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 Haighus wrote:
The default minimum power for an acceptable lasgun for military use in the Great Crusade was 70% mortality from a single shot to the torso of an unarmoured human (it doesn't state if medical care was given). Considering the different mechanisms of injury compared to a bullet, I don't know how much can be inferred from this. As you point out, lasguns can also have a variable power-per-shot, so this standard may be intended to set a minimum power-per-shot with lasgun patterns like the Lucius pattern notably exceeding this with a lower fire rate.

Autoguns are supposed to be better than modern assault rifles, although how is not generally mentioned (I think there are some references to caseless ammunition, but most models have ejection ports). Given the Imperium has far superior materials tech to us now, this isn't surprising. Autoguns are not equal to modern general-issue assault rifles, at worst they are modern rifles made with wonder materials by todays standards.

Likewise, "flak" armour looks to be pretty effective against projectiles (capable of stopping the closest equivalent to modern day heavy machine guns in 40k- heavy stubbers), and carapace armour is very impressive. Current personal armour couldn't hope to stop a direct hit from a .50 BMG cartridge, yet flak armour can do just that.

Interesting. I hadn't read the 70% mortality rate bit.

I do remember getting the impression way back when that autoweapons were supposed to use caseless ammunition and fire relatively small projectiles at a really high velocity and rate of fire, while more normal firearms firing cased ammunition were all called stubbers. I'm not sure where this idea came from, maybe the Inquisitor RPG? Anyway, you're right in that most autoguns today just appear to be regular rifles. Where does the idea that they are super high-tech come from?

Not sure I agree about the flak armor. I don't remember reading anywhere that it could reliably stop hits from a heavy stubber. Got a source? A lot of heavy stubbers also appear to fire cartridges substantially smaller than .50 BMG.

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
Not sure I agree about the flak armor. I don't remember reading anywhere that it could reliably stop hits from a heavy stubber. Got a source? A lot of heavy stubbers also appear to fire cartridges substantially smaller than .50 BMG.

I think this is one of those things where the rules are heavily generalized for the sake of simplicity. A "heavy stubber" on the standard IG tank upgrade sprue is a short-barrelled M2 .50cal, a "heavy stubber" for the DKoK is a .303 Bren gun, but both have the exact same rules. And flak armor has a 33% chance of stopping both of them.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
Not sure I agree about the flak armor. I don't remember reading anywhere that it could reliably stop hits from a heavy stubber. Got a source? A lot of heavy stubbers also appear to fire cartridges substantially smaller than .50 BMG.

I think this is one of those things where the rules are heavily generalized for the sake of simplicity. A "heavy stubber" on the standard IG tank upgrade sprue is a short-barrelled M2 .50cal, a "heavy stubber" for the DKoK is a .303 Bren gun, but both have the exact same rules. And flak armor has a 33% chance of stopping both of them.

Generalizing a wide variety of machine guns into one heavy stubber profile does make a lot of sense. The Chimera on my desk has one, but the cartridges coming out of the belt look a lot smaller than .50 BMG. on the other hand, it could very well be that the GSC manning it is out of scale with the tank.

Flak Armor also has a 33% chance of bouncing a round from a bolter, which I think would be a pretty rare occurrence in the fluff. I definitely don't think that tabletop rules should be thrown out in background discussions, but they can lead to some weird places.

With regards to motorbikes versus horses.

You cannot eat your motorbike in a pinch.

Also, to underestimate the capability for large animals to withstand bullets is to make the same mistake as Australia in the Emu War.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
With regards to motorbikes versus horses.

You cannot eat your motorbike in a pinch.

To be fair, if you're at the point of having to eat your horses to survive then you're probably screwed anyway and you would have been better off not having the horse and keeping its food for the soldiers. The real advantage of horses is that it's a hell of a lot easier to supply horse food than gas/spare parts/etc for a bike, especially in the context of interstellar war. Any human-habitable planet is going to have food that a horse can eat, probably within a very short distance from where the battle is happening, but if you want to support those bikes you may have to haul fuel/parts/etc across interstellar distances and deal with all of the logistics hell of getting it from the landing zone to wherever the bike cavalry is. And that can easily get into the exponential growth problem where now you have to haul trucks to haul the fuel, then more fuel for the trucks, then more trucks to haul that fuel, and so on until your army implodes under the weight of its logistics burden.

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
Not sure I agree about the flak armor. I don't remember reading anywhere that it could reliably stop hits from a heavy stubber. Got a source? A lot of heavy stubbers also appear to fire cartridges substantially smaller than .50 BMG.

I think this is one of those things where the rules are heavily generalized for the sake of simplicity. A "heavy stubber" on the standard IG tank upgrade sprue is a short-barrelled M2 .50cal, a "heavy stubber" for the DKoK is a .303 Bren gun, but both have the exact same rules. And flak armor has a 33% chance of stopping both of them.

Generalizing a wide variety of machine guns into one heavy stubber profile does make a lot of sense. The Chimera on my desk has one, but the cartridges coming out of the belt look a lot smaller than .50 BMG. on the other hand, it could very well be that the GSC manning it is out of scale with the tank.

Flak Armor also has a 33% chance of bouncing a round from a bolter, which I think would be a pretty rare occurrence in the fluff. I definitely don't think that tabletop rules should be thrown out in background discussions, but they can lead to some weird places.

I agree that rules-based arguments can be... odd sometimes. However, if you look at pre-8th rules for the heavy stubber, it was AP6 from 3rd to 7th. Bolters/stormbolters were AP5, so ignored flak armour. That is where my argument comes from- heavy stubbers were not capable of ignoring flak armour for 5 editions of the game where bolters could (bolters being described as armour piercing).

Of course, this depends on what you call reliably Flak armour in the rules only ever stops 1/3rd of "shots". However, I have always felt a 40k rules "shot" to be equivalent to a burst for that weapon type, which could be a single missile or shell, or a short burst of several shots for a heavy stubber or something, which are abstracted into reasonable quanta for a tabletop game. In that context, it isn't urprising that armour which isn't totally covering the body doesn't stop a hail of shots all that often, even if the armour itself can stop the individual shots.

Alright, so I had to remake my name here as I haven't posted on forums much lately and not really at all here that I think of. That said, I had to take a stand for my boys, The Riders of the Rough.

As has been mentioned, yes they are silly. However they are also amazing in their visual appeal for some people. Now if they make bike versions, or horses, or cyber horses or some cross in between like genetic super horses, whatever they do, I want them back.

They fit the silly but fun appeal of a 40k unit, they have a niche that could be cool and a multi part kit done right to modernize the models and make them more like their own core unit would sell a lot to me at least as well as some other cavalry super fans. Not to get mired in the discussion of those who hate or love the idea, I'll just leave this quote which I think speaks to every Rough Rider lover. One of my favorite guard quotes as a matter of fact. Enjoy and bring on the space horses GW, I want them.

"I have seen war in all its forms. I have seen feral world savages braining each other with stones, and I have monitored the death of a whole planet at the hands of a virus bomb. I have seen Space Marines drop to certain death, and win. I have seen Titans crush whole platoons underfoot. But there is no more stirring sight in war than the charge of massed cavalry."

— Dravin Gratz, 14th Tharinga Regiment