Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I dont no if this belongs here but how do meltas work? Would be really good if you guys/gals could provide diargrams speficlay. Thanks

It uses space-magic to shoot a super-hot beam of "energy" at a target, in some fluff described as hot as a star, that melts things. People, buildings, tanks, doesn't matter, they melt. Some fluff sources describe them as having a cone-shaped area of effect, while others describe a thin, white-hot line that utterly slags anything it touches.

What, exactly, a melta is or how it functions is not clearly defined in the fluff. It is known to carry some sort of ammunition/fuel that is either gaseous or liquid in origin, as it's carried in tanks or flasks. It is thermal in nature, though it is not a flame-based weapon.

They work like a small portable blast furnace. Fuel is injected at high pressure into the chamber which is then ignited and placed under even more pressure. The trigger basically opens a hatch on the chamber. Unfocused (by, say, a magnetic field as in the case of plasma guns), the heat of the weapon is intense, but very short ranged.

Basically, think of it as a flame thrower, except instead of shooting fuel at the enemy that burns once it gets there, it instead burns the fuel in advance and sprays the heat at the bad guys.

spya wrote:I dont no if this belongs here but how do meltas work? Would be really good if you guys/gals could provide diargrams speficlay. Thanks

They work the same way your microwave does, times a billion.

Magic.

lol yes. It works because the omnissiah wills it. Dont ask so many questions.

I personally think their portrayal in Space Marine the game worked quite well in terms of what it looks like, although I think it would be much more powerful.

As to how it works? I'm going to quote Joey:

Magic.

Fluff wise, Magic.
In game the rules are quite clear on "how they work"

A melta weapon gains an additional D6 when rolling to determine if the melta shot penetrates a tanks armour.

Most Melta weapons are Range 12" and Str 8, ap1.
so when shooting a vehicle from 6.1" to 12" the hit will be
Str 8 + 1-6 depending on the d6 roll.
if at 6" or less the roll becomes
Str 8 +2-12 (whatever the total of the 2d6 rolled is)

They fire real hot stuff that melts metal and skin and rock and tyranids.

Paraphrasing from the Imperial Munitorum Manual (p. 73):

Not all meltaguns use the same method to deliver energy. There are two main variants of the meltagun. Esteban VII pattern meltaguns use a pyrum/prometheum fuel mix to initiate a small scale fusion reaction whose blast is directed out of the barrel of the gun. Mars pattern meltaguns work by submolecular thermal agitation of the target.

The two descriptions aren't really that different; you're using a handwavium energy source in the gun to produce nuclear-weapon levels of energy, and then delivering it over a short range as a beam or blast. This energy can shear not only molecular bonds, but also disrupt the nuclei of the the target atoms. We know that prometheum is a petroleum like fuel, I assume that 'Pyrium' is therefore a fusionable material, perhaps a 40k Hydrogen isotope/analog? Many 40k sources compare meltaguns to microwaves; however the amount of energy required for 'destructive submolecular agitation' of the target would lead me to think it uses super-grimdark-40k-gamma-rays+1 rather than microwaves; we're flash-vaporizing adamantium, not reheating last night's meatloaf! Also, some novels describe the crew inside getting cooked as well (Faith and Fire comes to mind). I don't think microwaves would be able to do this (they can't reach the inside of a hot dog, let alone a Chimera) but I may be wrong here. And finally, concerning the blast pattern, It's conceivable that different gun designs could channel the blast in different manners, producing either the 'death ray' we see in Dawn of War and some BL novels (Faith and Fire), or the 'shotgun o' doom' we see in Space Marine (and likely in other BL novels, but none come to mind), depending on the specific engineering of the gun's shielding, barrel, etc.

Although I could never relocate the source, my initial impression of melta weapons was that they fired out super heated rock and metal at targets. Making them akin to a gun that shoots Lava. Melting through all types of armor and vehicles, regardless of size. But apperently the typical idea is they fire a microwave burst of hot death.

I don't like the way they're presented in space marine, because it really seems like they just needed a shotgun type of weapon and didn't want a normal shotgun, so the took the melta gun and turned it into one. Plus, you don't even use it against any vehicles (since there aren't any to hit) But that's a gaming developers choice.

You used to be able to twiddle heavy flamers on dreadnoughts to fire as a heavy flamer IIRC

Karnac wrote:Fluff wise, Magic.
In game the rules are quite clear on "how they work"

A melta weapon gains an additional D6 when rolling to determine if the melta shot penetrates a tanks armour.

Most Melta weapons are Range 12" and Str 8, ap1.
so when shooting a vehicle from 6.1" to 12" the hit will be
Str 8 + 1-6 depending on the d6 roll.
if at 6" or less the roll becomes
Str 8 +2-12 (whatever the total of the 2d6 rolled is)

This^^ but you also add +1 for being an AP1 weapon vs vehicles

skycapt44 wrote:

Karnac wrote:Fluff wise, Magic.
In game the rules are quite clear on "how they work"

A melta weapon gains an additional D6 when rolling to determine if the melta shot penetrates a tanks armour.

Most Melta weapons are Range 12" and Str 8, ap1.
so when shooting a vehicle from 6.1" to 12" the hit will be
Str 8 + 1-6 depending on the d6 roll.
if at 6" or less the roll becomes
Str 8 +2-12 (whatever the total of the 2d6 rolled is)

This^^ but you also add +1 for being an AP1 weapon vs vehicles

The +1 bonus is not on the strength of the hit but on the result. AKA a penetrating hit rolls a 4 on the damage result or immobilized. AP 1 add +1 to the result making it a 5; or vehicle wrecked!

skycapt44 wrote:

Karnac wrote:Fluff wise, Magic.
In game the rules are quite clear on "how they work"

A melta weapon gains an additional D6 when rolling to determine if the melta shot penetrates a tanks armour.

Most Melta weapons are Range 12" and Str 8, ap1.
so when shooting a vehicle from 6.1" to 12" the hit will be
Str 8 + 1-6 depending on the d6 roll.
if at 6" or less the roll becomes
Str 8 +2-12 (whatever the total of the 2d6 rolled is)

This^^ but you also add +1 for being an AP1 weapon vs vehicles

This^^ but you also get them Twin-Linked with Vulcan! (And my buddy still misses more than he should...)

In modern day terms, it'd work much like an oxygen or oxyacetylene torch, but cranked up to 11 (check Youtube for the bacon blowtorch. Seriously: mind = blown).

In the grimdark, it works via Applied Phlebotinum (<- TvTropes link, click at your own risk)

How melta different from plasma? I never understood that.

Plasma is a fusion (relatively cold, as fusion reactions go) reaction contained in some sort of magnetic field. Meltas are more like blowtorches, that use a source of fuel to generate enough heat to melt things.

DoctorZombie wrote:How melta different from plasma? I never understood that.

They both work through heat, but the way they produce the heat is different. Meltaguns simply bake their targets by throwing the heat right at them, like opening the door to an enormous blast furnace. Plasmaguns heat some kind of projectile to the point where it reaches the 4th state of matter, plasma, which is essentially what the sun is made out of, and then throws it at the target.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke,

That's how.

DoctorZombie wrote:How melta different from plasma? I never understood that.

Plasma is green.
Melta is yellow.

Joey wrote:

DoctorZombie wrote:How melta different from plasma? I never understood that.

Plasma is green.
Melta is yellow.

/thread

Joey wrote:

DoctorZombie wrote:How melta different from plasma? I never understood that.

Plasma is green.
Melta is yellow.

My plasma is red and my melta is contained in the gun...

plasma is blue
melta is white
you look like an ork
die xenos scum

traditional cadian childrens rhyme

melta is a condensed heat beam its white hot other than that we don't know

If you have ever played the game Space Marine it shows a pretty good example of what a melta looks like while shooting as well as a plasma.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9dskxN10N0

Meltas are made from bacon.

I was going to say that guy was a man's man. But then he pulled out a veggie version of his lance. He's thinking "You know, cutting steel with flaming bacon is pretty cool, but you know what would make it better? If it was vegan." Who does that? Deeply disappointing.

Yeah, I couldn't find the original bacon lance in a 30 second youtube search, so I gave up and just posted the top result.

Still a cool video.

I always thought of them like blowtorches with a fixed setting. From max effective range they do great damage, get them in their sweet spot and they perform their best, and outside their max range it's just a bunch of hot air.