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gendoikari87 wrote:I don't know where they're getting 90 lbs of recoil but to produce that much force with a laser beam you'd need I think something on the order of Tera watts or some other ungodly powerful exponent.

It's not the laser beam that's the problem. It's the gas being accelerated to supersonic speeds to create the laser beam that (hypothetically) causes the recoil in this particular setup.

Just FYI we have mobile TerraWatt lasers in operation today, give it another 38k years and fairly sure that one will find ways to further increase the population inversion

Phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range...

Portable Plasma weaponry is far FAR more likely then Laser based weapons.


Laser weapons will likely cost too much to produce and will be overlooked in favor of solid slug weaponry.


why is the lasgun cheap to produce in 40k?

"Because its Cooooooooooooool"

-Invader Zimtm

All I can think of right now are Reese's Peanut Butter cups.

"Hey! You got your fiction in my reality!"
"Hey! You got your reality in my fiction!"

Something tells me that this will never taste anywhere NEAR the peanut buttery, chocolatey goodness that is a Reese's!

Eric

Howard A Treesong wrote:Of course al lot of this relies on suspending your belief that battles are fought on the ground largely in hand to hand it seems. The reality would probably be that the IG is more like the national Guard and keeps local order. Any serious problems and a load of spaceships turn up and drop nukes from orbit, you wouldn't drop ground troops unless they were more like special forces going in on rescue missions or such like. Which is where the Space Marines come in. The idea that you'd have a standing army of millions deployed to fight trench warfare is a bit silly.

As for the state of technology, well in the 40K universe much technology has been lost, what they have is what is maintained from more enlightened times which goes to explain the patchwork approach to mixing high and primitive technologies. It's not an exactly original idea in SF.

well you can't just go around nuking everything. It's a bad Idea, you kinda need that thing called living space and wiping a planet of all life kinda turns it into a useless hunk of rock, which you might have just left alone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tedurur wrote:Just FYI we have mobile TerraWatt lasers in operation today, give it another 38k years and fairly sure that one will find ways to further increase the population inversion

yeah.... CHEMICAL lasers... mounted inside the passenger compartment of a 747. The idea of a plasma weapon seems better to me, but I honestly think we shall see a positron beam weapon long before a useable laser weapon. Or at least an electron beam gun.

Maybe you should look into a little company called Raytheon before you talk about the current state of lasers...

gendoikari87 wrote:

tedurur wrote:Just FYI we have mobile TerraWatt lasers in operation today, give it another 38k years and fairly sure that one will find ways to further increase the population inversion

yeah.... CHEMICAL lasers... mounted inside the passenger compartment of a 747. The idea of a plasma weapon seems better to me, but I honestly think we shall see a positron beam weapon long before a useable laser weapon. Or at least an electron beam gun.

eh, no?

A positron beam weapon would work exactly how in a non vacuum envoronment?

Kommissar Kel wrote:Computergeek01:
Lasers will create a rather small hole(literally the exact size/shape of the beam), are likely to cauterize the wound as they make it(minimizing blood loss) and will only disrupt the organ function of those organs it actually burns through.

It takes a considerable effort to cauterize a wound, you're more likley talking about 4th degree deep tissue burns. CAUTION GRAPHIC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn

I like the pseudo-science as much as any of you which is why I am defending GW's stance. I could just as easily point to facts that prove me wrong but that seems to easy and doesn't propagate the suspension of disbelief that makes this game so great. Besides most of these counter points are flawed esspecially when you consider that the "shock wave" you pointed out is the hydrostatic shock I mentiond earlier. What good does that do against targets that aren't soft tissue (Necron) or are insanly tough (Orks)?

A laser simply cuts off limbs, it doesn't matter how tough you are if I cut off your leg you aren't coming to get me anymore, if I cut off your arm then you can't swing that big weapon at me. Can a solid projectile reliably cut up a target like that?

I like the pseudo-science as much as any of you which is why I am defending GW's stance. I could just as easily point to facts that prove me wrong but that seems to easy and doesn't propagate the suspension of disbelief that makes this game so great. Besides most of these counter points are flawed esspecially when you consider that the "shock wave" you pointed out is the hydrostatic shock I mentiond earlier. What good does that do against targets that aren't soft tissue (Necron) or are insanly tough (Orks)?

A laser simply cuts off limbs, it doesn't matter how tough you are if I cut off your leg you aren't coming to get me anymore, if I cut off your arm then you can't swing that big weapon at me. Can a solid projectile reliably cut up a target like that?

on the surface you seem to have a point, but remember we are talking kills here, I mean if you cut off a mans legs... he can still shoot at you, especially when theres tons of adrenaline involved. a high pressure hydrostatic shock from being shot in the gut however is likely to kill you quickly Mid abdomen it's likely an instant death. A shot in the arm will likely tear your army off it its an assault rifle THV. and a steel core round would certainly be somewhat effective against necrons and if I was tasked to design and assult rifle type weapon for use against orks it wouldn't be a laser, it'd be something that did a mass area of damage, like a THV or explosive rounds. Or better yet a poisoned fungacidal round

eh, no?

A positron beam weapon would work exactly how in a non vacuum envoronment?

By Rapidly heating the air molecules causing them to expand and get out of the way making a less dense substance for the beam to travel through untill it reaches it's target and just annihilates it. The Tip would need to be made of carbon carbon composite though, but I wouldn't want to be the one using it the first time.

Ok I FINALLY gave up on trying to figure out what you mean with your THV round spec and googled it, after some effort I found a referance to reverse ogive rounds which led me to assume you mean hollow points. If this is the case then I believe generally on this site we except the term JHP (Jacketed Hollow Point) or UHP (Unjacketed Hollow Point), none of this arcane stuff from the 1940's if you don't mind. Please correct me if I am wrong because this is bugging me .

A laser could\would cut through to your heart as easily as it would cut off a limb. Also I'll mention that according to the fluff piece the Infantryman's Primer, the IG lasgun fires at around 2,000 Joules making it a beast by comparison to many of today's lasers.

EDIT: Came off with the wrong tone for the friendly conversation\compitition that I see this as. Sorry about that.

ComputerGeek01 wrote:Ok I FINALLY gave up on trying to figure out what you mean with your THV round spec and googled it, after some effort I found a referance to reverse ogive rounds which led me to assume you mean hollow points. If this is the case then I believe generally on this site we except the term JHP (Jacketed Hollow Point) or UHP (Unjacketed Hollow Point), none of this arcane stuff from the 1940's if you don't mind. Please correct me if I am wrong because this is bugging me .

A laser could\would cut through to your heart as easily as it would cut off a limb. Also I'll mention that according to the fluff piece the Infantryman's Primer, the IG lasgun fires at around 2,000 Joules making it a beast by comparison to many of today's lasers.

EDIT: Came off with the wrong tone for the friendly conversation\compitition that I see this as. Sorry about that.

Not hollow points. Hollowpoints simply increase the energy transfer by increasing the surface area, THV's are so much more.

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/THV.htm






see the shape of the round forces air around it a lot more violently than a traditional more aerodnamic bullet, reducing range to some degree but they were intended for police pistols where this would not be an issue, overall they increase the wound channel significantly as detailed in the chart.

Edit: the .357 Magnums I hear are particularly nasty. I don't know if the Assault rifle caliber ones have ever been tested or let alone sold, but my opinion is that properly design the natural high speed of assault rifles combined with the brute power of the 7.62 would make for something to truely be feared, something that would simply be way more than needed for humans and be more for shock and awe.

no human target would require such projectiles.


that is a "One shot, one kill" kinda round.

ComputerGeek01 wrote:A laser simply cuts off limbs, it doesn't matter how tough you are if I cut off your leg you aren't coming to get me anymore, if I cut off your arm then you can't swing that big weapon at me. Can a solid projectile reliably cut up a target like that?

I don't know about your Arm but to cut off my arm you are going to need either:
A) A Laser with at least a 4" diameter emitter(in exactly the right angle, and at my arm's smallest), or a 5" Diameter emitter(from the Side)
Or
B) you will need a Laser capable of sustained fire(no weapon grade lasers can fire longer than a few nano-seconds, currently), and "walk" the beam across my arm.

anything less than either of those 2 would leave a hole, and me in a great deal of pain(and possibly shock) but may not actually stop or even disable me. but then I have a very high pain threshold.

I did some extra research after my last post; and found that most military lasers fire in nano-second and pico-second bursts(sometimes both in tandem) and most of the damage caused by them is actually from the target area converting to plasma(so laser blasts would end in slight "explosions" by definition) but rate of fire is very low as is actual penetration of the target(enough to detonate the firing charge or Fuel tank of an ICBM, sure, but then ICBMs are not armored).

Also Fourth degree burns are also self cauterizing; cauterizing itself is not that difficult so long as the tool is hot enough and the administer knows what they are doing(and that is on a jagged wound, a Clean cut is very easy to cauterize by anyone with the slightest bit of training)

In answer to the OP:

...These are the tales of those times.
Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war.

From the first page thingy of damn near every (if not all) non-Heresy Black Library book.
So, I believe what we're being told is that humanity HAD advanced much much farther than current (and current in 40k) technology, but everything was lost (I'd assume this happened around or because of the Age of Strife/Old night).

Not to mention those miles long fusion powered space ships seem to generate more weapons energy output than a star....see the star trek thread for the detailed figures showing how...inexact BL / GW "science" is.

since when did the fuff claim that Impierial ships generate more energy then stars?


Fusion power plants can generate an insane amount of energy, but you need a reactor the size of a star to equal a star.


40K IMO has much more realistic tech then Star Trek(aside from Warp Travel, but then traveling at the speed of light is pretty farfetched) they are still using Solid slug weapons and power their vehicles with fossil fuels(or manufactured Hydrocarbons)

gendoikari87 wrote:Lasguns: Setting aside that lasers won't cause you to explode unless the beam covers your whole body, laser energy weapons are much less efficient than traditional kinetic at doing damage because a kinetic round needs only to break a few bonds rather than heat up the surrounding tissues to high energies. Even THV rounds which are meant to deal massive damage use shockwaves which simply tear rather than heat up the tissues. Granted Lasers can be recharged and don't require a supply train... that might have something to do with why the imperium uses lasguns instead of rifles.

Basically they wouldn't work for killing anything larger than a rat... Which is the case of the Imperium Lasgun.

I got about halfway through reading this thread, then I realized:

This is a universe where guns shoot tiny goblins through hell, a chainsaw axe is a feasible weapon, and the only reliable method of faster-than-light space travel carries with it a significant danger of being eaten by demons.

Why are we applying science to it, again?

because it's coooooooooooooooool

Captain Solon wrote:No.

The LR MBT could not be based on any tanks with it's sponsons.

Actaully, what Nickmund was referring to is that the actual model is a derivative of a model of an inter-war French design, at least according to Wikipedia (so, take that with a grain of Sodium-Chloride, as gendo would say ):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicles_of_the_Imperial_Guard#Leman_Russ

wikipedia wrote:The original plastic model sold by Games Workshop is a modification of a French World War II B1 bis tank kit that the company purchased the rights to early on in the company's history. The first boxed set was released in 1994 during the game's second edition.

Also, several WW I British tanks had sponsons, so that is where that inspiration came from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:British_Mark_V-star_Tank.jpg

Anyway, the Navy-trained engineer side of me says that 40k makes no sense, while the sci-fi nut in me says "Wow, that's cool!" This dichotemy is one of the things that makes the game so interesting for me, I suspect. Gendo, one thing you need to keep in mind is that there is always the Rule of Cool and Rule of Super Advanced Tech trump cards to play; thins are that way to make the game fun, and we can assume they are that way becuase they are made of advanced materials that are impossibly light/strong/explodey.

the British MkIV, the Icon of WW1 Tanks, had 2 gun sponsons and 12 Machine guns located around the hull.


if you have ever watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade the tank they are fighting on is a MkIV