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How come we never see silencers on weapons in 40k?

Just imagine bolters and lasguns with silencers O_O.

*Cue Grey Knight Psilencer trolling*

You do...
Telion has a silenced bolter (Lets not get into it here)
Most of the time it is because the armies in 40k are in the middle of a big fight and not a little fight.

purplefood wrote:Most of the time it is because the armies in 40k are in the middle of a big fight and not a little fight.

Ok but what about ambushes and sobatage?

xxmatt85 wrote:

purplefood wrote:Most of the time it is because the armies in 40k are in the middle of a big fight and not a little fight.

Ok but what about ambushes and sobatage?

Ambushes don't need silenced weapons... neither does sabotage if your teams are any good.
For infiltration missions a team would be equipped with silenced weapons but some weapons cannot or are harder to silence or suppress.

Well, there really isn't a point in silencing a Bolter.


the 1st reason is that a Bolt Shell makes noise after it leaves the barrel as it is a small rocket.


it requires a silencer on the gun itself, and a different type of ammo. Stalker patten Bolt Rounds use compressed gas instead of solid state fuel, reducing the lethality and range, but being almost completely silent.

only the Deathwatch really use Stalker ammo anyway. Telion just has the silenced gun, not ammo.

10 Orks died reading the title of this thread.

Grey Templar wrote:Well, there really isn't a point in silencing a Bolter.


the 1st reason is that a Bolt Shell makes noise after it leaves the barrel as it is a small rocket.


it requires a silencer on the gun itself, and a different type of ammo. Stalker patten Bolt Rounds use compressed gas instead of solid state fuel, reducing the lethality and range, but being almost completely silent.

only the Deathwatch really use Stalker ammo anyway. Telion just has the silenced gun, not ammo.

Wouldn't the benefits of slightly lowered volume be more or less negated completely when it explodes on impact with its target?

IIRC: The Stalker was Mercury filled; that way the Stalker still has a messy micro-explosion, but no sound.

Even if the bolt explodes, the silencer ensures that the shooter is harder to locate for target and friends. Often a primary use for silencers.

The Dark Heresy Core Rulebook talks about silencers for autoguns and snub pistols, so they ARE used. However, if you REALLY want to be silent, you have needle pistols and needle rifles. I guess silenced autoguns fill a very small gap between "sophisticatedly silent and deadly" and "military-grade 180dB firepower" for people how can't afford the needle stuff.

PS: Or for someone who is up against armored enemies, since needlers are crap against armor. Silenced autogun with man-stopper bullets is quite a potent weapon in the Dark Heresy ruleset.

Witzkatz wrote:Even if the bolt explodes, the silencer ensures that the shooter is harder to locate for target and friends. Often a primary use for silencers.

Wouldn't the ten foot tall suit of whirring, clanking power armor give you away, though?

Orks have a silent weapon. The Choppa, sadly, they usually give away their cover by screaming WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! before they can silently knife the poor souls.

I'm sure the IG and inquisition have access to suppressors.

Hardly anything around in 40k that would be worth silencing, if you could even do it. Same reason suppressors aren't standard issue for any modern military. They burn out rather quickly and make the weapon somewhat dangerous to handle. Suppressors become brutally hot after firing only a handful of rounds. If you want good suppression, you usually need to run it "wet" with either water or oil. It's just not practical.

Wouldn't the ten foot tall suit of whirring, clanking power armor give you away, though?

"Real-life" bolter range is at least up to effective 200 meters or something. I'm pretty sure trained Space Marines can operate at that distance without their armor necessarily giving them away, depending on terrain.

Furthermore...something just occurred to me. I'm not an expert, but an engineering student with laser applications classes. I'm pretty sure your average lasgun is FAR more quiet than a bullet propelled by an explosion. The damage is about the same for lasguns and autoguns, as we know. If you want the silence you get from "basic" non-super-sophisticated silencers - which means making it quiet enough that you don't wake up a whole valley of Orks when firing - I gues you could just use las weaponry.

There's a story in the novels around Col. Schaeffer and his Last Chancers where some Jungle Fighters on Armageddon argue that they'e changed their weapons from lasguns to autoguns, because the Orks respect the loud noise from the autoguns more than the quiet lasguns. This is some in-universe evidence that lasguns themselves are already comparably quiet.

(And their beam should be, for all the physics that I'm aware of, not be visible like in every frickin' game or movie you see laser weapons in.)

In the 41st Millennium, there is only attacking from the front.

Tell that to Snikrot or Marbo.

Hey, Marbo HAS a silenced pistol, right? Lemme check on that.

...turns out the codex doesn't mention it explicitly. Oh well.

Snipers are silent. That is all, /thread.

The Space Marine Scout bolt pistols are supposed to have silencers//suppressors. That's what that extra bit on the barrel is. There was a bit about it in WD way back when the metal Goodwin sculpts were first released, including a special mission where scouts with silenced pistols took out sentries and infiltrated a base (or something like that).

Witzkatz wrote:
(And their beam should be, for all the physics that I'm aware of, not be visible like in every frickin' game or movie you see laser weapons in.)

Shouldn't they make a loud 'popping' noise?

Vet Sgt Naaman of the Dark Angels in 2nd ed had a silenced bolt pistol.

They are just uncommon and marines are not reknowned for the stealthy approach. More the "shock and/or what?" approach.

Fafnir wrote:

Witzkatz wrote:
(And their beam should be, for all the physics that I'm aware of, not be visible like in every frickin' game or movie you see laser weapons in.)

Shouldn't they make a loud 'popping' noise?

They make a "pew pew" noise.

Laser beams are visible if there is enough particulate material suspended in the air to cause backscattering of the light or to absorb the energy and fluoresce, if the beam is very high power (which of course is the point of laser weapons).

This would include smoke, dust, fog, and anti-laser aerosols.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Fafnir wrote:

Witzkatz wrote:
(And their beam should be, for all the physics that I'm aware of, not be visible like in every frickin' game or movie you see laser weapons in.)

Shouldn't they make a loud 'popping' noise?

They make a "pew pew" noise.

Laser beams are visible if there is enough particulate material suspended in the air to cause backscattering of the light or to absorb the energy and fluoresce, if the beam is very high power (which of course is the point of laser weapons).

This would include smoke, dust, fog, and anti-laser aerosols.

Yeah, but wouldn't the sound of the laser burning through whatever it's hitting (ie, the air) make a loud popping noise?

Aye Telion has a silenced gun, and I glued the silencer looking bit off the scouts bolt pistols onto my other scouts bolters so they match. It looks super good.

Fafnir wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Fafnir wrote:

Witzkatz wrote:
(And their beam should be, for all the physics that I'm aware of, not be visible like in every frickin' game or movie you see laser weapons in.)

Shouldn't they make a loud 'popping' noise?

They make a "pew pew" noise.

Laser beams are visible if there is enough particulate material suspended in the air to cause backscattering of the light or to absorb the energy and fluoresce, if the beam is very high power (which of course is the point of laser weapons).

This would include smoke, dust, fog, and anti-laser aerosols.

Yeah, but wouldn't the sound of the laser burning through whatever it's hitting (ie, the air) make a loud popping noise?

The bang from a gun comes from two sources -- the explosion of the propellant, and the supersonic boom of the bullet pushing through the air.

Neither of these is a factor for a laser. In theory, if the laser crossed enough particles and heated them sufficiently they could vaporise with enough force to create a mini explosion.

If this happened at the muzzle of the laser, the operator might be harmed. It also saps the power of the beam.

I recall them having been stated as producing a sharp crack when fired. Nothing like a gun shot, certainly, but a crack nonetheless, from the pressure caused by heating the air.

Lasguns create a loud crack when fired.

the beam is also visible.


this is because the lasgun doesn't actually fire a Laser.


the Lasgun uses a laser to agitate a gas in a special chamber. the gas then changes into plasma and is ejected from the barrel of the gun at hypersonic speed.


the sonic boom(or crack) is the plasma leaving the barrel really fast.

the "laser beam" is actually an after-image left by the plasma pulse.

Space Marine scouts carry mostly silenced pistols.

I can more see a dampening field that renders a weapon silent than an actual suppressor. At any rate, silencers don't really silence anything. They're more accurately called suppressors, because the lower the dB output of the weapon.

This isn't a factor in any energy based weapon because the plasma/laser beam makes it's own noise akin to thunder. And most of the projectile weapons are either supersonic, or explode on impact anyway, negating the need for a suppressor.

In fact, there's only a handful of real life weapons are completely silent, one of which is a Russian pistol that contains the gas explosion from the primer and gun powder within the shell casing. It uses a piston to fire the projectile. It's only effective up to 20 yards though.

On the other hand, I figure most soldiers in the 40k universe have serious hearing problems anyway. I have yet to see ear protection on a single model. Even artillery.

Grey Templar wrote:
Lasguns create a loud crack when fired.

the beam is also visible.


this is because the lasgun doesn't actually fire a Laser.


the Lasgun uses a laser to agitate a gas in a special chamber. the gas then changes into plasma and is ejected from the barrel of the gun at hypersonic speed.


the sonic boom(or crack) is the plasma leaving the barrel really fast.

the "laser beam" is actually an after-image left by the plasma pulse.

Could you cite sources for that? I don't believe that is actually the case.

Might I quote a source of my own:

Warhammer 40,000 3rd Edition Rulebook wrote:
The lasgun uses the same basic technology and operates along the same lines as other las weapons, emitting a beam of focused light. The high amount of energy in the beam causes the immediate surface area of a target to be vaporized in a small explosion.

Furthermore, your plasma theory is inconsistent with the fact that you can recharge lasgun power packs at simple power sources, transferring electrical energy. There's no mention of loading a gas compartment, which would be necessary for the effect you describe. Your mode of operation sounds very much like a Star Wars Blaster, though.

However:
When a pulsed laser beam hits a surface, it is possible that the rapid heating of material can result in something like an explosion, an effect in which plasma created on impact plays a role. In this way, a lasgung could work on this plasma effect, but NOT by shooting agitated gas out of the barrel or anything like that. It shoots a laser beam, that's what it does.