of ammunition. Logistical support would logically scale up to support to an army that depends heavily on cartridge-fed weapons, like space marines.
You can always run out of ammo... what the f will you do then? Throw your bolter? And as stated... yes Orks... Orks will swarm you.. before the second wave hits you WILL have run out of ammo,,... orks waves are massive.. all you got then is your guts, sword and the brother beside you...
..said bolter-armed combatant would reload. We would expect soldiers, especially ones with power armor, to be carrying quite a lot of ammunition. Logistical support would logically scale up to support to an army that depends heavily on cartridge-fed weapons, like space marines.
What if your logistics lines stretched through the warp? You know that thing that can cause planets to disappear for a few centuries and seems to regularly cause ships to get lost.
We tend to think about travel in 40K as like today but rather it is closer to ~1700's shipping soldiers across to continents.
You can always run out of ammo... what the f will you do then? Throw your bolter? And as stated... yes Orks... Orks will swarm you.. before the second wave hits you WILL have run out of ammo,,... orks waves are massive.. all you got then is your guts, sword and the brother beside you...
..said bolter-armed combatant would reload. We would expect soldiers, especially ones with power armor, to be carrying quite a lot of ammunition. Logistical support would logically scale up to support to an army that depends heavily on cartridge-fed weapons, like space marines.
What if your logistics lines stretched through the warp? You know that thing that can cause planets to disappear for a few centuries and seems to regularly cause ships to get lost.
We tend to think about travel in 40K as like today but rather it is closer to ~1700's shipping soldiers across to continents.
Astartes, even deployed in the limited fashion they are(that is, not part of a prolonged conflict) would have to be sufficiently supported to be effective. Chapters are known to have access to their own fleets, so I think it's safe to assume crafts orbiting a planet during a conflict would be able to deploy both forces *and* supplies to the ground.
You can always run out of ammo... what the f will you do then? Throw your bolter? And as stated... yes Orks... Orks will swarm you.. before the second wave hits you WILL have run out of ammo,,... orks waves are massive.. all you got then is your guts, sword and the brother beside you...
..said bolter-armed combatant would reload. We would expect soldiers, especially ones with power armor, to be carrying quite a lot of ammunition. Logistical support would logically scale up to support to an army that depends heavily on cartridge-fed weapons, like space marines.
What if your logistics lines stretched through the warp? You know that thing that can cause planets to disappear for a few centuries and seems to regularly cause ships to get lost.
We tend to think about travel in 40K as like today but rather it is closer to ~1700's shipping soldiers across to continents.
Astartes, even deployed in the limited fashion they are(that is, not part of a prolonged conflict) would have to be sufficiently supported to be effective. Chapters are known to have access to their own fleets, so I think it's safe to assume crafts orbiting a planet during a conflict would be able to deploy both forces *and* supplies to the ground.
I like to think the reason Astartes need multi-kilometer long ships to deploy 100 men or less is all the room for ammunition.
There is a prevelance that the imperium doesn't care about civilians, so why not fly in bombard the planet and then mop it up, colonize the planet again, problem solved.
I remember hearing somewhere (no proof at hand, although im sure it was from cbc coverage of that kid on the bus) that at 22 feet a man with a knife can stab a person before they could draw their gun, aim and fire.
In modern times that would be pretty much the high end of effective melee range.
Take into account the speed at which a space marine can run and you are somewhere around 40 feet
Look around you, I bet there is something within 40 feet that could hide a space marine.
You can always run out of ammo... what the f will you do then? Throw your bolter? And as stated... yes Orks... Orks will swarm you.. before the second wave hits you WILL have run out of ammo,,... orks waves are massive.. all you got then is your guts, sword and the brother beside you...
..said bolter-armed combatant would reload. We would expect soldiers, especially ones with power armor, to be carrying quite a lot of ammunition. Logistical support would logically scale up to support to an army that depends heavily on cartridge-fed weapons, like space marines.
Orks, Cultists, Guardsmen, and Tyranids tend to have more soldiers than a Marine force, Loyal or Heretical, will have shots to fire at them. By an order of magnitude or so.
So Marines deploy surgicially to take out key points because one hundred Space marines vs one hundred million Orks in a straight fight won't end well.
Not everyone is using a sword, bayonet, or axe. Some guys have pistols, and when I imagine close quarters combat I picture those pistols being used. Even in modern times fights happen at close quarters.... I always picture that one fight in Saving Private Ryan....
In short, beyond the "it's the game", it can make sense, it's plausible. It's not fact, it's fiction. Science fiction makes best guesses, and 40k is a mix of science and fantasy fiction(aspects just don't have as much scientific backing as much of modern sci-fi does). Close combat is not something relegated to fantasy, however, as another person claimed. It shows in numerous sci-fi settings, including well researched ones.
So you don't know how 40K started, Warhammer in space, they didn't even bother creation a new rules set. Until 3rd, but they never left behind the fantasy, CC, magic(psy), demons from hell, epic heros wade across the feild killing 100s or 1000s single handed, orcs, elfs, do I need to go on. Even Tau came in to being becouse "gaint robot were cool at the time", not becouse GW realised you should be shooting in the future. Becouse it is dumb to walk up to a 10ft human tank and hit it with a sword. Hell in 40K trained soilder, just now figured out you should shot the guys charging you (6th ed), so maybe everybody in the 40K setting were just to dumb until now.
Huh? Yeah the warhammer in space thing is true but what was going on at the end? Yes 40k is dumb. Developing a space marine seems so preposterously pointless when I'd rather have all those extra guardsmen. Logistics, ammo, etc all fail when you try to think of them realistically as 40k has never been realistic. It is grimdark, scifantasy. It has technology but so too does it have magic. You have Tau that detest close clombat (Kroot were supposed to deal with that) and then you have armies like Chaos Daemons, Tyranids, and Orks that one way or another can reach you and fight in cc by either weight of numbers or flickering between reality and the immaterium.
And no they have always known how to overwatch. It just so happens to be that most races (SM, Eldar, two of the four daemon gods and even then some of tzeentch being super fast, certain nids, etc) happen to be super fast some being so crazy good they can parry a bullet barrage out of the sky. In fact, if you think about it, the shooting phase is supposed to represent your overwatch in a way (because if we claim it shouldn't then let me ask you do you seriously believe that the two armies fight in such orginization all the time only fire at one unit, wait for the enemy to shoot them first before moving, randomly decide to fail charges even when really close etc).
In terms of why it is popular... Close combat still does occur in real life. Maybe not as frequently when swords were the thing but it still occurs (just look at the bayonet). Anyways, one must also realize that 40k doesn't work on the same logic as our world and follows the Rule of Cool! Many people like close combat. Look at Star Wars as an iconic example. In reality, it shouldn't really work against all the guns yet somehow it does.
Frozen Ocean wrote: Because, as others have said, the battlefield is not the same as it is today.
In Halo, for example, you are quite capable at charging around and pummelling many a foe to death. Your energy shields are not only capable of taking serious punishment, but also self-replenishment. Compare this to 'realistic' shooters, or even Halo on a much higher difficulty setting. You can't break cover under fire without dying. Melee is no longer viable. Your shields are no longer sufficient.
In modern combat, no soldier is capable of withstanding more than a couple of rounds, and is especially not capable of surviving against intense fire without cover. In 40k, various factors eliminate this - power armour, teleportation, innumerable and suicidal enemies that you will inevitably end up in close quarters with. As well as this, technology has made melee viable in the form of power weapons, sophisticated systems that are capable of ignoring most armour.
Another reason is efficiency. Bullets are very efficient, and do not do very much damage. They put small holes in just the right places to kill - which is perfectly deadly when you're fighting normal humans. Compare the damage done to a soft target with a bullet to a bladed weapon of any kind. It is not necessary to cleave a man in half to kill him. In real life, guns of any kind are deadly at extreme range (relative to melee) and even if they don't kill, a hit is almost guaranteed to incapacitate. Not true in 40k.
It is not that it's "fantasy sci-fi and it's to be interesting". Using the rules of the game, see how effective a unit of ten Guardsmen is at killing things in close quarters with chainswords out in the open with no cover. Now compare that to Assault Marines, suddenly leaping into a group and tearing them apart in seconds with lightning claws.
No they haven't. In 5th you could have an assault unit go from out of LOS 18" away (which, at 28mm scale, represents over a hundred feet) to combat without ever getting shot at. Why? Because of the alternating turn structure where a unit acts once and then sits around doing nothing while all of the enemy units go through their move-shoot-assault sequence. It wasn't until 6th that GW decided to include at least a token element of reaction fire to represent the fact that your troops aren't just standing there waiting for the enemy to charge.
It just so happens to be that most races (SM, Eldar, two of the four daemon gods and even then some of tzeentch being super fast, certain nids, etc) happen to be super fast some being so crazy good they can parry a bullet barrage out of the sky.
That's just rationalizing to deal with the fact that you're playing with the turn structure of a 1980s fantasy game. The only reason you have to make up ridiculous excuses like "fast enough to parry bullets" is because 40k's obsolete turn structure doesn't allow for realistic reactions to events.
Look at Star Wars as an iconic example. In reality, it shouldn't really work against all the guns yet somehow it does.
The difference is that in Star Wars melee combat is a ceremonial thing between the special warrior monks and the other 99.999999999999% of the universe uses guns.
kingleir wrote: I remember hearing somewhere (no proof at hand, although im sure it was from cbc coverage of that kid on the bus) that at 22 feet a man with a knife can stab a person before they could draw their gun, aim and fire.
In modern times that would be pretty much the high end of effective melee range.
Take into account the speed at which a space marine can run and you are somewhere around 40 feet
Look around you, I bet there is something within 40 feet that could hide a space marine.
They did this in mythbusters, and it was something like ten feet.
Plus thats to 'draw' aim and shoot, with 90% of the time coming from draw. Soldiers generally wouldn't have their guns in their holsters when the choppa boyz come over the hill
Anyway, easy answer; melee combat works because Orks say it does.
Deadshot wrote: And who wins between the sword monks and the 99.99999%?
The 99.999999%. Prequel jedi die just fine to guns when they're in full-scale battles, Luke in ROTJ only escaped with a hand wound because the shooter's aim sucked, etc. And that's with supernatural abilities including precognition, something the average screaming idiot with a sword in 40k doesn't have.
I feel obligated to mention that space marines would probably be involved in quite a bit of ship to ship space combat, including boarding an repelling actions that would absolutely require close quarters non-projectile weaponry to effectively secure a vessel without accidental venting into space.
Swabby wrote: I feel obligated to mention that space marines would probably be involved in quite a bit of ship to ship space combat, including boarding an repelling actions that would absolutely require close quarters non-projectile weaponry to effectively secure a vessel without accidental venting into space.
It isn't all fantasy or stupid
No ship a boarding action would be taking place in would have a hull that's vulnerable to small arms fire.
Besides, even if something penetrates the outer hull, one would assume that ships have sealable compartments just like modern ocean going vessels have. Atmospheric venting isn't really as big of a deal (for Space Marines at least) as one might think unless the ship lacks safeguards.
The real thing with ship boarding actions is just how the Space Marines actually manage to move through these ships without tearing them to pieces destroying all the hatches and bulkheads.
Because those who wrote the game liked "lightsabers".
Same reason there are Titans. A 'Titan' is actually an incredulously idiotic weapon of war. It cannot hide, it's easy to hit, incredibly expensive to produce, etc. If technology existed that could build such a device that wouldn't crumple under it's own weight or sink into the ground due to it's massive weight, a couple gomers with future 'rpgs' could take it out with ease. If you can make one, you can easily make something much much cheaper to bust it.
However, it's "cool" to have big stompy 'robots' to fight with, so we have Titans and inane reasons they don't always get hopelessly annihilated with ease.
Maniac_nmt wrote: Because those who wrote the game liked "lightsabers".
Same reason there are Titans. A 'Titan' is actually an incredulously idiotic weapon of war. It cannot hide, it's easy to hit, incredibly expensive to produce, etc. If technology existed that could build such a device that wouldn't crumple under it's own weight or sink into the ground due to it's massive weight, a couple gomers with future 'rpgs' could take it out with ease. If you can make one, you can easily make something much much cheaper to bust it.
However, it's "cool" to have big stompy 'robots' to fight with, so we have Titans and inane reasons they don't always get hopelessly annihilated with ease.
Titans dish out and tank firepower in the multi-kiloton to megaton level. The tech involved is OOMs more advanced than what goes into baneblades or leman russes.
Because tech was not lost or regained at the same level for everything not everything is up to the same standard.
Kain wrote: Orks, Cultists, Guardsmen, and Tyranids tend to have more soldiers than a Marine force, Loyal or Heretical, will have shots to fire at them. By an order of magnitude or so.
So Marines deploy surgicially to take out key points because one hundred Space marines vs one hundred million Orks in a straight fight won't end well.
A hundred marines vs a thousand Orks in a straight fight probably wouldn't end well for the Marines, either. The Orks would create too many SM casualties, so that even if they're wiped out to a Boy, they've won an effective victory-- the Orks can be easily replaced, the Marines can't. Even if all the Orks could do was kill a single squad of marines, that's a victory over the Marines in terms of expense needed to replace the 1000 Orks vs the 10 marines.
Now, 100 marines ambushing 1000 Orks, that'd end pretty damned well for the marines. Of course, 100 Kommandos ambushing 100 marines... that's an iffy proposition on either side.
... because sometimes a dude just wants to be driven closer so he can hit them with his sword. That's all there is to it. A dude and his desire to be driven closer to fulfill his desire to hit them with his sword.
Psienesis wrote: ... because sometimes a dude just wants to be driven closer so he can hit them with his sword. That's all there is to it. A dude and his desire to be driven closer to fulfill his desire to hit them with his sword.
Swabby wrote: I feel obligated to mention that space marines would probably be involved in quite a bit of ship to ship space combat, including boarding an repelling actions that would absolutely require close quarters non-projectile weaponry to effectively secure a vessel without accidental venting into space.
It isn't all fantasy or stupid
No ship a boarding action would be taking place in would have a hull that's vulnerable to small arms fire.
What about control consoles? I can't imagine shooting up the bridge would be in anyone's best interest.
The British actually performed a victorious bayonett charge in Iraq a few years ago. In reality, close combat does happen in real life but it is still done with guns. That being said, i still carried a big *** knife with me on both of my tours....for close encounters.
Well, I guess a lot of it is from the guys at GW reading Dune when they were young. Feudal society, personal shields making a nuclear reaction with lasguns, honorable melee combat man vs man being considered state-of-the-art military technology.
Even in real life it's not unknown, just not the preferred method. Western powers happily use expensive missiles to take out one man. Terrorists use cheap bombs. And once in a while someone like the Brits or a ghurka soldier shows everyone what a real melee is.
But that's pretty extreme, either against opponents who might not have real guns (like the train robbery) or guys who think shouting praises to their god is better than actually training shooting to hit targets.
I love this kind of threads Although I guess everything important has been already said, I would like to add a bit more, always from an in-background logic and setting aside "Rule of cool" or "GW=dumbasses" explanations:
What we see in WH40k tabletops is actually a microscopic action that we suppose is subsumed in some wider battle, war, narrative arc or whatever. It's the peak of the cream of the desperate decissive climax. That's why armies deploy suicidally close, why they get wipped out to a man (Ork, Eldar, whatever) and why galactic size heroes are there in huge numbers(What the hell is Ulthwe's most powerful psyker ever doing in a firefight? Wait! Is that Ghazgkull Thraka, side by side with Abbadon? Man, what a jolly meeting here, at planet Backwater Secundus!) Even Apocalypse battles are little more than skirmishes with a shocking concentracion of heavy gear.
So, 40k battles are by no means the normal 41st Millenium battle. In the normal 41st Millenium battle -if such thing exists-, space, aerial and artillery warfare should be decisive and make the bulk of the fighting. When it comes to the ground, most of the battle would take place between forces hundreds of meters or even kilometers away from each other. Probably, 41 Mil. forces move fast, hit hard and disperse quickly, as, unlike in WWII, massed armies under disputed air and space are cannon fodder. Casualties would be unsustainable even for Orks or IG. I imagine them, from IG to Tyranids, with a general doctrine closer to mid-Cold War doctrines. Not surprisingly, everybody is now capable of deploying lots of APCs.
Just for comparation, according to Steven Zaloga, between 60 and 80% of the casualties inflicted by the Red Army during WWII were produced by artillery fire (POWs not counted here). What we do with our little toy soldiers is what happens after all this kaboom has taken place.
Of course, there is also place in the galaxy for trench or static warfare: fortresses seem to be impervious to all but the most powerful artillery and air superiority is not always granted.
Anyway, according to size, to play "normal" battles in this background, we should use something between Battlefleet Gothic and Epic 40k. GW never really made it into the wargames realm, so, this comprehensive game simply doesn´t exist.
Beware, too, that many of these forces, Imperial ones included, as thalassocratyc forces in space (space=sea, obviously). Up in the thread, someone (sorry, cannot find it again for a proper quote) argued that Imperial logistics are closer to the XVIIth Century than to the XXIth C. That's true. Relatively small -yes, small- contingents deploy with great effort in order to seize strategic objectives. As in Guadalcanal: how many ships where used during the operation (many), how many pairs of boots actually fought on the ground (not too many) and how big was the goal (aerial dominion over a quarter of the Pacific!)? Proportions are shocking. Here in Spain, we have an old-fashioned expression: to put a pike in Flanders. We use it to describe enormous efforts or costs. It's because, during Religion Wars in the Netherlands (XVII C.), our king expended monstruous amounts of money, effort and time to put armed soldiers in, well, Flanders.
Moreover, as has been stated, lots of 41st Millenium fighting are not actual field battles, but boarding actions, explorations, insertions in choked enviroments (Hives!), small tactical actions with strategic significance that happen close and personal.
Adding this all, in the main picture, I don't even believe massed battling a la WWII to be so usual in the galaxy. I would expect most conflicts to be solved with a mix of air and artillery power and fast, critical encounters that, on occasions, become very close. If we accept that offensive firepower is not as effective as it is today for a number of reasons -armour, fields, poor quality of guns, resilience of many creatures, contempt of casualties, etc-, things start to make sense.
So, the thesis is already there: 40k is about the final, decissive clash in one of these battles. It's about the assault at Stalingrad's grain elevator, about the most savage charges at the Matinakau, about the assassination of Bin Laden! And, in this actions, "normal" -big guns and prudent distance- is set aside and everybody throws the kitchen sink at the opponent. If that means that a Sector Commander has to power-fistfight aliens, so be it! Yeah, it's a bit idiotic, but you get the idea
See, that would almost make sense if you went back to when 40k was an infantry-only skirmish game. But now when you have hordes of infantry, tank companies, enough air support to cover the table, etc, that explanation doesn't work so well.
Peregrine wrote: See, that would almost make sense if you went back to when 40k was an infantry-only skirmish game. But now when you have hordes of infantry, tank companies, enough air support to cover the table, etc, that explanation doesn't work so well.
That's where I come from, from good ole' "Man, you brought two tanks to a 1500 points battle?! You looney powergamer!" times
Anyway, two or three planes, some platoons and a fistful of tanks is, by XXth century standards, a very humble tactical force. It's still skirmish or commando level -reinforced company-, not even batallion size. It is, in fact, a very odd kind of combined-arms force, with a crazy concentration of heavy gear per actual soldier. A specialized ad-hoc force, I would say. And specialized ad-hoc forces are the ones that acomplish critical missions, where close combat is more probably happening.
BTW: Thanks for the repply, it's always nice to be a newbie and get some feedback.
Titans dish out and tank firepower in the multi-kiloton to megaton level. The tech involved is OOMs more advanced than what goes into baneblades or leman russes.
Because tech was not lost or regained at the same level for everything not everything is up to the same standard.
You prove my point, somehow you can figure out how to build the computer program, gyros, metal components, weight distribution systems, etc but somehow we can't just drop a penny on it from orbit and it's a smoking crater (which is all it would really take, and being as big, slow, and short ranged as they are would be laughably easy even using modern technology, let alone even year 10, 20, 30, or 40k technology).
Basically you break the laws of physics, warfare, etc., and go with Titans work because they are cool, so lets figure out how we'll make them survive. There is a reason the US went to looking at the 'Star Wars' defense plan (basically satalite based systems that would effectively drop a penny on a target, obliterating pretty much everything), the Patriot Missle Defense system, etc. You cannot slap that much armor on anything of size and not eventually have it trumped by a better gun.
Look, I love Battletech. Nothing beats stomping around in an assault mech slapping PPC/Gauss fire on some poor unsuspecting shlub. It's fun, but totally impractical. Same with Titans, or running across the battlefield to bash someone with your gun instead of shooting them with it.
It's done because the writers and we the readers want to be able to do that, not because it's practical or would actually work.
Bayonet charges still occur, believe it or not. Account below.
Spoiler:
British bayonet charge in BASRA.
Part of channel(s): Iraq (current event), Afghanistan (current event)
Prepared by the U.S. Urban Warfare Analysis Center:
Executive Summary:
In May 2004, approximately 20 British troops in Basra were ambushed and forced out of their vehicles by about 100 Shiite militia fighters. When ammunition ran low, the British troops fixed bayonets and charged the enemy. About 20 militiamen were killed in the assault without any British deaths.
The bayonet charge appeared to succeed for three main reasons. First, the attack was the first of its kind in that region and captured the element of surprise. Second, enemy fighters probably believed jihadist propaganda stating that coalition troops were cowards unwilling to fight in close combat, further enhancing the element of surprise. Third, the strict discipline of the British troops overwhelmed the ability of the militia fighters to organize a cohesive counteraction.
The effects of this tactical action in Basra are not immediately applicable elsewhere, but an important dominant theme emerges regarding the need to avoid predictable patterns of behavior within restrictive rules of engagement. Commanders should keep adversaries off balance with creative feints and occasional shows of force lest they surrender the initiative to the enemy.
I. Overview of Bayonet Charge
On 21 May 2004, Mahdi militiamen engaged a convoy consisting of approximately 20 British troops from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders 55 miles north of Basra. A squad from the Princess of Wales regiment came to their assistance. What started as an attack on a passing convoy ended with at least 35 militiamen dead and just three British troops wounded. The militiamen engaged a force that had restrictive rules of engagement prior to the incident that prevented them from returning fire. What ensued was an example of irregular warfare by coalition troops that achieved a tactical victory over a numerically superior foe with considerable firepower.
The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders are an infantry regiment of the British Army with a rich history. It is one of Scotland’s oldest fighting forces. It is best known for forming the legendry “thin red line” at the Battle of Balaklava in the Crimean War against Russia in 1854. It later fought with distinction in World War I and World War II, including intense jungle warfare in Malaya. After Iraq, it served in Afghanistan before returning home in2008.
Country: United Kingdom
Branch: Army, 16th Air Assault Brigade
Type: One of six Scottish line infantry regiments
Role: Air assault-Light role
Motto: Nemo Me Impune Lacessit
No One Assails Me With Impunity
Atmosphere Preceding the Attack
After a period of relative calm, attacks escalated after coalition forces attempted to arrest Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. British soldiers in southern Iraq said they were “stunned” by the level of violence near Basra. In particular, Mahdi militiamen conducted regular ambushes on British convoys on the roads between Basra and Baghdad.Frequent, uncoordinated attacks inflicted little damage, although precise data is unavailable in open sources. Since the Scottish and Welsh troops arrived in Basra, Shiite militias averaged about five attacks per day in Basra.
The Bayonet Charge
The battle began when over 100 Mahdi army fighters ambushed two unarmored vehicles transporting around 20 Argylls on the isolated Route Six highway near the southern city of Amarah. Ensconced in trenches along the road, the militiamen fired mortars, rocket propelled grenades, and machine gun rounds. The vehicles stopped and British troops returned fire. The Mahdi barrage caused enough damage to force the troops to exit the vehicles.The soldiers quickly established a defensive perimeter and radioed for reinforcements from the main British base at Amarah – Camp Abu Naji. Reinforcements from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment assisted the Argyles in an offensive operation against the Mahdi militiamen. When ammunition ran low among the British troops, the decision was made to fix bayonets for a direct assault.
The British soldiers charged across 600 feet of open ground toward enemy trenches. They engaged in intense hand-to-hand fighting with the militiamen. Despite being outnumbered and lacking ammunition, the Argylls and Princess of Wales troops routed the enemy. The British troops killed about 20 militiamen in the bayonet charge and between 28 and 35 overall. Only three British soldiers were injured.This incident marked the first time in 22 years that the British Army used bayonets in action. The previous incident occurred during the Falklands War in 1982.
II. Why the Bayonet Charge Was a Tactical Success
The bayonet charge by British troops in Basra achieved tactical success primarily because of psychological and cultural factors. It also shows that superior firepower does not guarantee success by either side. In this case, the value of surprise, countering enemy expectations, and strict troop discipline were three deciding characteristics of the bayonet charge.
Surprise as a Weapon
The Mahdi fighters likely expected the British convoy to continue past the attack. Previous convoys of British vehicles had driven through ambush fire. British military sources believe the militiamen miscalculated the response of the convoy and expected the Scots to flee.
• Although the raid is a well-honed tactic practiced by jihadist and Arab irregulars, the surprise raid has been an effective tool against Arab armies, both regular and irregular.
Irregular fighters usually are not trained in the rigid discipline that professional counterparts possess, and the surprise attack exploits this weakness.
Enemy Expectation that Coalition Troops Would Avoid Combat
Propaganda by Sunni and Shiite jihadists regularly advertised the perception that American and British soldiers were cowards. Similar rhetoric increased after the battles of Fallujah in April2004, perhaps to steady the resolve of militia fighters in the face of aggressive coalition attacks.
In addition, British convoys did not engage significantly during previous ambushes, which probably validated the narrative for many Mahdi militiamen. Because many of the Mahdi fighters were teenagers, it is also likely that the Mahdi army used these ambushes for training and recruiting. The attacks were an opportunity for young fighters to use weapons in combat with little risk of serious reprisal.
• In short, the bayonet charge not only surprised the Mahdi militiamen, it also debunked the perception that coalition troops were reluctant fighters seeking to avoid conflict.
"I wanted to put the fear of God into the enemy. I could see some dead bodies and eight blokes, some scrambling for their weapons. I’ve never seen such a look of fear in anyone’s eyes before. I’m over six feet; I was covered in sweat, angry, red in the face, charging in with a bayonet and screaming my head off. You would be scared, too."
Corporal Brian Wood
Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment
"There was a lot of aggression and a lot of hand-to-hand fighting. It wasn’t a pleasant scene. Some did get cut with the blades of the bayonet as we tumbled around, but in the end, they surrendered and were controlled. I do wonder how they regard life so cheaply. Some of these Iraqis in those trenches were 15 years old – against trained soldiers."
Colonel Mark Byers
Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment
Strict Discipline
A crucial distinction during the bayonet charge was the professional discipline of the British troops in contrast to the disunity and confusion of the militia fighters. Irregular militia often fight with passion and benefit from knowledge of the local terrain. Professional soldiers, however, formally trained in tactics and squad unity can often overcome these and other obstacles. During the bayonet charge, the soldiers rarely lost their nerve and not a single soldier lost his life.
Titans dish out and tank firepower in the multi-kiloton to megaton level. The tech involved is OOMs more advanced than what goes into baneblades or leman russes.
Because tech was not lost or regained at the same level for everything not everything is up to the same standard.
You prove my point, somehow you can figure out how to build the computer program, gyros, metal components, weight distribution systems, etc but somehow we can't just drop a penny on it from orbit and it's a smoking crater (which is all it would really take, and being as big, slow, and short ranged as they are would be laughably easy even using modern technology, let alone even year 10, 20, 30, or 40k technology).
Basically you break the laws of physics, warfare, etc., and go with Titans work because they are cool, so lets figure out how we'll make them survive. There is a reason the US went to looking at the 'Star Wars' defense plan (basically satalite based systems that would effectively drop a penny on a target, obliterating pretty much everything), the Patriot Missle Defense system, etc. You cannot slap that much armor on anything of size and not eventually have it trumped by a better gun.
Look, I love Battletech. Nothing beats stomping around in an assault mech slapping PPC/Gauss fire on some poor unsuspecting shlub. It's fun, but totally impractical. Same with Titans, or running across the battlefield to bash someone with your gun instead of shooting them with it.
It's done because the writers and we the readers want to be able to do that, not because it's practical or would actually work.
A penny at 7 m/s falls very short of a kiloton.
And it'd burn up in the atmosphere.
Not to mention that in 40k armor and firepower seem to be largely equal.
Or in some cases, durability wins out over firepower, Biotitans can take those kilo to megaton bomb blasts from titans and not only keep fighting, but go "Lol we stole our powers from wolverine" and heal right up.
From what we heard of the Crypt Stalker, the Necron titan equivalents flat out no-sell said kilo to megaton blasts.
This is also a setting where a single Psyker can split a planet in half with his mind when he goes coo coo for Chaos cocoa puffs. Realism has no place here, go play Mass Effect or something.
40k however, does manage to maintain a degree of verisimilitude.
You prove my point, somehow you can figure out how to build the computer program, gyros, metal components, weight distribution systems, etc but somehow we can't just drop a penny on it from orbit and it's a smoking crater (which is all it would really take, and being as big, slow, and short ranged as they are would be laughably easy even using modern technology, let alone even year 10, 20, 30, or 40k technology).
By the time a Titan is going for a walk dirtside, the Imperium has established space-superiority, and the kill-sats that would be capable of dropping said penny have all been destroyed or compromised.
There's also the fact that such technologies might no longer exist in the Imperium. Just because they have recovered (or maintained) the ability to create a Titan (though it takes them 100 years to construct it) does not mean they have maintained or recovered the technological knowledge required to build a killer satellite.
Warhammer 40k is not a Science fiction setting it is a High Fantasy setting in space. Some of the elements are very science based but most of the setting does not even try to explain itself as science. In a setting where ships can travel faster then light by breaking open holes in hell the argument that a marines armor could not possibly be powered seems silly. As for all the arguments that marines could not survive their armor stopping a tank round because of the G forces they outright say in the fluff that a normal human would die from going through the forces of a drop pod stopping.
Sorry, you made a lot of posts that I felt compelled to respond to and rather than listing a page and a half of what you said just to respond to it, I summed it up for you
It is endlessly amusing to me that you seem just intelligent enough to grasp the simpler concepts of physics, but you prattle off at keyboard like you are the definitive authority on the matter. The truth is, you've run off ahead of yourself and you've stopped making sense. Still, your arrogance is entertaining....
It bears mention that 40k is a Science-Fantasy game. It is important to understand the difference because Fantasy, Science-Fiction, and Science-Fantasy are not so closely related that they can be grouped together without some knowledge why we have different names for them. In the early days of Science Fiction novels, the authors were very often people of influence in the scientific community of their time. R.A. Heinlein, Halding, C.S. Lewis, H.G. Wells, to name a few. These men were not just writers but all of them were intellectual titans. They not only had considerable influence on the sciences during their lifetimes but even on into ours. As well, they also had a solid enough grasp on literature to present their fictions (which they knew were fictions) to readers in a desirable fashion. Their works were entertaining fiction that was grounded, however slightly, in a scientific understanding or perspective.
Fantasy as a genre is largely dismissive of the sciences. E.R. Eddion, J.R.R. Tolkien, & C.S. Lewis (again), all wrote books that are imaginative, profound, and entertaining without having to stop and address the sciences at every turn so their readers could rationalize the stories to themselves. Their works are fictional, plainly and simply. There is no need to discuss the probability of events in them, and no need to consider the weighty and sometimes intense concepts they bring forth such as Destiny, Fate, and the human ability to accept things that we cannot control.
And then you have Science-Fantasy. This genre takes all that is good about the others, and gives us ... well it gives us WH40k!. Parts of the universe are grounded in simple scientific truths, and parts are based solely on imagination. If you can grasp that than the story can fairly appeal to you. If you do not, than you will make the mistake of imposing scientific expectations on the story where it aught not be imposed. Or Visa Versa. This is what you are doing...
Except even if the armor is strong enough to stop an impact the person inside it isn't. The only benefit to a suit of power armor stopping a direct hit from a tank shell is that maybe you can hose out the remains of the wearer and give it to the next guy. Impact force alone is going to kill whatever is inside the armor, just like people figured out that the easiest way to deal with plate armor is to just hit it with a hammer until the guy inside is dead.
Power Armor is a vacuum sealed, pressurized space. It protects its wear from the impact by virtue of equalizing the pressure inside the suit. Which is redundant anyway since Space Marines' sweat seals them tightly enough that they can exist in the vacuum of space - see the Black Templars Codex for examples of the various organs and what they do. Unlike the medieval knights in your example who wore plates of thin metal on top of chain links and cloth, the Space Marines are wearing several inches of armor which absorbs and equalizes impacts. Those same medieval warriors could swing hammers at a Space Marine all day all they would accomplish is getting themselves thoroughly worn out.
Look up what happens when large caliber shells impact bunkers (oddly not liquefying the men inside).
Since spacemarines are so incredibly rare that they stoped making sense a long time ago, powerarmour doesn't even need to enter our considerations. Common bodyarmour technology in 40k is roughly comparable to today's bodyarmour technology, sufficient to offer some protection against small arms fire but one shouldn't expect too much of it. So, for most human armies close combat will be just as unusual as it is today. Regarding titans, it is best to see them as venerated idols of the machine god and not as sensible warmachines.
Maniac_nmt wrote: drop a penny on it from orbit and it's a smoking crater (which is all it would really take
That would only be true if the penny was traveling a non-insignificant fraction of the speed of light. Which gravity alone would be incapable of doing, and even magnetic weapons would have a hard time doing (once you get close enough to the speed of light, accelerating more starts to take more energy than you would be able to get if you freaking converted all the mass of the object in to energy directly with 100% efficiency). And with something as small as a penny, there's no guarantee that there'd be enough mass left upon impact to get through the void shields and armor to inflict significant damage.
I'm not arguing that walkers are the ultimate war machine, only that your example is nonsensical.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
KingDeath wrote: Since spacemarines are so incredibly rare that they stoped making sense a long time ago, powerarmour doesn't even need to enter our considerations. Common bodyarmour technology in 40k is roughly comparable to today's bodyarmour technology
No. It's vastly, VASTLY superior to modern bodyarmor.
For less than the wieght of a single modern bulletproof vest, a full set of guard flak armor-- pauldrons, gauntlets, boots, kneeguards, breast and backplate, helmet, and so on-- protects the entire body, and does it against projected energy weapons as well as kinetic ones. And it does it while being far cheaper to produce than our best quality body armor by orders of magnitude.
Even if you're just arguing about protection, a simple flak vest is better than modern body armor because of the range of weapons it is capable of protecting against.
I mean FFS, it's capable of blocking a multilaser shot-- which itself is quite capable of taking down light vehicles-- and it requires something equivalent to a boltgun (a highly advanced, armor piercing two-stage munition which has the advantages of both a traditional gun and a rocket) or better to get through it.
Even if you're just arguing about protection, a simple flak vest is better than modern body armor because of the range of weapons it is capable of protecting against.
I mean FFS, it's capable of blocking a multilaser shot-- which itself is quite capable of taking down light vehicles-- and it requires something equivalent to a boltgun (a highly advanced, armor piercing two-stage munition which has the advantages of both a traditional gun and a rocket) or better to get through it.
That multilasers are ap6 is a game mechanic, nothing more. In all pieces of fluff and the rpgs as well, flak armour provides protection against small arms but won't do much against heavy weapons like machineguns (it will stop an entire point of damage against heavy stubbers in FFG's games...), multilasers or bolters. So, while the technology itself may be more advanced, the amount of protection against basic weapons of the time/setting is more or less the same. You won't expect a piece of flak armour to protect against a heavy stubber round just like you won't expect a piece of modern bodyarmour to offer any serious protection against modern machineguns.
If you want to use FFG, I'd point out that it's quite easy to survive a heavy stubber round while wearing guard flak armor in those games, even if it was a direct hit to the head. You couldn't expect to survive a direct hit from a heavy machinegun IRL, regardless of your body armor (it would go through and liquidate your brain).
So your comparison still breaks down.
Furthermore, modern body armor would provide no protection against directed energy weapons. Flak armor, in comparison, provides quite adequate protection against them-- as proven by its effectiveness against multilasers and lasguns.
Melissia wrote: If you want to use FFG, I'd point out that it's quite easy to survive a heavy stubber round while wearing guard flak armor in those games, even if it was a direct hit to the head. You couldn't expect to survive a direct hit from a heavy machinegun IRL, regardless of your body armor (it would go through and liquidate your brain).
So your comparison still breaks down.
You can even survive that stubber round while being naked in FFG's games just like you can survive a direct battlecannon shell hit in 40k while being naked. On the other hand, the description in FFG's Only War makes it pretty clear: "...Many layers of ablative and impact absorbent material go into making each suit, enough to deflect or negate most low-level attacks such as small arms, shrapnel, and proximity blasts." Flak armour isn't designed to stop heavy weapons but to offer protection against small arms and shrapnell, just like modern bodyarmour.
This is pretty consistent with how flak armour is described in pretty much all of the fluff available to me.
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Melissia wrote: I
Furthermore, modern body armor would provide no protection against directed energy weapons. Flak armor, in comparison, provides quite adequate protection against them-- as proven by its effectiveness against multilasers and lasguns.
Do we have any direct energy weapons to compare the level of protection? Certainly not.
Maniac_nmt wrote: drop a penny on it from orbit and it's a smoking crater (which is all it would really take
That would only be true if the penny was traveling a non-insignificant fraction of the speed of light. Which gravity alone would be incapable of doing, and even magnetic weapons would have a hard time doing (once you get close enough to the speed of light, accelerating more starts to take more energy than you would be able to get if you freaking converted all the mass of the object in to energy directly with 100% efficiency). And with something as small as a penny, there's no guarantee that there'd be enough mass left upon impact to get through the void shields and armor to inflict significant damage.
I'm not arguing that walkers are the ultimate war machine, only that your example is nonsensical.
In reality it is a rod that is fired at the surface, and actually busts the hell out of pretty much everything that would otherwise be impervious to other known weapon systems. The penny was more, albeit poor, analogy of what you are shooting at the planet vs the cost of what a walker that size would be.
Yes everyone isn't packing railguns, just that weapons that can vaporize a titan are not far fetched (plans go back as far as 1944 at least for railguns). It's cheap (outside of power, but that is a moot point given the power sources of 40k given we know we can do it today), basically impossible to defend against, and pretty much makes slow, large targets silly. Raw kinnetic armored bunker busting power ='s dead target. Skipping that go for things like Durendals and older bunker piercing munitions, DPU rounds, etc.
The point being, it doesn't have to make sense from a game or fantasy perspective. Melee doesn't have to make sense if you enjoy the game and the fluff.
I'm an avid comic reader, I can willingly suspend disbelief when Superman picks up a battleship or aircraft carrier. Even though if you could apply that much force over that small an area it would likely tear clean through the hull (or Hulk lifting a mountain and it some how working despite the focal point being the size of his hands).
It should be pointed out that Titans are equipped with multiple Void Shields. While ground-based armaments and non-Titan vehicles certainly exist that are capable of killing a Titan... there's a fethload of shields to shoot down, first, and the Titan is not likely to offer you a second chance.
because despite all the massive technological advances , the average marksman is as accurate as Wikipedia ....and let's face it that's not very accurate.
but failing piss poor shots, anyone can bludgeon the enemy to death, especially with an ax ...with a chainsaw blade.
and any good and well rounded army can adapt to various situations or else it isn't a good army, hence Close combat units in races like the eldar.
KingDeath wrote: Flak armour isn't designed to stop heavy weapons but to offer protection against small arms and shrapnell, just like modern bodyarmour. This is pretty consistent with how flak armour is described in pretty much all of the fluff available to me.
I don't think you understand. It's designed to be effective against 40k small arms.
Not modern small arms, which are pretty tame in comparison to the things used by, say Orks-- Ork shootas are hideously overpowered guns, that make modern assault rifles look like peashooters. Yet flak armor protects against it quite damned well.
KingDeath wrote: IDo we have any direct energy weapons to compare the level of protection? Certainly not.
We do; ours are inefficient and ineffective in comparison. But more importantly, modern body armor is not designed to be effective against directed energy weapons. And it isn't effective against directed energy weapons.
I tend to think the other reason the Astartes in particular have a preference for melee combat is one of logistics. How many bolter rounds can a Legionnaire carry? Adding a chainsword or an axe to his combat loadout allows him to fight for much longer between resupplies. It also makes for easy conservation of ammunition when fighting foes who would be pointlessly and messily overkilled by bolter fire.
Why waste one of the 160 bolter rounds you stepped off the drop pod with to kill a starving, crazy human cultist when you can punch his head off his shoulders, or hack him in two with a gladius?
Also, the armor is so reliant against most small arms fire that many forces don't carry enough additional ammunition to allow them to use their small arms very often without running low on supplies. A sword to the neck fixes that.
To use a historical analogy, during the Satsuma Rebellion in Japan in 1871, the rebelling Samurai of the aforementioned region managed to inflict enormous casualties on the advanced Imperial Army by use of terrain, allowing them to close without overt exposure to cannon and rifle fire; each swordsman can kill several times his number of ranged combatants if he can close. By use of terrain and advanced technologies, Marines of both Loyalist and Traitor variety can use their super-human abilities to their fullest extent in close combat, but even then, most marines spend more time using their boltguns than a chainsword.
I blame you for making me want to play Shogun 2 now.
No ship a boarding action would be taking place in would have a hull that's vulnerable to small arms fire.
All ships are vunerable to small arms fire in a universe where small arms include melta/plasma/fusion weapons.
Boarding actions are generally executed against crafts designed to take at least some punishment from ship-mounted weapons. Deliberate effort aside, a boarding party isn't going to be piercing a hull easily.
It is also why killing foes in CC is far more effective to morale than shooting them is. It forces action to happen for a game.
The lore of 40K is built around the game.
A futuristic combat scenario would make for a terrible game. Think about playing the US military in a game today.
An unmanned drone flies over the target. Sometimes the drone has a missile. Target defeated. Otherwise, someone ELSE just fires a long range missile. Target defeated.
But, tanks! Enjoy combat without movement. Because the range at which a tank can engage a target makes movement as a game mechanic pointless.
This leaves only house to house small unit actions as the only playable game for the modern US military.
Now just add 50 years of technology. Or 100. Think how far military tech increased from 1900 to 1950.
Add 20,000 years.
The ONLY reason 40K works as a game is utterly and completely ignoring this concept.
It is also why killing foes in CC is far more effective to morale than shooting them is. It forces action to happen for a game.
The lore of 40K is built around the game.
A futuristic combat scenario would make for a terrible game. Think about playing the US military in a game today.
An unmanned drone flies over the target. Sometimes the drone has a missile. Target defeated. Otherwise, someone ELSE just fires a long range missile. Target defeated.
But, tanks! Enjoy combat without movement. Because the range at which a tank can engage a target makes movement as a game mechanic pointless.
This leaves only house to house small unit actions as the only playable game for the modern US military.
Now just add 50 years of technology. Or 100. Think how far military tech increased from 1900 to 1950.
Add 20,000 years.
The ONLY reason 40K works as a game is utterly and completely ignoring this concept.
That's a fair point. However, would extended, infinite total war not force armies to revert into some more primitive, yet sustainable, warfare style? Drones, supertrained high-tech soldiers, clever missiles and jet-tanks are not cheap and easy things to create and maintain, not in big, unending masses for sure.
Spoiler:
(Spoiler incoming!)
If you have read World War Z, you will have found this interesting idea: modern armies have to reform and to revert to old-fashioned, cheaper doctrines because they have to, suddenly and unexpectedly, face an enemy (almost inexhaustable zombie hordes) way different than what they were designed to fight in the first place (other modern forces, guerrilla irregulars or Third World obsolete armies, most of the time). Fire lines, foot marches and hand to hand combat return to the battlefield. Expensive and complicated ultramodern planes, vehicles and armaments of all kind are quickly forgotten, as they kill to few zombies for what they require.
Of course, this doesn't mean that everybody needs to go Waterloo in the 41st Millenium, but leaves some decent place for regressive tactics and, ultimately, strategies. And there is also some niche there for hacking & slashing with chainsaws.
BlaxicanX wrote: What is the source for the power of an ork shoota?
In tabletop, Shootas have the same strength as a boltgun, but less penetrative power. That's right-- shootas do generally similar damage as a .75 cal shell which explodes after penetrating its target. And it does it without necessarily having the explosive aspect of it-- it's just an oversized, overpowered gun. In Black Library fiction, they're described as hideously overpowered weapons, often "crude bolters" (Ciaphas Cain series) and other similar descriptors.
Crude, oversized, and absurdly powerful. The Orky way.
Melissia wrote: Crude, oversized, and absurdly powerful. The Orky way.
And at least in FFGs Rogue Trader perfectly usable for anyone, though for some funny reason they tend to be unreliable if not used by an Ork.
That's because it's the Orky gestalt psychic field that keeps it functional on some sort of reliable level. In the hands of any non-Ork, however, it's not as stable, and prone to malfunction. This is why you have to be an Ork to get a red one to go faster.
Melissia wrote: Crude, oversized, and absurdly powerful. The Orky way.
And at least in FFGs Rogue Trader perfectly usable for anyone, though for some funny reason they tend to be unreliable if not used by an Ork.
That's because it's the Orky gestalt psychic field that keeps it functional on some sort of reliable level. In the hands of any non-Ork, however, it's not as stable, and prone to malfunction. This is why you have to be an Ork to get a red one to go faster.
Iz becuz yoo 'oomies too klumzy to 'andle sofistikated Orkish taknolagy. Yooz not got da touch.
Maniac_nmt wrote: drop a penny on it from orbit and it's a smoking crater (which is all it would really take
That would only be true if the penny was traveling a non-insignificant fraction of the speed of light. Which gravity alone would be incapable of doing, and even magnetic weapons would have a hard time doing (once you get close enough to the speed of light, accelerating more starts to take more energy than you would be able to get if you freaking converted all the mass of the object in to energy directly with 100% efficiency). And with something as small as a penny, there's no guarantee that there'd be enough mass left upon impact to get through the void shields and armor to inflict significant damage.
I'm not arguing that walkers are the ultimate war machine, only that your example is nonsensical.
Maybe he was thinking of a Rods from God - style weapon, but yeah, dropping a penny from earth orbit and disregarding any atomsphere gives it roughly a staggering 0,00000003 kiloton in kinetic energy...or put otherwise, 30 kJ, which equals the calorific value of about 24 Snickers bars. I'm pretty sure i could eat that without turning into a crater. Alternatively, it's the kinetic energy of a 3-ton truck...going at jogging speed. Huh. And again, thats on a vacuumed earth.
Tl,dr: Check your physics, kids!
Boarding actions are generally executed against crafts designed to take at least some punishment from ship-mounted weapons. Deliberate effort aside, a boarding party isn't going to be piercing a hull easily.
So you are saying the majority of ships in the 40k universe have hulls built to withstand a hit from a macro battery and have absolutely no weak points where a stray melta shot could cause an issue?
So you are saying the majority of ships in the 40k universe have hulls built to withstand a hit from a macro battery and have absolutely no weak points where a stray melta shot could cause an issue?
On the hull? I'd say no. Near the reactor or gellar field generator or some such it might do significant damage but that'd be well inside the ship.
people seem to forget, that it is entirly possible to have a CC enemy be up in your face before you even know they are there,
at close range, your guns are pretty much worthless, can injure your own comrades, and a deft close combat weapon can simply turn the barrel away from your target, or damage the weapon.
within 10' or so, melee beats pistol, many cops have training courses just to imprint that fact on them, you just cannot draw, aim and shoot that fast.
and while most modern weapons are certainly CAPABLE of shooting up to 1km, most engagments are at sub 300m, and it is much harder to hit a moving target at any range then you think... MUCH MUCH MUCH harder...
dont believe me? set up a laterally running target at 50m, moving 5-7 clicks, and see how long it takes you to hit it. Its not as easy as you think.
some foes atttack in such #'s, that you run out of ammo before you run out of foes, so while your bolter has a 30 rnd clip in it, your sword keeps going until you get tired (which for some characters, is days and days)
modern times, the emphasis is definetly on ranged, but there are plenty of real world, modern examples of battles or engagments where CC was very important to the outcome.
in a future where armour, and the means to get up close are much improved, it makes perfect sense to see more melee.
Boarding actions are generally executed against crafts designed to take at least some punishment from ship-mounted weapons. Deliberate effort aside, a boarding party isn't going to be piercing a hull easily.
So you are saying the majority of ships in the 40k universe have hulls built to withstand a hit from a macro battery and have absolutely no weak points where a stray melta shot could cause an issue?
I think your position here is based on the notion that melta guns are just really damned powerful weapons, which is of course accurate if we're talking about tanks on the ground. The problem with this is, I would expect ship weaponry capable severely outclassing a man-portable melta weapon, and typical ship armor to be appropriately robust(again, this is in the context of crafts that would be targets of boarding actions in the first place).
Multiple, well-aimed melta gun shots against such hulls could work, but regardless, that's not an argument against use of ranged weapons in general during a board action.
Boarding actions are generally executed against crafts designed to take at least some punishment from ship-mounted weapons. Deliberate effort aside, a boarding party isn't going to be piercing a hull easily.
So you are saying the majority of ships in the 40k universe have hulls built to withstand a hit from a macro battery and have absolutely no weak points where a stray melta shot could cause an issue?
Once the void shields fail they don't withstand hits, they penetrate the hull and tear their way through the decks. The reason they survive the hit is because the ships are so damn big it takes a lot of shots to seriously cripple them.
easysauce wrote: within 10' or so, melee beats pistol, many cops have training courses just to imprint that fact on them, you just cannot draw, aim and shoot that fast.
Yes, but that's because police aren't allowed to carry their guns drawn at all times and call in an airstrike on anything that looks vaguely threatening. The guy with a knife is only really a threat because the cop has to wait until he's has crossed the legal line. That isn't a problem in 40k, where even the Tau are perfectly willing to shoot first and ask questions later once the shooting begins.
and while most modern weapons are certainly CAPABLE of shooting up to 1km, most engagments are at sub 300m, and it is much harder to hit a moving target at any range then you think... MUCH MUCH MUCH harder...
Sure. But 300m would be 12.5 feet at true 28mm scale. That's significantly longer range than a tank's main gun in 40k rules-wise. Which just demonstrates what I said earlier: melee only works in the tabletop game because weapon ranges and movement speed are not to scale.
some foes atttack in such #'s, that you run out of ammo before you run out of foes, so while your bolter has a 30 rnd clip in it, your sword keeps going until you get tired (which for some characters, is days and days)
But that's just stupid tactics. If you have a horde of a million orks you nuke it and kill them all with a single bomb. You don't send in a bunch of guys with rifles and swords. Which is problem #2 with the tabletop game, GW doesn't accurately represent the firepower of heavy weapons and WMDs.
Trondheim wrote: Because many armies like Nids and Orks are almost without numbers, and tends to swarm their enemies. When dealing with such foes you need to be abel to figth in close combat. That and the fact that combat is rittualized, and battels can be won or lost with the outcome of a single duel between leaders or champions.
I like the point about the Leaders outcomes and how important a 1v1 duel is so important.
I learned this the hard way.
My Tyranid friend threw his swarm lord at my Warboss with the insta kill powerklaw nd I didn't make the wound. The swarm lord killed he Warboss and finished off my Lootas and ork boys...
I agree on the bit about Heavy Weapons but WMDs in 40k are called Exterminatus, ie, blow the planet up. Which is bad because you need the planet. As stated.
Even a modern nuclear warhead would leave the area inhospitanle without Radiation gear which is too expensive to waste on lowly grunts and workers. Hence, you lose irreplacable land which you can't afford.
I agree on the bit about Heavy Weapons but WMDs in 40k are called Exterminatus, ie, blow the planet up. Which is bad because you need the planet. As stated.
Even a modern nuclear warhead would leave the area inhospitanle without Radiation gear which is too expensive to waste on lowly grunts and workers. Hence, you lose irreplacable land which you can't afford.
There would be plenty of solutions before Exterminatus even becomes an option option.
Veteran Sergeant wrote:If 40K has Future Rifles, and Future Tanks, and Future Artillery, and Future Airplanes and Future Grenades and Future Bombs, then contextually Future Swords seem somewhat questionable to use, since it means crossing Future Open Space to get Future Shot At.
Well, I think 40k took much influence from Dune, where void shield and force fields gives many units strong protection against ranged weapons.
Strong psykers can even use telekenis to stop a bolt round dead in mid flight, and hold it there, and lasgun and autorifle shots bounce off power armor like nothing.
-Volsung- wrote: Well, I think 40k took much influence from Dune, where void shield and force fields gives many units strong protection against ranged weapons.
Strong psykers can even use telekenis to stop a bolt round dead in mid flight, and hold it there, and lasgun and autorifle shots bounce off power armor like nothing.
Very, very few units on foot in the setting have access to energy shields of any kind.
Deadshot wrote: I agree on the bit about Heavy Weapons but WMDs in 40k are called Exterminatus, ie, blow the planet up. Which is bad because you need the planet. As stated.
You're forgetting about tactical nuclear weapons. You know, the kind that just kill everything within a mile or two radius with no real effect on the planet as a whole.
Even a modern nuclear warhead would leave the area inhospitanle without Radiation gear which is too expensive to waste on lowly grunts and workers. Hence, you lose irreplacable land which you can't afford.
Everything in 40k is already inhospitable. Over and over again the fluff brags about how grimdark it is that you have billions of people crammed into giant planet-scale factories where they never see sunlight, and everything outside the factory is a toxic waste dump. For example, the entire war for Armageddon: everything outside the hive cities is already an inhospitable wasteland, so just nuke the orks until there aren't any left and be done with it.
The B53 nuclear bomb, the largest the USA ever built, has a blast radius of 2,580 km square. You'd have to drop over 59,000 of those to affect every part of the earth.
They may have bigger bombs or bigger planets or whatever in the future, but the point of this post is that its a hell of a lot harder to 'glass a planet' or purge a planet of enemies than one might think. It won't work for the same reason no amount of artillery could win WW1 on its own without the foot sloggers to back it up (and believe me, they tried to do this)
In real life, I highly doubt there would be that much CC, but for the sake of keeping the actual game fun with some different combat styles there just is.
The B53 nuclear bomb, the largest the USA ever built, has a blast radius of 2,580 km square. You'd have to drop over 59,000 of those to affect every part of the earth.
They may have bigger bombs or bigger planets or whatever in the future, but the point of this post is that its a hell of a lot harder to 'glass a planet' or purge a planet of enemies than one might think. It won't work for the same reason no amount of artillery could win WW1 on its own without the foot sloggers to back it up (and believe me, they tried to do this)
Besides, it'd leave the place radioactive if it was a nuclear weapon, and that invites heretical things like mutation-- to say nothing of the fact taht it'd be hard to make the planet productive afterwards even in the event of a non-NBC weapon!
Better to sacrifice half a billion guardsmen and take the planet with relatively little harm done to its ecosystem and industrial base, than to just destroy the planet's surface.
Why is melee combat so popular? Because Rogue Trader was originally adapted from Warhammer fantasy. The two were so similar that vehicles had toughness stats, wounds, and armor saves.
You are essentially asking "why does this make sense" with something that you should just be accepting as fact inside of a fiction. Pick a reason why it works and stop bothering your head with it.
Edit.. nvm I just realized that is what this forum is for.. maybe I should go somewhere else.
The B53 nuclear bomb, the largest the USA ever built, has a blast radius of 2,580 km square. You'd have to drop over 59,000 of those to affect every part of the earth.
They may have bigger bombs or bigger planets or whatever in the future, but the point of this post is that its a hell of a lot harder to 'glass a planet' or purge a planet of enemies than one might think. It won't work for the same reason no amount of artillery could win WW1 on its own without the foot sloggers to back it up (and believe me, they tried to do this)
Nuclear weapons are conventional arms to the Imperium. When they want to "glass a planet" they use torpedoes that detonate the planet's core and cause it to, literally, shatter. Or one that turns all organic matter into hydrogen gas, which causes the atmosphere to ignite.
Psienesis wrote: Nuclear weapons are conventional arms to the Imperium.
Nah. Nukes aren't regularly used on planets that they actually want to save. Too much pollution from the fallout, reduces the value of the planet too much.
They have cleaner weapons with more effectiveness.
Psienesis wrote: Nuclear weapons are conventional arms to the Imperium.
Nah. Nukes aren't regularly used on planets that they actually want to save. Too much pollution from the fallout, reduces the value of the planet too much.
They have cleaner weapons with more effectiveness.
And as far as I know, they also have forbidden the use of Nukes.
Melissia wrote: They have cleaner weapons with more effectiveness.
Got any examples of such weapons? Weapons that don't just outright destroy the planet, I mean. Something on a similar scale to a nuclear bomb. This is something that I've been needing to look into.
calgar 2.5 wrote: And as far as I know, they also have forbidden the use of Nukes.
Pretty sure most of the ship-to-ship torpedoes that are used in Naval engagements are nuclear, if they aren't of some other stated payload (plasma, boarding, etc.). They'd almost have to be, what with armor plating on a battleship being meters thick of plasma-forged admantium and other space-magic materials and the like. Conventional explosives, even delivered by a thirty-meter-long, ten-meter-wide torpedo just isn't going to cut it.
I am surprised how involved the discussion is over the OP's original question. I have read quite a few good points, nice thread.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I am surprised how involved the discussion is over the OP's original question. I have read quite a few good points, nice thread.
That's a fair point. However, would extended, infinite total war not force armies to revert into some more primitive, yet sustainable, warfare style? Drones, supertrained high-tech soldiers, clever missiles and jet-tanks are not cheap and easy things to create and maintain, not in big, unending masses for sure.
Spoiler:
(Spoiler incoming!)
If you have read World War Z, you will have found this interesting idea: modern armies have to reform and to revert to old-fashioned, cheaper doctrines because they have to, suddenly and unexpectedly, face an enemy (almost inexhaustable zombie hordes) way different than what they were designed to fight in the first place (other modern forces, guerrilla irregulars or Third World obsolete armies, most of the time). Fire lines, foot marches and hand to hand combat return to the battlefield. Expensive and complicated ultramodern planes, vehicles and armaments of all kind are quickly forgotten, as they kill to few zombies for what they require.
Of course, this doesn't mean that everybody needs to go Waterloo in the 41st Millenium, but leaves some decent place for regressive tactics and, ultimately, strategies. And there is also some niche there for hacking & slashing with chainsaws.
I would doubt it. Much of human history has been a perpetual state of warfare in some way, shape, or form. The Pax Romana was still a period of wars along the Roman frontiers, and the Dark and Middle Ages saw lots of conflict across the globe. Warfare adapted and advanced continuously, not regressed.
It is a popular misconception that the world went completely backwards in the 'Dark Ages'. Much was lost, but in other ways much also moved forward. Metal forging leapt forward, ship building, even construction concepts jumped ahead in various ways (crop rotation cycles changed and became more advanced, understanding of forms and architecture moved forward, etc). There was simply a lack of a firm centralizing power to allow for paved roads and thousand mile long aqueducts.
The Normans advanced cavalry warfare, fighting dicipline, the crossbow, siege weapons, and other methods of war that would be like going from a biplane to a fighter jet.
I have not read WWZ, but it wouldn't require tremendously backward thinking. Fuel Air bombs would be brilliant. Flash fry a square mile of zombies making for total and complete incineration (as in nothing but ashes left). Cluster muntions, explosive rounds, etc. Plenty of 'high tech' would work extremely well at fighting zombies without massive regression. Tactics would change, sure, but going completely primitive wouldn't be necessary.
There's an upcoming movie (edge of tomorrow) based on a brilliant book called "All you need is kill" where the best way to survive future combat is with melee weapons, as guns will eventually run out of ammo.
At some point, you just have to hit someone over the head with a hammer!
Umn... I have been in combat. I can shoot my M4 and hit a guy at 200 to 300 meters if I'm lucky, if I don't miss, if I see him in time. They will use pinning fire and sweep our flank, we might get rolled by dudes with RPG... it sucks. My FISTER can call down death on anybody within ten miles that he can visualize in his head, all he has to know is where they are at. Nomatter how good my fire support or personal weapon, it always comes down to assaulting the position or the building to take it away from the 'bad dudes.' The donkey-cave has to be merc'd, arrested or run away for the combat to stop... So even with the most advanced long range weaponry conceived by man it will always come down to the assault.
Imagine that you're a Space Marine, one of the most valuable and valiant warriors in the galaxy, tasked with clearing a Space Hulk. You're teleported in, and are immediately swarmed by Genestealers, then you realise: You have no melee weapon because guns are so advanced! And then you're dead. Wrong. You have a big-ass goddamn chainsword, and you're all like: VRRRNHHHHGHHGHGHH and you kill them because you're badass. 'nuff said.
Because when you are faced with enemies that are hard to kill (necrons), enemies that can warp in and out of reality (demons), and enemies who greatly outnumber you (orks and tyranids, the former of which the IoM commonly face), it's nice to be trained in the way of the pointy stick for when you inevitably run out of ammunition.
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: Orks and Necrons shrug off any number of small holes in their bodies, so the only way to guarantee a kill is to eviscerate them.
Yep, and it turns out swords, axes and maces are very good at that. You could just use a bigger gun, but then you will run out of ammo, and then be forced to use it as a club.
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: Orks and Necrons shrug off any number of small holes in their bodies, so the only way to guarantee a kill is to eviscerate them.
Yep, and it turns out swords, axes and maces are very good at that. You could just use a bigger gun, but then you will run out of ammo, and then be forced to use it as a club.
Plenty of ranged weapons in the setting are capable of causing equal or greater tissue damage than say a chainsword.
The example of terminators against genestealers makes enough sense but that's in contrast with the likes of guardsmen officers and eldar walking around swinging swords.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Because when you are faced with enemies that are hard to kill (necrons), enemies that can warp in and out of reality (demons), and enemies who greatly outnumber you (orks and tyranids, the former of which the IoM commonly face), it's nice to be trained in the way of the pointy stick for when you inevitably run out of ammunition.
In close combat they still outnumber you and they are still tough. The only difference is that now they can actualy hit back. Engaging in close combat against creatures which are basicaly engineered to do so is foolish and the wise IG sarge will leave the chainsword at home and rather carries a few aditional belts for is squad support mg
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Because when you are faced with enemies that are hard to kill (necrons), enemies that can warp in and out of reality (demons), and enemies who greatly outnumber you (orks and tyranids, the former of which the IoM commonly face), it's nice to be trained in the way of the pointy stick for when you inevitably run out of ammunition.
In close combat they still outnumber you and they are still tough. The only difference is that now they can actualy hit back. Engaging in close combat against creatures which are basicaly engineered to do so is foolish and the wise IG sarge will leave the chainsword at home and rather carries a few aditional belts for is squad support mg
Orks can loose the upper part of their head and quadrants of their chest. Necrons can have a ruptured chest, a missing head, a missing abdomen, and they'll still keep attacking.
Bigger guns or more ammo wont do much against a necron, but they are very slow and not that physically strong. Why not take advantage of that?
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Because when you are faced with enemies that are hard to kill (necrons), enemies that can warp in and out of reality (demons), and enemies who greatly outnumber you (orks and tyranids, the former of which the IoM commonly face), it's nice to be trained in the way of the pointy stick for when you inevitably run out of ammunition.
In close combat they still outnumber you and they are still tough. The only difference is that now they can actualy hit back. Engaging in close combat against creatures which are basicaly engineered to do so is foolish and the wise IG sarge will leave the chainsword at home and rather carries a few aditional belts for is squad support mg
Orks can loose the upper part of their head and quadrants of their chest. Necrons can have a ruptured chest, a missing head, a missing abdomen, and they'll still keep attacking.
Bigger guns or more ammo wont do much against a necron, but they are very slow and not that physically strong. Why not take advantage of that?
Take advantage how? Wading through massed fire from arguably the deadliest weaponry *in the galaxy*, somehow surviving to get close enough to knock down a few Necrons before they overwhelm you? If we accept that conventional ranged weapons in the setting are sometimes not-quite-effective against Necrons, then it follows that any melee weapon short of a power weapon isn't going to fare well in the hands of anything less than a space marine.
I feel like against Necrons, use of mobile and relatively hardy combatants(space marines w/ jump packs) could work, but I would imagine any other unit type would be flayed from afar or otherwise cut off, out-flanked, and *then* disintegrated alive.
The solution to durable opponents isn't to bring a sword (which won't cause more damage than a bolter anyway), it's to bring more artillery and nuclear weapons.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Because when you are faced with enemies that are hard to kill (necrons), enemies that can warp in and out of reality (demons), and enemies who greatly outnumber you (orks and tyranids, the former of which the IoM commonly face), it's nice to be trained in the way of the pointy stick for when you inevitably run out of ammunition.
In close combat they still outnumber you and they are still tough. The only difference is that now they can actualy hit back. Engaging in close combat against creatures which are basicaly engineered to do so is foolish and the wise IG sarge will leave the chainsword at home and rather carries a few aditional belts for is squad support mg
Orks can loose the upper part of their head and quadrants of their chest. Necrons can have a ruptured chest, a missing head, a missing abdomen, and they'll still keep attacking.
Bigger guns or more ammo wont do much against a necron, but they are very slow and not that physically strong. Why not take advantage of that?
Take advantage how? Wading through massed fire from arguably the deadliest weaponry *in the galaxy*, somehow surviving to get close enough to knock down a few Necrons before they overwhelm you? If we accept that conventional ranged weapons in the setting are sometimes not-quite-effective against Necrons, then it follows that any melee weapon short of a power weapon isn't going to fare well in the hands of anything less than a space marine.
I feel like against Necrons, use of mobile and relatively hardy combatants(space marines w/ jump packs) could work, but I would imagine any other unit type would be flayed from afar or otherwise cut off, out-flanked, and *then* disintegrated alive.
That's one man killing 3 necrons before going down and we at the max of their current numbers still outnumber them more than 100 to 1.
They are also pretty slow to aim. They rely a lot on people being petrified of them.
Pretty big win, without a doubt.
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: That's one man killing 3 Necrons before going down and we at the max of their current numbers still outnumber them more than 100 to 1.
I take it you're referring to guardsmen, given that ratio.
First of all, I meant exactly what I said by 'knock down' -- an unaugmented human lacking a power weapon just isn't going to be able to take out even a basic Necron warrior quickly enough to make fighting them at close range anywhere near feasible at scale.
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: They are also pretty slow to aim. They rely a lot on people being petrified of them.
No, they rely on exceedingly dangerous weaponry, disturbingly survivable warriors, and physics-defying technological marvels. I'll accept Necron warriors aren't particularly deft, but they're certainly quick enough to slaughter normal humans in flak armor running up to bang their bayonets and ceremonial sabers against their metal bodies.
And that's without mentioning wraiths, flayed ones, and other units that would stop an assault like that cold.
From marines? Naw flayed ones are chumps to Death Company. You do know every imperium knife is at the very least mono molecular edged right? It would penetrate with repeated hits pretty easily. Power swords would go it through like a superheated knife through butter. Power weapons are rarely not overkill.
If every man and their granddad became a marine (happened in the crusades, seriously look up how easy it was to get accepted, and the surgery isn't demanding at all) the necrons would no longer pose a threat. Nor would anything else.....and we wouldn't have a story.......but whatever.
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: If every man and their granddad became a marine (happened in the crusades, seriously look up how easy it was to get accepted, and the surgery isn't demanding at all) the necrons would no longer pose a threat. Nor would anything else.....and we wouldn't have a story.......but whatever.
At least until the Necrons deployed their version of tactical nuclear weapons, at which point the only difference between a guardsman and a marine is that the dead marine cost more.
From marines? Naw flayed ones are chumps to Death Company. You do know every imperium knife is at the very least mono molecular edged right? It would penetrate with repeated hits pretty easily. Power swords would go it through like a superheated knife through butter. Power weapons are rarely not overkill.
If every man and their granddad became a marine (happened in the crusades, seriously look up how easy it was to get accepted, and the surgery isn't demanding at all) the necrons would no longer pose a threat. Nor would anything else.....and we wouldn't have a story.......but whatever.
Even during the great crusade only the most capable and healthy warriors became space marines. The selection process and the surgery are demanding as the death of most of Russ's older jarls shows (think it was mentioned in Wolf at the Door).
Peregrine wrote: The solution to durable opponents isn't to bring a sword (which won't cause more damage than a bolter anyway), it's to bring more artillery and nuclear weapons.
Why anyone would even bother fighting with sticks and stones when you got weapons like these is beyond me. Though this is WarHammer40k, so I guess I could let it pass …
Psienesis wrote: Dropping a nuke on the Necrons leaves you with nothing but radioactive killer robots.
Necrodermis gives not one single feth about your radiation.
You… you do know now what happens when an atomic weapon is detonated right? Everything that isn’t turn asunder by the massive shockwave of the blast is instead turned into dust, or in the case of Necrons, just molten slag.
Because the chainsword epitomizes everything that is 40K. That's why until 3rd edition, every army except the Tyranids has access to it as a hand-to-hand weapon.
Redcruisair wrote: You… you do know now what happens when an atomic weapon is detonated right? Everything that isn’t turn asunder by the massive shockwave of the blast is instead turned into dust, or in the case of Necrons, just molten slag.
They would have to spend time reconstructing themselves first, and would likely need additional materials due to the heat vaporizing some of their mass.
Or, to put it clearer, they'd teleport back the necrodermis slag and repair it, THEN send it back in to combat.
Ya know people wonder how guardsmen would even bother with melee against necrons and it just makes me remember the movie Battle Los Angeles. Remember in the final battle scene when the air force chick rams a bayonet into a xeno and just pulls the trigger? That's how I always imagined guardsmen doing most of their melee combat.
Redcruisair wrote: You… you do know now what happens when an atomic weapon is detonated right? Everything that isn’t turn asunder by the massive shockwave of the blast is instead turned into dust, or in the case of Necrons, just molten slag.
And then they'd proceed to get back up.
Your point being? Nuking the Crons would sill be the more cost efficient way of combating them.
One reason is because in the 41st millennium, Armor tech>Ranged tech.
This has always been a paradigm in human history. When ranged weapons are superior to armor, nobody wears armor and the emphasis is on ranged weapons. When armor is superior to ranged, we swing to where melee is the preferred form.
I predict we will have another swing back towards melee combat sometime in the next century or so. As body armor becomes more effective at stopping bullets, we'll have the first suits of power armor. Which will require nothing short of anti-tank weapons or very high powered rounds to penetrate. But you can still come up an stick a knife in the joints. This may result in melee weapons besides trench knives being issued. Even if its just a bigger knife and more emphasis on melee techniques beyond the current "last resort" stance on the subject.
Psienesis wrote: Dropping a nuke on the Necrons leaves you with nothing but radioactive killer robots.
Necrodermis gives not one single feth about your radiation.
... Sometimes I wonder if the stuff some of you guys post is serious, lol.
Do you even Hiroshima bro?
look at this picture of ground zero at Hiroshima. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hiroshima_aftermath.jpg You will notice that Concrete buildings are still standing and look pretty well intact. Concrete. a material invented by the Romans over 2000 years ago.
Necrodermis is super space robot metal. Made by a race who has utter mastery of the physical universe that some can even travel through time. they put their freakin souls into metal bodies that repair themselves.
So aside from the heat at the actual point of detonation, I doubt a nuke would have any other ill effects. Yes, I'll give the race with mastery over the physical universe some credit to being smarter than we are.
Grey Templar wrote: I predict we will have another swing back towards melee combat sometime in the next century or so. As body armor becomes more effective at stopping bullets, we'll have the first suits of power armor. Which will require nothing short of anti-tank weapons or very high powered rounds to penetrate.
Real life “power armour” is noisy, clunky, expensive and damn impractical to wear in a warzone. The idea of using such armour in, say, very limited numbers for an elite force, would still be bank-brakeingly expensive and pointless.
Weapons and body armor in our modern world are really overinflated as to their price because of the way defense contracts work. If the market for weapons was truly a free market the expenses would be way down.
And you say "is" like we already have power armor. We don't to my knowledge. And who's to say it will be noisy, clunky, and impractical. If we had Space Marine PA we'd use it in a heartbeat.
It's also METAL, not concrete. Concrete is very, very good at absorbing heat, and it is extremely difficult to melt. Metal is very good at conducting it, and it is quite easy to melt.
Lasguns are capable of tearing apart necrodermis. A nuke delivers far, FAR more energy than a lasgun.
Grey Templar wrote: And you say "is" like we already have power armor. We don't to my knowledge. And who's to say it will be noisy, clunky, and impractical.
Power armour, or powered exoskeleton as it is more commonly know as, is a real life thing. Try google it.
Weapons and body armor in our modern world are really overinflated as to their price because of the way defense contracts work. If the market for weapons was truly a free market the expenses would be way down.
Grey Templar wrote:
look at this picture of ground zero at Hiroshima. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hiroshima_aftermath.jpg You will notice that Concrete buildings are still standing and look pretty well intact. Concrete. a material invented by the Romans over 2000 years ago.
Necrodermis is super space robot metal. Made by a race who has utter mastery of the physical universe that some can even travel through time. they put their freakin souls into metal bodies that repair themselves.
So aside from the heat at the actual point of detonation, I doubt a nuke would have any other ill effects. Yes, I'll give the race with mastery over the physical universe some credit to being smarter than we are.
The thing is, how many buildings are missing? How close is that site to ground zero? Etc. We don't really know what caused some building to be flattened, and others to survive. Perhaps some of the standing structures were sheltered by other structures in front of them that deflected the blast around the building behind it and absorbed some of it. Concrete is also fairly good at absorbing and resisting heat stresses. Maybe the pictures are from areas further out from ground zero. How many doors, or windows are left? Just about zero.
Remember, Necrons are still anthropomorphic. Which means they are built around joints. Joints are typically weak points in any structure. When you attempt to damage a solid external door, you don't shoot a hole in the middle of it. You attempt to destroy the hinges, or the latching mechanism, and then dislodge the door. So yeah, the Necrodermis might survive. But of course, then you have a bunch of disassembled Necron pieces lying around that were ripped apart by the force of the blast.
Nothing's a sure thing, but if boltguns and lasguns can disable Necrons, the force and heat of a nuclear blast will easily destroy them.
Most of the buildings in any Japanese city at the time were wooden. and those are the buildings that aren't there anymore.
That picture was taken at more or less ground zero from what I understand. A location where a building protecting another would be more or less negligible as far as damage was concerned(because the bomb detonated in the air roughly 600 meters above the ground)
I don't argue that the direct blast wouldn't cause harm, but anything other than a direct blast would accomplish nothing. So maybe a hundred meters of obliterated necrons and another hundred or so of necrons that have been tossed around a bit(missing a few limbs), but anything beyond that wouldn't be adversely effected by the blast itself. Debris is another issue entirely of course.
It be nowhere near as devastating as it would be on any sort of living army. Not even half as devastating.
The one guy was just suggesting there'd be a bunch of glowing robots, and that's all. It's kinda silly, because it assumes that the destructive properties of nuclear weapons are based on radiation, and not on heat and kinetic energy. Radiation is just a side effect.
Also, the Hiroshima bomb is tiny compared to modern nuclear weapons. Little Boy was a Fission bomb and produced a blast of 16 kilotons.
The very first Fusion bomb produced a blast equivalent to around 10 megatons. That's a bit under a thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Now consider the largest Fusion bomb ever detonated on Earth, Tsar Bomba. This bomb produced a yield of 50 Megatons, so 5 thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. This bomb produced a fireball 3.5km in radius. It is estimated that if dropped on a city, it would cause complete destruction over a 35km radius.
Now imagine a future where nuclear testing was not banned, where you had entire planets on which to test your bombs. How big could one get?
Redcruisair wrote: You… you do know now what happens when an atomic weapon is detonated right? Everything that isn’t turn asunder by the massive shockwave of the blast is instead turned into dust, or in the case of Necrons, just molten slag.
And then they'd proceed to get back up.
It's very hard to "get back up" when you've been vaporized entirely. And if Necrons are just shrugging off nukes and getting back up what exactly do you think you're going to do to them with a chainsword?
A Town Called Malus wrote: Also, the Hiroshima bomb is tiny compared to modern nuclear weapons. Little Boy was a Fission bomb and produced a blast of 16 kilotons.
The very first Fusion bomb produced a blast equivalent to around 10 megatons. That's a bit under a thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Now consider the largest Fusion bomb ever detonated on Earth, Tsar Bomba. This bomb produced a yield of 50 Megatons, so 5 thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. This bomb produced a fireball 3.5km in radius. It is estimated that if dropped on a city, it would cause complete destruction over a 35km radius.
Now imagine a future where nuclear testing was not banned, where you had entire planets on which to test your bombs. How big could one get?
Well, you would be limited. The best you could realistically want to strive for would be a bomb that reaches all points on the horizon. So a dozen or so bombs to eliminate an entire planet in nuclear fire. But planets aren't cheap so such a massive bomb would be of limited use.
It's very hard to "get back up" when you've been vaporized entirely. And if Necrons are just shrugging off nukes and getting back up what exactly do you think you're going to do to them with a chainsword?
Cut them in half.
A Space Marine's strength delivered by a point of impact a single molecule thick is going to be able to cut through things a nuke could not penetrate.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Also, the Hiroshima bomb is tiny compared to modern nuclear weapons. Little Boy was a Fission bomb and produced a blast of 16 kilotons.
The very first Fusion bomb produced a blast equivalent to around 10 megatons. That's a bit under a thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Now consider the largest Fusion bomb ever detonated on Earth, Tsar Bomba. This bomb produced a yield of 50 Megatons, so 5 thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. This bomb produced a fireball 3.5km in radius. It is estimated that if dropped on a city, it would cause complete destruction over a 35km radius.
Now imagine a future where nuclear testing was not banned, where you had entire planets on which to test your bombs. How big could one get?
Well, you would be limited. The best you could realistically want to strive for would be a bomb that reaches all points on the horizon. So a dozen or so bombs to eliminate an entire planet in nuclear fire. But planets aren't cheap so such a massive bomb would be of limited use.
But we're not talking about destroying an entire planet, they already have planet-killer stuff. We're talking about decimating the entire enemy army in as an efficient way as possible.
Using a nuke, or equivalent weapon, isn't always an option however.
As I said before, planets aren't replaceable. but people are.
Its better for the Imperium in the long run to spend 10 years reclaiming a planet and lose a billion soldiers doing it that to spend 2 weeks nuking the entire planet from orbit. Bodies are the Imperium's most available asset, time being the second.
They aren't to waste a perfectly good planet just so they can win the war quicker. Exterminatus is only used in the most dire of circumstances where the planet is a total loss and its best to destroy it than let the enemy have it.
Best to fight for 10 years and have a mostly usable planet then to win the war in a week but have to wait a thousand years for the planet to stop glowing.
Void__Dragon wrote: A Space Marine's strength delivered by a point of impact a single molecule thick is going to be able to cut through things a nuke could not penetrate.
Lol, no. A close-range nuke is going to vaporize any known substance. As in "nothing left". Compared to that a chainsword is a joke.
Also, if a Necron can reassemble itself after being vaporized by a nuke then what exactly is the point in cutting it in half?
Grey Templar wrote: Its better for the Imperium in the long run to spend 10 years reclaiming a planet and lose a billion soldiers doing it that to spend 2 weeks nuking the entire planet from orbit.
But we're talking about tactical nuclear weapons here, not nuking the entire planet. Destroying everything within a mile radius makes entire armies go away while doing little, if anything to the planet as a whole. Plus we're talking about 40k, where borderline-inhabitable wastelands are common anyway. For example, on Armageddon all that matters is the hive cities. Nuke the wastelands outside until they glow and nothing is lost. There's absolutely no reason to go out of the hive city with conventional forces to fight the orks when you can just kill them all from your fortified command bunker.
Only if you don't count the delivery cost of the chainsword. A nuclear missile (or equivalent weapon) is the most cost-effective way of killing stuff you can get.
Even a tactical nuke may be unacceptable amounts of radiation.
And you aren't always fighting in inhospitable wastelands where a nuke wouldn't make a difference.
We don't hear about when they do use a nuke and everything works out. No, we hear about the time orks overran vital Forge World 1783-09 and we were forced to declare Exterminatus to prevent them from stealing our technology.
True, but if something can withstand the heat of a nuclear strike, then it stands to reason that an excessive amount of pressure via blade would be far more effective.
Compared to the pressure at the edge of that chainsword, the core of the sun can't even compare. Nukes far less so.
Lol? How exactly does the pressure at the edge of a sword exceed the core of the sun. Please show your math.
It won't be vaporized by the nuke though.
Again, show your math. And when you do, please keep in mind that the temperature in the fireball of a nuclear weapon is orders of magnitude higher than the boiling point of any element.
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Void__Dragon wrote: True, but if something can withstand the heat of a nuclear strike, then it stands to reason that an excessive amount of pressure via blade would be far more effective.
No it doesn't. There is no such thing as "withstanding the heat of a nuclear strike", assuming a direct hit. The only question is the damage tolerance of a Necron, and if that Necron can recover from being vaporized by a nuclear weapon then cutting it in half with a sword isn't even going to mildly inconvenience it.
Lol? How exactly does the pressure at the edge of a sword exceed the core of the sun. Please show your math.
Chainsword teeth have monomolecular edges, assuming that the full depth of a 1.5m chainsword's teeth were contacting a surface at once, which is impossible because the teeth are spaced and spin at hundreds of RPM gives us a surface area of 0.00000000075
Take this and apply 8 kN The maximum force achieved by weight lifters during a 'clean and jerk' lift http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(force). This is not nearly as strong as a Marine, but it's a good baseline to give a point. Lets find pascals.
Almost thirty times the Earth's core. Admittedly I was wrong on the sun's core count using these numbers alone, but that's irrelevant to the main point.
Also, note that this number is about a fifth of the pressure inside W80 nuclear warhead. This is the pressure that can be generated by a physically strong normal human being with a chainsword, much less a Space Marine that is many times stronger than a human being.
Again, show your math. And when you do, please keep in mind that the temperature in the fireball of a nuclear weapon is orders of magnitude higher than the boiling point of any element.
Oh so you know the boiling point of necrodermis?
It can resist chainswords, so the pressure/concussive power of a nuke shouldn't be much trouble, and as for the heat, while it probably can't remain undamaged, it can withstand bunker-vaping melta weaponry or sun-hot plasma weaponry.
No it doesn't. There is no such thing as "withstanding the heat of a nuclear strike", assuming a direct hit. The only question is the damage tolerance of a Necron, and if that Necron can recover from being vaporized by a nuclear weapon then cutting it in half with a sword isn't even going to mildly inconvenience it.
Please show your math for this, and include units.
And then show your math on how that supposed pressure number interacts with the target, specifically the part where this extreme pressure is applied entirely to the target and none of it goes into damaging the edge of the chainsword.
Finally, once you're done with that please show the math for a 1mm blade edge, since once the "monomolecular" edge cuts into the target the thickness of the cutting surface will increase rapidly as the rest of the blade attempts to cut deeper. Unless you'd like to propose that a Necron can be disabled by a cut so shallow that it won't even scratch the paint?
Oh so you know the boiling point of necrodermis?
I don't, and I don't care. The fireball temperature is orders of magnitude higher than any element, so no matter what it's made of it will be destroyed. The only way to avoid conceding that the nuke gets the job done is to argue for some kind of magic forcefield, but then that would apply just as much to the chainsword and you can't argue cutting performance based on a plain metal target.
It can resist chainswords, so the pressure/concussive power of a nuke shouldn't be much trouble
Do you understand the difference between cutting and overpressure? It sounds like you don't if you think resistance against one is the same as resistance against the other.
and as for the heat, while it probably can't remain undamaged, it can withstand bunker-vaping melta weaponry or sun-hot plasma weaponry.
So, given that melta/plasma weapons are vastly superior to chainswords at destroying heavy armor, how exactly is the much weaker weapon supposed to accomplish anything?
Maybe not in real life. In 40k? Why not?
Because then you might as well argue that melee combat exists in 40k because a single guardsman can punch a titan to death and stab the chaos gods in the face with its remains.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Because when you are faced with enemies that are hard to kill (necrons), enemies that can warp in and out of reality (demons), and enemies who greatly outnumber you (orks and tyranids, the former of which the IoM commonly face), it's nice to be trained in the way of the pointy stick for when you inevitably run out of ammunition.
In close combat they still outnumber you and they are still tough. The only difference is that now they can actualy hit back. Engaging in close combat against creatures which are basicaly engineered to do so is foolish and the wise IG sarge will leave the chainsword at home and rather carries a few aditional belts for is squad support mg
Better hitting them with a sword or knife than with a fist. I would like to see that sergeant try to parry a choppa with that belt ammunition. Ever played Space Marine on the hardest difficulty? You will find yourself relying on melee attacks a lot, since you will keep running out of ammo, and as it turns out, guns are a bit bad at CC.
A nuke would slaughter everything, however. Including any civilians and perishable resources that the IoM may want. You don't clear a cockroach infestation with napalm, after all.
They don't use tactical nukes because they are too close to risk dropping a pieplate the size of a monster truck tire on the table, might hit there own forces, against rules n stuff.
Rismonite wrote: They don't use tactical nukes because they are too close to risk dropping a pieplate the size of a monster truck tire on the table, might hit there own forces, against rules n stuff.
Nah, a tactical nuke would be one of those apoc templates. The IoM have much, much scarier things than nukes.
I suppose it's because melee might be thought of as more glorious, perhaps? Pistol in one hand, sword in the other, blasting, hacking, parrying the blade of your opposite number does sound rather brilliant, doesn't it? Another reason it may be so popular is once you realize the enemy has a better gun than you, you'll want to find a way to take his firepower out of the equation.
mechamagos wrote: I suppose it's because melee might be thought of as more glorious, perhaps? Pistol in one hand, sword in the other, blasting, hacking, parrying the blade of your opposite number does sound rather brilliant, doesn't it?.
Exactly. Like I said, it's romantic. Why on earth do you think one of the most popular, iconic and king of "rule-of-cool" when it comes to future science-fantasy weapons, is not a turbo-laser, not a Death Star planet-killing super-ray, not even a trusty blaster at your side, kid. No, it's the lightsaber. Think of all the obviously romanticised character types from various folklore; the knight, the ninja, the pirate, the samurai - swordsmen all. One of the major points of romanticism is reactionary against the march of science, technology and industrial revolution, one of the strongest manifestations of this in pop culture is melee vs. ranged, and more specifically sword vs. firearm.
That's why melee combat is so popular in the 40k universe. Because it's romantic.
Rismonite wrote: They don't use tactical nukes because they are too close to risk dropping a pieplate the size of a monster truck tire on the table, might hit there own forces, against rules n stuff.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Because when you are faced with enemies that are hard to kill (necrons), enemies that can warp in and out of reality (demons), and enemies who greatly outnumber you (orks and tyranids, the former of which the IoM commonly face), it's nice to be trained in the way of the pointy stick for when you inevitably run out of ammunition.
In close combat they still outnumber you and they are still tough. The only difference is that now they can actualy hit back. Engaging in close combat against creatures which are basicaly engineered to do so is foolish and the wise IG sarge will leave the chainsword at home and rather carries a few aditional belts for is squad support mg
Better hitting them with a sword or knife than with a fist.
I would like to see that sergeant try to parry a choppa with that belt ammunition. Ever played Space Marine on the hardest difficulty? You will find yourself relying on melee attacks a lot, since you will keep running out of ammo, and as it turns out, guns are a bit bad at CC.
A nuke would slaughter everything, however. Including any civilians and perishable resources that the IoM may want. You don't clear a cockroach infestation with napalm, after all.
Think again. If your position is already overrun by close combat specialists then neither the chainsword nor a knive will help you. Packing aditional ammo for the weapon which can help you to avoid being overrun is the smart thing to do, unless you are some kind of spacemarine protagonist with epic character shields. Regarding the space marine game, last time i checked normal people have neither hitpoints nor do they replenish health. One nasty wound and you are done for so trying to kill from afar with as much firepower as humanly possible is preferable to fighting galantly in close combat.
Please show your math for this, and include units.
And then show your math on how that supposed pressure number interacts with the target, specifically the part where this extreme pressure is applied entirely to the target and none of it goes into damaging the edge of the chainsword.
Finally, once you're done with that please show the math for a 1mm blade edge, since once the "monomolecular" edge cuts into the target the thickness of the cutting surface will increase rapidly as the rest of the blade attempts to cut deeper. Unless you'd like to propose that a Necron can be disabled by a cut so shallow that it won't even scratch the paint?
Oh so you know the boiling point of necrodermis?
I don't, and I don't care. The fireball temperature is orders of magnitude higher than any element, so no matter what it's made of it will be destroyed. The only way to avoid conceding that the nuke gets the job done is to argue for some kind of magic forcefield, but then that would apply just as much to the chainsword and you can't argue cutting performance based on a plain metal target.
It can resist chainswords, so the pressure/concussive power of a nuke shouldn't be much trouble
Do you understand the difference between cutting and overpressure? It sounds like you don't if you think resistance against one is the same as resistance against the other.
and as for the heat, while it probably can't remain undamaged, it can withstand bunker-vaping melta weaponry or sun-hot plasma weaponry.
So, given that melta/plasma weapons are vastly superior to chainswords at destroying heavy armor, how exactly is the much weaker weapon supposed to accomplish anything?
Maybe not in real life. In 40k? Why not?
Because then you might as well argue that melee combat exists in 40k because a single guardsman can punch a titan to death and stab the chaos gods in the face with its remains.
Want some cream for those third degree burns?
He clearly showed math, and I'm assuming mm.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Because when you are faced with enemies that are hard to kill (necrons), enemies that can warp in and out of reality (demons), and enemies who greatly outnumber you (orks and tyranids, the former of which the IoM commonly face), it's nice to be trained in the way of the pointy stick for when you inevitably run out of ammunition.
In close combat they still outnumber you and they are still tough. The only difference is that now they can actualy hit back. Engaging in close combat against creatures which are basicaly engineered to do so is foolish and the wise IG sarge will leave the chainsword at home and rather carries a few aditional belts for is squad support mg
Better hitting them with a sword or knife than with a fist. I would like to see that sergeant try to parry a choppa with that belt ammunition. Ever played Space Marine on the hardest difficulty? You will find yourself relying on melee attacks a lot, since you will keep running out of ammo, and as it turns out, guns are a bit bad at CC.
A nuke would slaughter everything, however. Including any civilians and perishable resources that the IoM may want. You don't clear a cockroach infestation with napalm, after all.
Think again. If your position is already overrun by close combat specialists then neither the chainsword nor a knive will help you. Packing aditional ammo for the weapon which can help you to avoid being overrun is the smart thing to do, unless you are some kind of spacemarine protagonist with epic character shields. Regarding the space marine game, last time i checked normal people have neither hitpoints nor do they replenish health. One nasty wound and you are done for so trying to kill from afar with as much firepower as humanly possible is preferable to fighting galantly in close combat.
Yes, taking ammo is the smart thing to do. What isn't the smart thing to do is to throw away your knife and leave yourself defenseless. It will help you; not much, but it's better than nothing.
I never said IG tried to engage in CC. I just said it would be wise to have a CC weapon, just in case.
I really don't get why it's so hard to comprehend that close combat exists in the setting. Even today, soldiers are trained in close combat. The swords used by IG sergeants are really just for show anyway; its to show their rank, just like how old army commanders in the 19th century had them.
About infantry grade necrodermis...if a plasma bolt can tear through it, there is no way it can survive a nuke. The necrons can still attempt to repair after that, but they will mostly just teleport away.
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: Want some cream for those third degree burns?
He clearly showed math, and I'm assuming mm.
He "showed math" but not for the important part of the calculation, how to get the contact area of the sword (which doesn't even have units given). Since the entire calculation depends on assuming an arbitrarily sharp blade to get ridiculous pressure numbers leaving out the justification for that one element makes the rest of it worthless.
Also, that's only a "burn" if you count "make up some absurd assumptions, show no understanding of the concepts involved, and post some arbitrary numbers as 'proof'" as anything more than a disappointing failure.
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: Want some cream for those third degree burns?
He clearly showed math, and I'm assuming mm.
He "showed math" but not for the important part of the calculation, how to get the contact area of the sword (which doesn't even have units given). Since the entire calculation depends on assuming an arbitrarily sharp blade to get ridiculous pressure numbers leaving out the justification for that one element makes the rest of it worthless.
Also, that's only a "burn" if you count "make up some absurd assumptions, show no understanding of the concepts involved, and post some arbitrary numbers as 'proof'" as anything more than a disappointing failure.
Swelling with hurt and sodium?
I looked that gak up on google and got the same numbers.
The surface area is Mono-molecular. Which does give a ball park estimate of what the surface area would be. I think his measurement(although he was lacking units) was fairly realistic for what you could achieve.
Grey Templar wrote: The surface area is Mono-molecular. Which does give a ball park estimate of what the surface area would be. I think his measurement(although he was lacking units) was fairly realistic for what you could achieve.
Except that "mono-molecular" doesn't tell us very much since the difference in thickness between different atoms/molecules results in an orders of magnitude difference in the final result. And besides that it's a nonsense concept, a true mono-molecular edge would crumple immediately as soon as you hit something with it and leave you with an edge that might be very sharp but is far short of mono-molecular.
Like I said, close combat is visceral. And Rogue Trader was a heavily converted warhammer Fantasy ruleset, which they have kept as a format all the way to modern editions.
You people using "logic", "science" or "reason" are all wrong.
The reason melee combat is so popular in 40k is because it started off as a ctrl+c, ctrl+v of fantasy without the block movement and never shook it off.
xole wrote: You people using "logic", "science" or "reason" are all wrong.
The reason melee combat is so popular in 40k is because it started off as a ctrl+c, ctrl+v of fantasy without the block movement and never shook it off.
That too. Space Marines are pretty much futuristic knights, with a bit of the Sardaukar thrown in for good measure. Speaking of Dune, that series also has a heavy emphasis on melee combat.
Has anyone read the Tau forgeworld book? There was very little close combat in it, except for the battle at the water station.
There's a lot of talk about nukes and such, which might be valid if we are discussing imperium vs imperium.
We are dealing with wraithbone constructs, warp generators, orks, daemons, and any manner of other stuff that really can't be comprehended.
When you fire a nuke what stops a weirdboy from preventing its detonation and putting it in a deathcopter to see if it goes faster?
What stops a farseer from recognizing the danger and simply not being where the nuke was launched?
What stops the nuke from causing some much destruction instantly that it tears a whole in real space and suddenly grandfather Nurgle send minions through to enjoy the rotting skin and decay from the destruction?
Space marines survived Istvaan, our concepts of warfare just don't apply.
Sorry for the delayed answer, Maniac, I've been busy elsewhere. Here I go!
Maniac_nmt wrote: I would doubt it. Much of human history has been a perpetual state of warfare in some way, shape, or form. The Pax Romana was still a period of wars along the Roman frontiers, and the Dark and Middle Ages saw lots of conflict across the globe. Warfare adapted and advanced continuously, not regressed.
It is a popular misconception that the world went completely backwards in the 'Dark Ages'. Much was lost, but in other ways much also moved forward. Metal forging leapt forward, ship building, even construction concepts jumped ahead in various ways (crop rotation cycles changed and became more advanced, understanding of forms and architecture moved forward, etc). There was simply a lack of a firm centralizing power to allow for paved roads and thousand mile long aqueducts.
The Normans advanced cavalry warfare, fighting dicipline, the crossbow, siege weapons, and other methods of war that would be like going from a biplane to a fighter jet.
I have not read WWZ, but it wouldn't require tremendously backward thinking. Fuel Air bombs would be brilliant. Flash fry a square mile of zombies making for total and complete incineration (as in nothing but ashes left). Cluster muntions, explosive rounds, etc. Plenty of 'high tech' would work extremely well at fighting zombies without massive regression. Tactics would change, sure, but going completely primitive wouldn't be necessary.
I know, I own a Degree in History I'm spezialized in Contemporary History, not Medieval, but, anyway, I'm aware of how not dark the Dark Ages were. "Dark Age" is actually an English concept seldom used in Mediterranean historiography. After all and as you surely know, there was plenty of people South of the old limes keeping cities (usually smaller, less abundant and shabbier than 1st to 3rd Century ones, but still cities- and quite decent centralized (ing) powers doing their thing. The Omeyan Caliphate and it's succesors, nonetheless, here at the Iberian Peninsula from the 8th Century onwards.
Still, you have a point. Things don't just go "back", although they can seem to. For example, and following your example, massed, ranked, highly disciplined, trained and equiped infantry ceased to rule the battlefields at the end of the Roman Empire. It didn't seriously return until the end of the 15th Century. Not in the form of heavy armoured legions, but as tercios and similar formations. What I mean is that military concepts regarded obsolete by social/economic/tactical/strategic/whatever changes can be recycled when these conditions change again. For some reasons -not all of them completely convincing, I admit- the relationship between firepower and resistance to it is very balanced in the 41st Millenium. Somehow, as it was between the 16th and 19th Centuries. As a consecuence, tactics involve shooting and hand to hand fighting, as shooting is sometimes not enough to achieve victory (don't forget that in this grimdark enviroment many foes don't stop fighting until they are completely dead, they don't get demoralized, surrender or flee often. And they don't die as easily as humans). Probably, people (or cyborgs) from the Dark Age of Technology would laugh at the idea of Assault Marines just as French knights would laugh at the idea of blocks of pike wearing nobodies.
I would also like to mark the diference between being involved at some kind of war and being involved in total war. As you point, making war has been the way to go for many powers during History. However, being as involved as, to use a classic example, WW2 Soviet Union, is quite unsusual. In the first place, because all posible resources are movilized for the war. Secondly, because a 20th Century class of State is required to do it. For example, warmongering 1st Century Rome had about 30 legions. Including all kind of auxiliaries and paramilitary forces, the Empire had an hilariously low percenteage of it's population soldiering around. They didn't need more and couldn't afford more. Even if nominally at war, the core of civil society was basically doing business as usual. On the contrast, maybe 10% of the Soviet population at the peak of WW2 was dressing a uniform. The rest were producing bullets and crops to sustain that 10% and, with luck, themselves. There was few room for any but the most basic innovation. Moreover, obsolete or crazy tactics had to be used. For example, they lacked a decent APC, even if they knew how useful a decent APC was. But building APCs would interfere with building tanks. So, Ivan had to tank-ride to the enemy and die in droves because bodies were already there and APCs were not! Noticeably, first thing in the morning post-war Soviet Union did was to develop decent APCs.
The Imperium is a hyping caricature of this total war/no room for R & D situation. As a result, the Guard doesn't get decent personal body armour and decent dakka and has to go with absolutely obsolete lasguns that require massing tactics to work. Space Marines can't become true Spaceship Troopers -one man armies- and have to group and profit from their power armours by getting close to the enemy and chopping it apart. And so on.
Regarding WWZ, let me just seriously encourage the reading. It's very worth it. Most intelligent zombie-fiction I've read/watched ever.
Grey Templar wrote: Same reason why you can run your finger down a razor sharp blade and not cut yourself if you are careful.
Just because its as sharp as a thing could possibly be doesn't mean the force of gravity is enough to let it cut through its sheath.
But we're not talking razor sharp are we, we're talking monomolecular, something so sharp it's supposed to be able to cut through atomic bonds......
Also as soon as there is pressure then you'll cut yourself no matter how careful you are.
Cheers
Andrew
A mono-molecular edge still wouldn't be able to sever atomic bonds. You're talking about nuclear fission there.
Well, it would be fission if it split an actual nuclei. Severing bonds between atoms in molecules is a completely different process. Still, in order to split that molecule you would either have to initiate a chemical reaction, in which case you end up with a different molecule on your blade, or swing with enough force that you could overcome the resistant force of electromagnetism which keeps atoms/molecules apart. Which is impossible as the force required increases exponentially the closer the atoms get to each other.
If it were to split an atom it would have to be a mono-neutron edge. Which is impossible and would result in a blade so dense no-one would have the strength to lift it, let alone swing it.
Peregrine wrote: Sure. But 300m would be 12.5 feet at true 28mm scale. That's significantly longer range than a tank's main gun in 40k rules-wise. Which just demonstrates what I said earlier: melee only works in the tabletop game because weapon ranges and movement speed are not to scale.
Sure, but someone like Usain Bolt or Michael Johnson can clear 300 meters in about 30 seconds. I would imagine Space Marines, Eldar, Hormagaunts, etc. can clear that in half the time if not faster.
I'm sure someone has already said this, but the reason melee combat is no longer important now is that most of our long range weapons can go through any armor regardless of how strong it is. Hence why melee isn't important, cause you'll be dead long before you reach the enemy with your swords.
This isn't the case in the grimdark future. While most armor does crumple to long range ammunition, MCs, Power armor, and especially Terminator armor is strong enough to withstand most anything the enemy throws at them, hence why assault is necessary again.
Seriously no matter how efficient the power source of a las rifle is, it still runs out eventually, knives don't suffer from ammo problems.
On a more serious note, considering the level of bureaucracy in the Imperium for example, every spent bolt casing probably needs to be accounted for interstellar war doesn't run itself you know.
Seriously no matter how efficient the power source of a las rifle is, it still runs out eventually, knives don't suffer from ammo problems.
Yes they do.
Knives wear with use, and eventually dull and break. This requires logistics to repair/replace.
Granted it's not the same logistics as a gun. But don't act like it's nonexistent.
The Guardsmen might outlive the las pack, the Guardsmen is unlikely to outlive the knife, besides should the knife fail you can assume he picked up a suitably sharp and stabby looking rock.
There's another point, as a general rule melee weapons require little in the way of special training or useful instructions such as "Pointy bit toward Enemy"
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: I'm sure someone has already said this, but the reason melee combat is no longer important now is that most of our long range weapons can go through any armor regardless of how strong it is. Hence why melee isn't important, cause you'll be dead long before you reach the enemy with your swords.
This isn't the case in the grimdark future. While most armor does crumple to long range ammunition, MCs, Power armor, and especially Terminator armor is strong enough to withstand most anything the enemy throws at them, hence why assault is necessary again.
The same problems apply to close combat. Of course, 40k manages to somewhat bypass that problem with powerswords and the like but as long as the same kind of armour penetration can be achieved with ranged weapons (plasma, melta, missile launchers, lascannons and the like or even autocannons and heavy bolters, both of wich can be a threat even to fully armoured space marines ) it is more efficient to kill your enemy at range.
Seriously no matter how efficient the power source of a las rifle is, it still runs out eventually, knives don't suffer from ammo problems.
Yes they do.
Knives wear with use, and eventually dull and break. This requires logistics to repair/replace.
Granted it's not the same logistics as a gun. But don't act like it's nonexistent.
The Guardsmen might outlive the las pack, the Guardsmen is unlikely to outlive the knife, besides should the knife fail you can assume he picked up a suitably sharp and stabby looking rock.
There's another point, as a general rule melee weapons require little in the way of special training or useful instructions such as "Pointy bit toward Enemy"
A competent commander would surely opt to not engage an enemy if all his men are left with only crooked knifes and pointy rocks to fight with. Waging war against aliens with such meager weapons is just too stupid of an idea even by the imperium’s standards.
Melissia wrote: Also, the laspack might empty, but it can be easily refilled by using a standard power socket available in any imperial guard building or vehicle.
True, but that takes time, and you have to get it to the power station first. Knives don't quite have that problem.
Seriously no matter how efficient the power source of a las rifle is, it still runs out eventually, knives don't suffer from ammo problems.
Yes they do.
Knives wear with use, and eventually dull and break. This requires logistics to repair/replace.
Granted it's not the same logistics as a gun. But don't act like it's nonexistent.
The Guardsmen might outlive the las pack, the Guardsmen is unlikely to outlive the knife, besides should the knife fail you can assume he picked up a suitably sharp and stabby looking rock.
There's another point, as a general rule melee weapons require little in the way of special training or useful instructions such as "Pointy bit toward Enemy"
A competent commander would surely opt to not engage an enemy if all his men are left with only crooked knifes and pointy rocks to fight with. Waging war against aliens with such meager weapons is just too stupid of an idea even by the imperium’s standards.
A competent commander may not always have the luxury of falling back and resupplying.
Melissia wrote: Also, the laspack might empty, but it can be easily refilled by using a standard power socket available in any imperial guard building or vehicle.
True, but that takes time, and you have to get it to the power station first. Knives don't quite have that problem.
Seriously no matter how efficient the power source of a las rifle is, it still runs out eventually, knives don't suffer from ammo problems.
Yes they do.
Knives wear with use, and eventually dull and break. This requires logistics to repair/replace.
Granted it's not the same logistics as a gun. But don't act like it's nonexistent.
The Guardsmen might outlive the las pack, the Guardsmen is unlikely to outlive the knife, besides should the knife fail you can assume he picked up a suitably sharp and stabby looking rock.
There's another point, as a general rule melee weapons require little in the way of special training or useful instructions such as "Pointy bit toward Enemy"
A competent commander would surely opt to not engage an enemy if all his men are left with only crooked knifes and pointy rocks to fight with. Waging war against aliens with such meager weapons is just too stupid of an idea even by the imperium’s standards.
A competent commander may not always have the luxury of falling back and resupplying.
Melissia wrote: Also, the laspack might empty, but it can be easily refilled by using a standard power socket available in any imperial guard building or vehicle.
True, but that takes time, and you have to get it to the power station first. Knives don't quite have that problem.
Seriously no matter how efficient the power source of a las rifle is, it still runs out eventually, knives don't suffer from ammo problems.
Yes they do.
Knives wear with use, and eventually dull and break. This requires logistics to repair/replace.
Granted it's not the same logistics as a gun. But don't act like it's nonexistent.
The Guardsmen might outlive the las pack, the Guardsmen is unlikely to outlive the knife, besides should the knife fail you can assume he picked up a suitably sharp and stabby looking rock.
There's another point, as a general rule melee weapons require little in the way of special training or useful instructions such as "Pointy bit toward Enemy"
A competent commander would surely opt to not engage an enemy if all his men are left with only crooked knifes and pointy rocks to fight with. Waging war against aliens with such meager weapons is just too stupid of an idea even by the imperium’s standards.
A competent commander may not always have the luxury of falling back and resupplying.
Then he has already lost the battle.
Not necessarily. Reinforcements may arrive, or they can surroundings as a weapon.
Even if he has lost, is he to order his men to lie down and await death? The IoM doesn't quite think that way. If death is certain, they will use everything to their disposal to kill as much of the enemy as possible, for the Emperor and all that.
Aparrently the sharpest cutting implements are synthetic diamond scalpels. Curious as to how sharp they are? 3 nanometers or sharper at the edge .
To the unitiated that's pretty darn close to monomolecular. A hydrogen atom IIRC is .1 nanometers. The knives are pretty durable because they don't really have any resistance to deal with when cutting.
You handle it like you would a sharp knife you avoid the edge. A scabbard would have simply need to grip top and bottom of the blade and avoid the edge. Apparently the people here are rather challenged.
Defensive technologies in the 40k world are much and a blade that sharp would shear apart tanks.
Not necessarily. Reinforcements may arrive, or they can surroundings as a weapon.
Even if he has lost, is he to order his men to lie down and await death? The IoM doesn't quite think that way. If death is certain, they will use everything to their disposal to kill as much of the enemy as possible, for the Emperor and all that.
As I said before, if your opponents got guns and you don’t and retreating for resupplying isn’t an option, then you just lost the game buddy. No really, it’s just simple as that. They enemy would kill every last one of your soldiers before they get the chance to stick those blades into their soft bellies.
Not necessarily. Reinforcements may arrive, or they can surroundings as a weapon.
Even if he has lost, is he to order his men to lie down and await death? The IoM doesn't quite think that way. If death is certain, they will use everything to their disposal to kill as much of the enemy as possible, for the Emperor and all that.
As I said before, if your opponents got guns and you don’t and retreating for resupplying isn’t an option, then you just lost the game buddy. No really, it’s just simple as that. They enemy would kill every last one of your soldiers before they get the chance to stick those blades into their soft bellies.
Only if you are stupid enough to charge a gun line
Not necessarily. Reinforcements may arrive, or they can surroundings as a weapon.
Even if he has lost, is he to order his men to lie down and await death? The IoM doesn't quite think that way. If death is certain, they will use everything to their disposal to kill as much of the enemy as possible, for the Emperor and all that.
As I said before, if your opponents got guns and you don’t and retreating for resupplying isn’t an option, then you just lost the game buddy. No really, it’s just simple as that. They enemy would kill every last one of your soldiers before they get the chance to stick those blades into their soft bellies.
Only if you are stupid enough to charge a gun line
I think he's talking about the people with guns coming to you whilst you sit there with no ammo hoping you can use a knife.
Not necessarily. Reinforcements may arrive, or they can surroundings as a weapon.
Even if he has lost, is he to order his men to lie down and await death? The IoM doesn't quite think that way. If death is certain, they will use everything to their disposal to kill as much of the enemy as possible, for the Emperor and all that.
As I said before, if your opponents got guns and you don’t and retreating for resupplying isn’t an option, then you just lost the game buddy. No really, it’s just simple as that. They enemy would kill every last one of your soldiers before they get the chance to stick those blades into their soft bellies.
Only if you are stupid enough to charge a gun line
I think he's talking about the people with guns coming to you.
Even better. Hide in narrow spaces; guns aren't that effective in close quarters. If they were, it wouldn't be possible to disarm it with your bare hands, like what nearly every experienced martial artist can do.
Not necessarily. Reinforcements may arrive, or they can surroundings as a weapon.
Even if he has lost, is he to order his men to lie down and await death? The IoM doesn't quite think that way. If death is certain, they will use everything to their disposal to kill as much of the enemy as possible, for the Emperor and all that.
As I said before, if your opponents got guns and you don’t and retreating for resupplying isn’t an option, then you just lost the game buddy. No really, it’s just simple as that. They enemy would kill every last one of your soldiers before they get the chance to stick those blades into their soft bellies.
Only if you are stupid enough to charge a gun line
I think he's talking about the people with guns coming to you.
Even better. Hide in narrow spaces; guns aren't that effective in close quarters.
Not necessarily. Reinforcements may arrive, or they can surroundings as a weapon.
Even if he has lost, is he to order his men to lie down and await death? The IoM doesn't quite think that way. If death is certain, they will use everything to their disposal to kill as much of the enemy as possible, for the Emperor and all that.
As I said before, if your opponents got guns and you don’t and retreating for resupplying isn’t an option, then you just lost the game buddy. No really, it’s just simple as that. They enemy would kill every last one of your soldiers before they get the chance to stick those blades into their soft bellies.
Only if you are stupid enough to charge a gun line
I think he's talking about the people with guns coming to you.
Even better. Hide in narrow spaces; guns aren't that effective in close quarters.
Grenades and flamethrowers are.
Not really. Still needs some distance away for them to be safely used. They are still very dangerous, however.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: True, but that takes time, and you have to get it to the power station first. Knives don't quite have that problem.
No, they have the inherent problem that they break faster than a lasgun does.
After only a few uses, the knife might be dulled to the point of being almost useless against a Necron or Ork. A lasgun is good for far more shots than a knife is for stabs.
So know one cares that we ALREADY have basically monomolecular knives that can take abuse? What happens when you make chainsaw teeth with this technique and give it thousands of RPM? How about adding a power field on top of that? The knife I mentioned could already deal damage to things that would survive nukes, but that? That would rip them apart.
Who would want a monomolecular knife when they can have a chainsword? Everything that cuts is cooler with a chainsaw blade, when you are in the 40K universe. Even enough to offset the huge change of self-inflicted death!
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: So know one cares that we ALREADY have basically monomolecular knives that can take abuse?
The Imperium has durable mono knives as well, according to FFG. They're expensive items that are not available to the common citizen though. Most knives wielded by humans in 40k are still just sharpened pieces of steel.
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: Chainswords are monomolecular. I mentioned how damn strong that makes them.
Being monomolecular does not increase their durability.
When you make chainsaws with teeth made of that, with thousands of revs per minute, it applies at least 50 times more force and you don't even have to swing the sword. The chainsaw teeth do all the work.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: True, but that takes time, and you have to get it to the power station first. Knives don't quite have that problem.
No, they have the inherent problem that they break faster than a lasgun does.
After only a few uses, the knife might be dulled to the point of being almost useless against a Necron or Ork. A lasgun is good for far more shots than a knife is for stabs.
Which it cannot do, until it gets to the recharging station. A knife may help it get there.
I'm not saying knives are better, just that it's useful to have. The consensus here appears to be that having a melee weapon is foolish. It really isn't.
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: So know one cares that we ALREADY have basically monomolecular knives that can take abuse? What happens when you make chainsaw teeth with this technique and give it thousands of RPM? How about adding a power field on top of that? The knife I mentioned could already deal damage to things that would survive nukes, but that? That would rip them apart.
Look it up. Surgical Scalpel blades are not that durable, with the majority being used once then disposed of as they become dull and cannot withstand the forces required to resharpen them. They are very sharp but not suitable to cut through anything but soft tissue as they are fragile and would break under the larger forces required to cut through bone, let alone ceramic armour plates, which cannot survive a conventional nuclear blast, let alone a thermonuclear on.
So I fail to see how a scalpel can damage anything which a nuke cannot. Unless it happens to be a person hiding in an underground bunker with your scalpel wielding soldier in there too.
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: So know one cares that we ALREADY have basically monomolecular knives that can take abuse? What happens when you make chainsaw teeth with this technique and give it thousands of RPM? How about adding a power field on top of that? The knife I mentioned could already deal damage to things that would survive nukes, but that? That would rip them apart.
Look it up. Surgical Scalpel blades are not that durable, with the majority being used once then disposed of as they become dull and cannot withstand the forces required to resharpen them. They are very sharp but not suitable to cut through anything but soft tissue as they are fragile and would break under the larger forces required to cut through bone, let alone ceramic armour plates, which cannot survive a conventional nuclear blast, let alone a thermonuclear on.
So I fail to see how a scalpel can damage anything which a nuke cannot. Unless it happens to be a person hiding in an underground bunker with your scalpel wielding soldier in there too.
There's an astronomical level of pressure on the business end of that monomolecular edge friend. Void Dragon showed it's about 1/5 the pressure of the initial (like a nanosecond at max intensity) 300,000,000K explosion. I did the same calcs and got the same numbers.
Those synthetic diamond scalpels are marvels of engineering. They can be used for a month and not break if you're lucky. You look that up.
It doesn't take a lot of force to cut bone with that kind of edge bro. To say the least, damn it's scary how easily those knives go through. They go through bone like a meat cleaver through warm butter.
Not dying and being unwounded are very different. I can take a claymore through my gut and not die instantly. Am I unwounded? What do you think?
You need to read more carefully before starting an argument with things established earlier in the thread friend. You're supposed to at least read the last two pages.
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: So know one cares that we ALREADY have basically monomolecular knives that can take abuse? What happens when you make chainsaw teeth with this technique and give it thousands of RPM? How about adding a power field on top of that? The knife I mentioned could already deal damage to things that would survive nukes, but that? That would rip them apart.
Look it up. Surgical Scalpel blades are not that durable, with the majority being used once then disposed of as they become dull and cannot withstand the forces required to resharpen them. They are very sharp but not suitable to cut through anything but soft tissue as they are fragile and would break under the larger forces required to cut through bone, let alone ceramic armour plates, which cannot survive a conventional nuclear blast, let alone a thermonuclear on.
So I fail to see how a scalpel can damage anything which a nuke cannot. Unless it happens to be a person hiding in an underground bunker with your scalpel wielding soldier in there too.
There's an astronomical level of pressure on the business end of that monomolecular edge friend. Void Dragon showed it's about 1/5 the pressure of the initial (like a nanosecond at max intensity) 300,000,000K explosion. I did the same calcs and got the same numbers.
Those synthetic diamond scalpels are marvels of engineering. They can be used for a month and not break if you're lucky. You look that up.
It doesn't take a lot of force to cut bone with that kind of edge bro. To say the least, damn it's scary how easily those knives go through. They go through bone like a meat cleaver through warm butter.
Not dying and being unwounded are very different. I can take a claymore through my gut and not die instantly. Am I unwounded? What do you think?
You need to read more carefully before starting an argument with things established earlier in the thread friend. You're supposed to at least read the last two pages.
Yet powerarmour offers reliable protection against such blades so their actual usefulness in the setting does not reflect your values.
If you can somehow get past the joints you can do some damage. Powered Armor is just high tech platemail, after all. Fully armored knights back then weren't invincible.
There's also the fact that such blades may be sheathed in a power-field, which makes of a mockery of powered armor.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: If you can somehow get past the joints you can do some damage. Unlikely for IG to do so, but quite likely for something like an Eldar.
There's also the fact that such blades may be sheathed in a power-field, which makes of a mockery of powered armor.
My point was that the TheSaintofKilllers's numbers do not seem to apply for the setting.
This might be because the idea of a monomolecular blade has other problems in practice or simply because GW likes to throw around words which do not make that much sense in context( depleted Deuterium for bolters...*coughs*). Of course, if you can make a knive's edge monomolecular then why not add a monomolecular tip to a bullet?
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: When you make chainsaws with teeth made of that, with thousands of revs per minute, it applies at least 50 times more force and you don't even have to swing the sword. The chainsaw teeth do all the work.
That has nothing to do with the fact that something being monomolecular DOES NOT MAKE IT MORE DURABLE. Obsidian is capable of being that sharp. Doesn't make it more durable.
Also, stop making up statistics. Making gak up and claiming that it's true doesn't make it true, no matter how hard you try.
Swing a chainblade into anything with any resistance and it will break, monomolecular teeth or not. That's why chainsaws aren't actually that good for massacres, even in Texas.
I don't deny that in 40k, we have cool things that don't make sense. I just wish people would stop using fake science and made up statistics to justify it.
Sometimes, a chainsword is just fething cool for its own sake even if it'd be monstrously terrible IRL.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: If you can somehow get past the joints you can do some damage. Unlikely for IG to do so, but quite likely for something like an Eldar.
There's also the fact that such blades may be sheathed in a power-field, which makes of a mockery of powered armor.
My point was that the TheSaintofKilllers's numbers do not seem to apply for the setting.
This might be because the idea of a monomolecular blade has other problems in practice or simply because GW likes to throw around words which do not make that much sense in context( depleted Deuterium for bolters...*coughs*). Of course, if you can make a knive's edge monomolecular then why not add a monomolecular tip to a bullet?
Well, monomolecular projectiles already exist in the form of shuriken rounds. Which are used by a race who are much more advanced than the IoM. So I would say the reason why you can't add a monomolecular tip on a bullet is due to the cost and difficulty of manufacture. A bullet is a lot smaller and much more expendable than a knife, after all.
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Melissia wrote: I don't deny that in 40k, we have cool things that don't make sense. I just wish people would stop using fake science and made up statistics to justify it.
Sometimes, a chainsword is just fething cool for its own sake even if it'd be monstrously terrible IRL.
Yeah, irl a chainsaw / chainsword is a terrible weapon, since the blood and chunks of meat tend to block the mechanics. Since it's so bloody cool though, it is permitted to use suspension of disbelief to exist.
Swing a chainblade into anything with any resistance and it will break, monomolecular teeth or not. That's why chainsaws aren't actually that good for massacres, even in Texas.
Though I doubt that Chain-weapon blades are equivalent to something bought from Home Depot. I would assume that if 40K were a real setting, the reason that chain-weapons are still used is that the 40K effects we would envision from a modern chainsaw being used as a weapon are irrelevant, or at least very small.
If you add enough future-tech to the engine and teeth of a chainsaw, it's quite possible that the intention is that it will bite into/cut through the target fast enough to not just be kicked away by it's own rotational force. Otherwise it would be discarded as a horrible invention.
TheSaintofKilllers wrote: When you make chainsaws with teeth made of that, with thousands of revs per minute, it applies at least 50 times more force and you don't even have to swing the sword. The chainsaw teeth do all the work.
That has nothing to do with the fact that something being monomolecular DOES NOT MAKE IT MORE DURABLE. Obsidian is capable of being that sharp. Doesn't make it more durable.
Also, stop making up statistics. Making gak up and claiming that it's true doesn't make it true, no matter how hard you try.
Never did I say it was more durable. Those statistics arent "made up". Whenever you apply the factors to an edge I mentioned you get dramatically more force.
All I can say to this surprisingly LONG thread is that warfare has gotten to the point in the 40k universe that anything tough enough to get through all the long distance flack out on the battlefield can probably get through to melee range. And at that point a thunder hammer doesn't hurt
Lets be honest though, its 40'k. ALL forms of combat are popular. If someone thought of an idea to spoon people to death im sure it would be adopted by at least one faction at some point.
There's an astronomical level of pressure on the business end of that monomolecular edge friend. Void Dragon showed it's about 1/5 the pressure of the initial (like a nanosecond at max intensity) 300,000,000K explosion. I did the same .
Source? Don't want to trawl through ten pages to find this. Bloody impressive though if its legit
Rotary wrote: Lets be honest though, its 40'k. ALL forms of combat are popular. If someone thought of an idea to spoon people to death im sure it would be adopted by at least one faction at some point.
Already exists. They are called Slaanshi followers
Well range weapons use ammunition / power sources and require a great deal of maintenance. Not to mention there are units out there with force field and reinforced armour - if you want to cut metal these days, you don't use a flame thrower.... you get up close with a high powered blow torch - same thing in the future.
If I was cut off and surrounded without resupply and my gun was damaged..... I'd sure want some kind of CC weapon over nothing at all.
I doubt it. I did hear a while back (Although don't quote me on this one) that the US Army had dispensed with formal bayonet training back in 2010 (Whether or not that has been reinstituted since is a different matter), but it's still a very, very viable method of eliminating enemy combatants. Bayonet charges have never been so much about the physical effects, rather the sheer psychological effect of seeing a group of adrenaline-hyped, professionally trained killers, screaming at the top of their lungs and charging straight at you with over a foot of sharpened steel - it's f*****g terrifying I'd guess. A little like this guy (plus extra screaming )
I fully expect that scariest thing on this planet is an enraged British soldier charging you with a foot long length of steel pointed in your direction (Extra rage added if he happens to be suffering from chronic tea deprivation - then the faeces really hits the rotary air oscillater )
gossipmeng wrote: Well range weapons use ammunition / power sources and require a great deal of maintenance. Not to mention there are units out there with force field and reinforced armour - if you want to cut metal these days, you don't use a flame thrower.... you get up close with a high powered blow torch - same thing in the future.
If I was cut off and surrounded without resupply and my gun was damaged..... I'd sure want some kind of CC weapon over nothing at all.
This is what I kept saying.
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Warpig1815 wrote: I doubt it. I did hear a while back (Although don't quote me on this one) that the US Army had dispensed with formal bayonet training back in 2010 (Whether or not that has been reinstituted since is a different matter), but it's still a very, very viable method of eliminating enemy combatants. Bayonet charges have never been so much about the physical effects, rather the sheer psychological effect of seeing a group of adrenaline-hyped, professionally trained killers, screaming at the top of their lungs and charging straight at you with over a foot of sharpened steel - it's f*****g terrifying I'd guess. A little like this guy (plus extra screaming )
I fully expect that scariest thing on this planet is an enraged British soldier charging you with a foot long length of steel pointed in your direction (Extra rage added if he happens to be suffering from chronic tea deprivation - then the faeces really hits the rotary air oscillater )
What am I looking at? 0_o
That is either stupid or awesome.
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amanita wrote: Has there EVER been an army that HASN'T trained for close combat? Will there ever be one?
Nope. All armies have practiced hand to hand combat to date, and they will continue being trained in hand to hand combat, until such time when soldiers have been genetically engineered to secrete explosive poop.
There's quite a difference between being trained in basic hand-to-hand and bayonet combat and spending x years training to become a proficient swordsman.
Vaerros wrote: There's quite a difference between being trained in basic hand-to-hand and bayonet combat and spending x years training to become a proficient swordsman.
Which is not what IG do. The officers do have swords, but that's mostly for leadership reasons. I doubt most of the "swordsmen" in the IG ranks have much more experience than "hit them with the bladed part" The fact that the Company Commander probably has the time and money to learn swordsmanship, however. It's still most likely just for show / self defense in case of bad things in the rear rank. What do you think is more inspiring, a sword, or a gun? And don't today's US army officers have a sword? Admittedly it's for show and not battle, but it's the same idea.
Space Marines can get away with having extensive melee training, because they have the years for it. Also might have to do with the fact that Space Marines, unlike the IG, rather not get butchered when engaged in Close Combat since they are the emperor's finest and very, very expensive. That and the whole knights in space thing.
necrondog99 wrote: I was not issued a bayonet in AF, but I did receive a tomahawk from a friend.
BTW - shooting someone at extreme close range is a highly effective CC technique.
- J
This. It is why the US adopted the Colt 1911 as a side arm in roughly 1911. They wanted a way to kill at short range crazed psycho warriors hoped up and wanting in your face. The 9mm they were using didn't cut it vs the zealots that were getting into trenches and so the 1911 came about as a side arm.
Close combat training isn't useless, and nor are close combat weapons. It's just when that is how you expect to go around fighting all the time it doesn't bode so well.
SEAL/SAS/etc all train for CQC or CQB, but a lot of that training also involves shooting people up close, not bashing them over the head with the rifle butt as the main way to use the rifle.
The whole "40k is about hitting people with swords!" concept is an exagerration. The only armies that are really into melee / close quarters fighting are Orks, Nids, Chaos Daemons, Dark Eldar and possibly CSM.
There are melee specialists, but those have very specialized roles, usually with a bit of logical fluff to back it up.
@Maniac_nmt - I think that's the key part people are missing. Close Combat isn't strictly limited to fencing with the enemy - it's more a brutal combination of firearms drill and rare chances (or in a 40K context - liberal) of direct hand to hand. CC isn't the kind of Napoleonic death or glory type dueling - even IRL it's grimdark.
It's because people are lazy and would rather kill it with fire than with muscle. However, the truly crafty and skilled see the lethality in close combat and can use it devastate squishy armies. There is another thread just like this going on in Tactics. ;>>
Case in point: You could shoot me to all hell. Especially if you're the Tau. But if I get in close combat, I'm probably going to win it, you're probably not fearless, I probably have fear, and you're going to run, I'm going to catch you and I'm going to kill the whole squad outright. +__+
THAT is the catch with Assault. You've just got to get in, is the problem.
Half the Air Force guys I met didn't even know where their weapons were kept. One of my Lance Coolies had to show a bunch of zoomies how to put their vests together when they arrived in country. I had to laugh when he told me where he'd been.
And don't today's US army officers have a sword?
Swords are solely for formal dress occasions, and the training with it is limited to the drill movements. You could say that officers (and Marine NCOs) "have a sword", but a cake is about the only thing that's ever going to get cut with it.
if you want to cut metal these days, you don't use a flame thrower.... you get up close with a high powered blow torch
Who the heck would bother with a blowtorch in combat? You breach reinforced walls and doors with demolition charges, rockets, tanks, or aerial munitions.
Because armor often surpasses firearms in warhammer 40k. The very bolters marines carry are easily shrugged off their own armor. However melee weapons have better penetration. So if your gun cant go through enemy armor and theirs cant punch through yours, and you have a sword more than capable of slicing through, what are you going to do?
shooting is by far the most popular, as it should be,
epic battle descriptions usually dwell on the CC part, because its more epic and visual to have hero x beat villan y in HTH reather then hero x just shooting the guy, wiping his hands, and walking away.
in the game, and the "reality" of the fluff, shooting is vastly more dominant.
CC will always have a role in combat, even with the best gun in the world, is useless in a REAL melee (ie freind and foe everywhere aroundyou, all pushing against each other, not simply being 10 ft away, or being spread out enough to reliable shoot at the enemy while not hitting friendlies)
easysauce wrote: shooting is by far the most popular, as it should be,
epic battle descriptions usually dwell on the CC part, because its more epic and visual to have hero x beat villan y in HTH reather then hero x just shooting the guy, wiping his hands, and walking away.
in the game, and the "reality" of the fluff, shooting is vastly more dominant.
CC will always have a role in combat, even with the best gun in the world, is useless in a REAL melee (ie freind and foe everywhere aroundyou, all pushing against each other, not simply being 10 ft away, or being spread out enough to reliable shoot at the enemy while not hitting friendlies)
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That's about right. Despite what people may think, CC isn't that common in Wh40k. In fact, most of the imperial armies in game favor shooting with only a very few CC oriented units, and those have a very specific role in fluff. Hell, even the armies that favor CC have a fair bit of shooting as well.
Swords are solely for formal dress occasions, and the training with it is limited to the drill movements. You could say that officers (and Marine NCOs) "have a sword", but a cake is about the only thing that's ever going to get cut with it.
Which is what I typed; it's NOT for battle. Swords historically have been associated with authority. It's no different in the 41 millennium. Just because a model has a sword, does not mean it is meant to use it in game. Or in fluff.
I wouldn't put it so drastically in the favor of shooting . Considering the fact that orks are the most common species in the galaxy and that Nids are quickly infecting the galaxy, I wouldn't put CC as drastically more dominant (I would certainly argue it beats out CC in commonality as most CC units have some form of shooting no matter how minor and pathetic it is). Also, I would find it a bit odd for certain regiments (some being rather popular) to so carefully hone their CC skills for bayonet charges. (also psssht hop into the chaos daemon codex. Have fun finding the small bits of shooting we have most of it being spells!)
In the grimdark future that is 40k,, grimdark is the language and Sci Fantasy is the name of the game. Magic, sopious amounts of close combat, and a good volley of fire are all mixed together into a lovely little mess of "creative borrowing" that we have all grown to love
Were it to be "realistic" close combat would actually play a much smaller role. The genre also would normally decree that it play a much smaller role as well. The reason it does it that GW emphasizes the heroic battle in close combat with the heroic scale models and customized fluff. In order to add this to the gaming table, they give it a much higher importance than would normally be there.I just go with the flow on it.
Alright, I didn't read through all the posts so I don't know if this was mentioned but I am going to bring a "proper" sci-fi game into this to demonstrate that melee is always a feasible way to do battle and their are circumstances, even in the future when we have advance firepower: Mass Effect. I don't know how anyone else plays but when I play Mass Effect, I use melee...probably a lot more than I thought I would in a shooting game because sometimes shooting something doesn't take it down and you are going to need to know how to take it down in close quarters. It could be that there are tight quarters or in the chaos of battle you couldn't stop the enemy from advancing but it does come in handy and when playing proper sci-fi games, I still find melee quite useful.
It IS useful and it is highly effective. However, On a battlefield, it should be hard to get into combat and the soldiers should consider it their last option (only after the guns have failed).Luckily, earlier editions of 40k 5 on back, required you only rush across the field for the win. Whoever had more close combat guys and less guns auto won the game. Now it is more in keeping with realism and the fluff where actual strategy and tactics come into play and are needed to win whether it be with guns or claws/swords.
Just like pre WW1 and Pre WW2 a lot of our military thinking and planning is based purely on theory. Because weapons have changed so much but without conventional wars to test them out we dont actually know how a "real war" with "fair odds" is gonna turn out. So expect the next full conventional war to start off with a lot of needless casualties and failed concepts. So relating 40k Melee combat and modern day Combat is pretty hard to do considering they are both theories.
But it can be summed up pretty easily as its cerimonial for some factions, entertainement for some and a neccessity for some. But if you got enemies geared up and designed to get up and close youd have to counter arm and train your men to counter this otherwise they could suffer provided the enemy are able to get close.
In a battle for land just shooting and using support doesnt work like it does on the movies and games. In the past armies tried shelling and bombing the enemy repeatedly even for days on end, but it doesnt move motivated or prepared defenders. It comes down to a soldier advancing. Im not saying this will result in Hand to Hand combat but thats the reason fighting up close will always happen. Another point is bullets arent unlimited and standing there and shooting uses up bullets very fast.
Same concept in paintball. Amatuers are always the ones that find a spot and shoot from it the whole game. They always acheive nothing and use their ammo, the ones who k now what they are doing are always moving trying to get closer and pushing them back using very little ammo. I imagine this would be exhaggerated in all aspects in a real war.
But as i said at the start its all based on assumption and looking at the past, history always repeats.
EVIL INC wrote: Were it to be "realistic" close combat would actually play a much smaller role. The genre also would normally decree that it play a much smaller role as well. The reason it does it that GW emphasizes the heroic battle in close combat with the heroic scale models and customized fluff. In order to add this to the gaming table, they give it a much higher importance than would normally be there.I just go with the flow on it.
Honestly the biggest reason it is so big is because they grabbed sci fi and then jammed it with fantasy to create... Fantasy in SPACE! Realistically, almost no unit would get into cc. Really only a few would be capable of making it there (since many armies are super fast I4 and 5) and at least from our opinion, guns = more shots, if they get too close shoot more and or dagger to finish off. A question could be made of the quality of armor in comparison to dakka perhaps....
Think about how scary good ECM will be 40,000 years in the future when nearly half of the species in the setting have the ability to generate a fully sentient artificial intelligence/network. Basically if it's not line of sight and very, very short range, it has to go through the warp. The EM spectrum is just clobbered with passively broadcast extremely high power malicious code, everywhere, all the time. That's why you don't just have like cruise missile autocannons or whatever. When you are limited to inside-the-horizon strike or traditional artillery barrages for the most part (outside of airpower which can't be datalinked together so is constantly stuck in about a Vietnam level of tactical effectiveness) and the main armies in the setting seem to use the 'grab them by the belt buckle' method of avoiding being obliterated by the rapetastic artillery of the 41st millenium, I can see how a reality disrupting broadsword starts too look more attractive.
I think one thing that is happening here is that people are underestimating the usefulness of melee combat in a modern and beyond as well as overestimating just how much melee is actually in 40k. To me, the meta game seems to have been favoring killing from a distance vs. taking things into CC. As well, as not many forces relying on just melee to win a battle. Do Eldar have Banshees? Yeah but that is one specialized unit. The Eldar still pack a lot of firepower. Assault Marines may have melee weapons but they have pistols as well and a way to get into CC to shock and awe their enemy. Only Terminators with Storm Shields and Hammers can be considered pure melee. The GK say screw it and decide to have both on at their disposal.
That being said, I think that some wisdom from Tolkien is in order. When asked why he wrote about fantasy and not modern, he answered saying that guns ruined the romance of war.
No one is dissing the usefulness of close combat at all. The fact is that it should only be a small part of the game. A part that comes into play when all else has failed or when someone has intelligently (or luckily) use strategy and tactics to sneak close enough to use close combat oriented troops against someone who is unprepared and that is/should be a dangerous gambit.
Aren't humans the only race on Earth that has ranged weaponry? Isn't that why we are the dominant species?
We can basicaly kill whatever animal we want with practicaly zero risk and without engaging in actual combat.
A single human with an assault rifle can kill dozens of tigers. A single tiger can kill dozens of humans without a ranged weapon.
Also, a Tiger can still murder a human with a rifle. You can only kill something if you can hit it, and it's really hard to hit something when it's eating your arm.
There also the fact that humans have no natural predators, barring micro organisms and parasites.
Why is melee combat so popular in the 40k universe? Because there are super-soldiers who can shrug off small arms fire with power armor, while still pulping a human body with no more than a leg lift or a punch to the face.
On top of that, you're dealing with far greater threats that utilize close combat prowess (like the Tyranids) who will get in your face whether you like it or not. Once again, this is where the super-soldiers come in, with the strength, skills and equipment to deal with something like that.
Close combat isn't dead. We're just not very effective as a species with it. However, when power armor is invented and it shrugs off anti-personelle fire, you'll see power weapons come right along with it to punch out that power armor.
For every new weapon, there is a new defense and for every new defense, a new weapon.
I like this supposition though; that combat is something to be admired and adhered too. Otherwise, why figure this stuff out in real life with actual combat?
Like another poster suggested earlier; "All we have is combat theory. When the battlefield changes, so does the tactic." Talking about the modern battlefield of today and the fact that standing armies no longer exist the way that they did prior to WW2.
Broly wrote: A single human with an assault rifle can kill dozens of tigers. A single tiger can kill dozens of humans without a ranged weapon.
A tiger against a prepared and ready man with a knife is unlikely to come out okay even if the man dies. A tiger against a dozen humans could simply be kicked to death. The main problem is the tendency for predators to ambush, prey on the weak and the fear of the prey. Take those out of the equation and it becomes much more even; though there will still be an advantage to the tiger if the person is unarmed.
I'd say mankind is dominant more due to the fact that we're intelligent, organised and capable of overcoming our fear on a much more consistent basis than other large animals. We learn what animals do what and so there are less unknowns to be wary of . A house cat can scare a bear up a tree because the bear doesn't know what it is. Without ranged weaponry we'd still be dominant.
CthuluIsSpy wrote:There also the fact that humans have no natural predators, barring micro organisms and parasites.
That's only because humans have consistently wiped out predators which prey on them, leading the remaining ones being very wary of targeting them.
And spitting poison is no way near the same level as a firearm.
R Version
Yeah, it's a bit idiotic, but you get the idea 
, the average marksman is as accurate as Wikipedia 
....and let's face it that's not very accurate.
I'm spezialized in Contemporary History, not Medieval, but, anyway, I'm aware of how not dark the Dark Ages were. "Dark Age" is actually an English concept seldom used in Mediterranean historiography. After all and as you surely know, there was plenty of people South of the old limes keeping cities (usually smaller, less abundant and shabbier than 1st to 3rd Century ones, but still cities- and quite decent centralized (ing) powers doing their thing. The Omeyan Caliphate and it's succesors, nonetheless, here at the Iberian Peninsula from the 8th Century onwards.
