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Why do Space Marines use bolters? I realise that they are powerful and all, but are they really worth it? Why not just give them all .50 Cal Machine Guns, they shoot really far, have excellent stopping power, and armor penetration. I think it would also be much cheaper to manufacture .50 ammunition as compared to bolter ammunition (which is small rockets if i'm not mistaken). What do you think?

bolters are .75 calibre HE rounds; if you want to compare stats, a heavy stubber (found on IG tanks) is about what a .50 cal machine gun would be. Besides, bolters are sacred weapons to the space marines; you wouldn't ask a samurai to trade in his katana for a pike because it's 'cheaper and has better range', would you?

Because bolters are freakin' cool!
A 50. Cal isn't very futuristic IMHO. You get a rapid firing machine gun (50. Cal) or you get a rapid-firing mini-rocket launcher. I don't think you can argue with the stopping power or armour penetration of a bolter. They're just difficult to fairly represent in game.
As for the cost, imagine the cost of power armour!
Space Marines get the best. Supposedly...

Because .50 cal might be devastating to a human, to an ork (who can survive decapitation) or another Marine it just doesn't cut it. You want to KNOW your enemy is dead. Also IIRC bolters are recoiless (more-or-less)

I think the Bolter is mainly used because Lasguns are simply too weak, and a .75 cal exploding bolt really exemplifies the style of a Space Marine: hitting fast and hard, leaving very little behind.

Lasguns being too weak is a bit misleading though, as they're strong enough to disembody limbs.

Melissia wrote:Lasguns being too weak is a bit misleading though, as they're strong enough to disembody limbs.

You've seen this?

Everything else is for chumps. Bolters have excellent recoil and rarely have problems. They're easy to fix, clean and use. Also, you can feed a variety of ammunitions into them. They're good weapons.

Bolters are holy to Space Marines, besides, if they were to change it the Adeptus Mechanicus would probably call it heresy.

i think everyone above explains it well.


but at the same time i wonder why they dont use a more efffective weapon such as meltaguns or something similar?

and on recoil, today guns used by the army have no recoil. except america, we choose not to use such weapons haha

Well meltaguns are definately more expensive and of much more limited use. A boltgun is rapid fire whereas a meltagun has to wait to cool down. A meltagun is very much a specialist weapon.

DEUS VULT wrote:

Melissia wrote:Lasguns being too weak is a bit misleading though, as they're strong enough to disembody limbs.

You've seen this?

in the sense of actually seeing it? No, fo course not, lasguns don't exist (But then neither do bolters).

But in the fluff? Yes, it's been shown numerous times.

There tacticaly flexebel weapons , with many diffrent types of the weapon and its amunition.

For the Lulz

Melissia wrote:

DEUS VULT wrote:

Melissia wrote:Lasguns being too weak is a bit misleading though, as they're strong enough to disembody limbs.

You've seen this?

in the sense of actually seeing it? No, fo course not, lasguns don't exist (But then neither do bolters).

But in the fluff? Yes, it's been shown numerous times.

Am I the only one who read: "The man tried to get up, but barzano shot him in the face" and laughed?

It's in nightbringer, near the end, when Barzano escapes the prison room and proceeds to violently kill every rebel PDF in sight. Something about it made me laugh for several minutes. The irony of this adept killing so ruthlessly was hilarious. Maybe I shouldn't read at 3:30 AM....

DEUS VULT wrote:

Melissia wrote:Lasguns being too weak is a bit misleading though, as they're strong enough to disembody limbs.

You've seen this?

Happens every other page in all the Gaunt's Ghosts stuff

If you look at the Game stats; a .50cal (heavy Stubber) can bounce off a Guardsman's flak armor; a Bolter round goes right through it.

Shure the Stubber gets an extra shot and longer range, but it is also classified as a Heavy weapon(as the .50 cal bucks like a bronco).

Right. Flak armor is actually a pretty damn amazing piece of equipment.

The flak greaves, boots, chest+waist armor, back armor, pauldrons, gauntlets, and helmet combined weigh less than just the improved tactical outer vest used by U.S. soldiers by itself, too.

Melissia wrote:Right. Flak armor is actually a pretty damn amazing piece of equipment.

The flak greaves, boots, chest+waist armor, back armor, pauldrons, gauntlets, and helmet combined weigh less than just the improved tactical outer vest used by U.S. soldiers by itself, too.

It's better than Ork boyz armour (Forgot the name) which says a lot, considering orks are incredibly muscular and have thick hide.

It's about equivalent to batman's suit in the new movies.

Ork boyz wear what basically amount to beaten metal plates strapped to their bodies.

'Ard Boyz (4+ save) wear a LOT of this.

just because the imperial guard is poorly armed / armored in game, doesn't mean those stats aren't quite good for what they are. Your comparing imperial guardsmen to the elite warriors of other races.. of course marines / aspect warriors / some nid strains / orks are going to be tougher and harder to kill. A modern soldier in 40k terms would be armed with a similar gun (autogun) and probably be wearing 5+ armor at best... and probably WS 2 BS 3 like a fire warrior. Imperial guardsmen are probably much more used to hand to hand combat, and probably have better leadership as well, because they know whats at stake if they break (comissar bullet in the back)

Melissia wrote:Ork boyz wear what basically amount to beaten metal plates strapped to their bodies.

'Ard Boyz (4+ save) wear a LOT of this.

Oh, true. By that logic, Meganobs must wear 4X the amount of metal as a Boy (Probably not much more complicated than that, actually)


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Honersstodnt wrote:just because the imperial guard is poorly armed / armored in game, doesn't mean those stats aren't quite good for what they are. Your comparing imperial guardsmen to the elite warriors of other races.. of course marines / aspect warriors / some nid strains / orks are going to be tougher and harder to kill. A modern soldier in 40k terms would be armed with a similar gun (autogun) and probably be wearing 5+ armor at best... and probably WS 2 BS 3 like a fire warrior. Imperial guardsmen are probably much more used to hand to hand combat, and probably have better leadership as well, because they know whats at stake if they break (comissar bullet in the back)

Well, sure. Not sure what your saying there, since Guardsmen are a "modern soldier". There's nothing more numerous than them. Other than conscripts, they're the bottom of the barrel kind of warriors.

I'm not sure why people complain about BS 3. You still hit on a 4+, which is a 50/50 chance. Now BS 2, well, that's something to complain about.

Samus_aran115 wrote:

I'm not sure why people complain about BS 3. You still hit on a 4+, which is a 50/50 chance. Now BS 2, well, that's something to complain about.

Hell if I know... As anyone even passingly familiar with the statistics of combat will tell you, hiting with every second round is frelling miraculous. I forget the exact details, but I believe the statistics from world war II was something like a quarter-million bullets fired for every soldier killed - if the entire war is taken as a whole.


As to 'why bolters?' - Bolters have a deliberate brutality to them. The Imperium brutal. The Imperium is metal. the Imperium is METAL! The Imperium will not only kill you, they want it to hurt when they do, and they want your friends to have to pick you up with a spatula and a bucket.

In 40K, everything is Metal. Even the laws of physics. In 40K, existence is pain, the dark is grim and every action is opposed by a larger and more brutal reaction kicking its arse for acting on it in the first place because that's METAL!

And bolters, my friend, are metal.

Basically, if an IG Army went up against a modern Earth army, the modern army would kill a bunch of them, but we'd still be crushed. As Melissa said, the lasgun and the average Guardsmen's flak armour are VERY useful against modern weaponry. The problem comes when you consider that everyone else the Imperial Guard fight are 200x better armored and armed than ANYTHING a modern soldier would face. Ever.

As to why bolters.....I think everyone else has already covered it. They're holy, and to replace them would be heresy, but I'd just like to add on that the Imperium probably hasn't even THOUGHT about the effectiveness of the bolter and then thinking, 'hmm, maybe we can give them a more effective gun'. The bolter is ancient, and was given to the Marines by the Emperor and therefore must be perfect. So goes Imperial Logic at least....

The Heavy Stubber is not a .50 Cal, do not refer to it as such. It ,maybe, is a .30 cal.
A REAL LIFE .50 can kill someone even if it doesnt hit them because it has so much force that it creates a concussive wave behind it (enough to kill a person), also a .50 cal can pierce through an inch of steel like nothing (kinda) also the range is far greater (4 miles)


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I'm not saying that Space Marines should carry around Browning M2's. I think that they should take a bolt gun and make it shoot .50 cal bullets. And I dont think recoil would be that big of an issue for the space marines because of the power armor and superior training.

I think you may like .50 cal's a bit too much... You can probably get doctors for that kind of thing.

To Be Honest, I think this argument for Bolter's being worse than .50 cal (or much else) was finished a long time ago, as others have already said.

As for your idea of Bolters firing .50 cal bullets:

Samus_aran115 wrote:Everything else is for chumps. Bolters have excellent recoil and rarely have problems. They're easy to fix, clean and use. Also, you can feed a variety of ammunitions into them. They're good weapons.

Valkyrie wrote:a .75 cal exploding bolt really exemplifies the style of a Space Marine: hitting fast and hard, leaving very little behind.

The Defenestrator wrote:bolters are .75 calibre HE rounds; if you want to compare stats, a heavy stubber (found on IG tanks) is about what a .50 cal machine gun would be. Besides, bolters are sacred weapons to the space marines; you wouldn't ask a samurai to trade in his katana for a pike because it's 'cheaper and has better range', would you?

i've read it meniontioned that normal bullets are useless against orks as they ignore pain , youy need to destroy them , tha was what led to he developement of the bolter , a heavey stubber is the closestt your gonna get to a normal gun

Melissia wrote:Lasguns being too weak is a bit misleading though, as they're strong enough to disembody limbs.

But they don't quite have the dakka of a Bolter...

Azezel wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:

I'm not sure why people complain about BS 3. You still hit on a 4+, which is a 50/50 chance. Now BS 2, well, that's something to complain about.

Hell if I know... As anyone even passingly familiar with the statistics of combat will tell you, hiting with every second round is frelling miraculous. I forget the exact details, but I believe the statistics from world war II was something like a quarter-million bullets fired for every soldier killed - if the entire war is taken as a whole.


As to 'why bolters?' - Bolters have a deliberate brutality to them. The Imperium brutal. The Imperium is metal. the Imperium is METAL! The Imperium will not only kill you, they want it to hurt when they do, and they want your friends to have to pick you up with a spatula and a bucket.

In 40K, everything is Metal. Even the laws of physics. In 40K, existence is pain, the dark is grim and every action is opposed by a larger and more brutal reaction kicking its arse for acting on it in the first place because that's METAL!

And bolters, my friend, are metal.

We know that bolters contain some sort of metal, and that the imperium uses alot of metal, through I'm not sure everything in it is metal, that would probably be necrons. Do you, by chance, mean mental every time you said metal?

Anyway, redguardian, in real life, a bolt pistol round could, in theory take out light vehicles, turn men in to a slushy puddle on the floor and reduce a Carnifex to a large hold ridden corpse in a matter of clips (well, maybe not THAT). It is well known bolters take .75 rounds, which is .25 bigger than your .50 (well arstrates take the .75, it's something lie .675 for humans) So what, there is a concussive wave behind a .50 bullet that can kill a guy. That dosn't mean it'll kill orks, 'nids or 'crons as well as penertrate through the power armour chaos marines wear. Also, I have a feeling that apart from orks weapons are going to have to deal with more than an inch of steel, which has been replaced by many different metals or covered by force shields or remakes itsef every time.

(Where)TF did this rumor about the .50 cal being able to kill you without hitting you come from? It sounds like something you would hear from those gun nuts that wear camo everywhere they go, get drunk before noon and talk about how great military life would have been and how the only reason he isn't in the Army is because they wouldn't take them for being "too crazy".

I can understand how you would believe it, and if you heard it from a credible source (parent, older sibling etc.) that you admire you would have no reason to question it. But me? I'm a confrontational PITA and everyone who has met me knows this. So here we go:

- Muzzle Velocity on an M2 Browning Machine Gun: 2,910 FPS
- Speed of Sound: 1,125 FPS (Which puts the .50 cal bullet right around Mach 2.5 so we will be using supersonic\compressible flow)
- Surface area of a .50 cal round should be obvious; half an inch.

Knowing that the shock wave is going to be the amount of air displaced by the half-inch object traveling through it.
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/oblique.html

To simplify this for everyone I'll edit my post later after I've done the math, but you can probably see that if the shock wave is in fact lethal then it would have to come REALLY close to you for it to have that effect.