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The bolter is not real, everything we have been told about it, is what the bolter is. If it's described as complicated and requiring heavy maintenance, that's just how it is.

Belexar wrote:Even so, you can ger the same results with a Bolter pistol than with a Slugga, which is basically a big gun made from scrap metal.

Actually, it's only the same result an ORK can get with a slugga. Sluggas may not actually work when wielded by a non-ork.

You really know 40k, even I knew the fact about the fact that Marines don't build their bolters, but chapters like the Salamanders like to make custom modifications, so that is probably where that comes from

Grey Templar wrote:a Bolter is no more complicated then any of our modern firearms.

This is a ridiculous assertion. Bolters are delicate, overcomplicated messes, and their ammo even more so.

it does require a supply line of ammo, but Space Marines never persue the kind of war where they will need to maintain supply lines.

they drop in, get the job done, and leave. they don't need to resupply.

Right. None of that contradicts anything I said. Space Marines are shock troops to be used in brief engagements to soften hard targets. Naturally, tanks are a better solution to the problem, and this is reflected in tanks of all sorts outnumbering Space Marines, including the tanks that are worth several squads of them, like baneblades.

the ammo is fairly complex, but once you are able to mass produce the ammo everything becomes alot easier. and yes, Bolt rounds are mass produced, along with most of the imperiums equipment.

Bolts aren't mass-produced, at least not in the sense you're meaning it. They're handcrafted with a great deal of pointless ritual, since they're meant to be sacred objects after all.

the Imperial Guard does fight long protracted wars, but thats why they have Lasguns. no ammo to truck in, its just recharged with mobile generators or even light and heat.

Right, the lasgun is perfect from a logistical standpoint. It's also ridiculously advanced, as evidenced by the fact that it works the way it does at all. Non-Marine tech is notably a great deal more efficient in terms of labor and resources, though. Compare Guard tanks to Marine ones, for instance. Or even the basic infantry equipment: for the resources (considering both labor and parts) to make a single suit of power armor, you could probably outfit several regiments in flak; a single round for a bolter would take more than a entire lasgun, complete with its hundreds of rounds of ammo worth of chargepacks.

and the Imperium is actually advancing its technology. just extremely slowely. they make sure something works before they use it.



and not all Imperial tech is made with STCs. Power Armor and Bolters are actually NOT STC built. Power Armor is constantly improving. Bolters are often hand built by the marine that will wield them.

the Ad Mech understands their technology, the higher up you are, the more you know. its the unwashed masses who don't know how things work.

I never said anything to the contrary, only that it is technologically inefficient and often ridiculously complicated. Take Titans, for example: the design poses numerous technological hurdles and difficulties to function at all, let alone be able to match something like a baneblade, yet a titan is demonstrably worth a great deal more than a baneblade in terms of firepower and resilience, and so a great deal of extra technology would have had to go into making it work, enough to make a tank worth many times a titan had it been spent there instead. There's some reason to believe that a Titan requires more investment of labor than one of the smaller naval vessels (which would be kind of like a bicycle taking more labor to build than an eighteen-wheeler); or it could just be that the naval vessel is more useful, and that's why it's produced on a much greater scale, sort of like how for every suit of power armor more than ten million suits of flak are produced.

Or compare power armor to a crisis suit, for an Imperial versus Non-Imperial comparison: they both provide roughly the same level of protection, but the crisis suit is the size of a dreadnought and clumsy in close, though it has a jet engine duck taped to it so it can move around the battlefield at a better clip than a Marine, and although it packs more firepower than a suit of power armor can carry with it it's still significantly less than what a dreadnought could carry. The power armor is objectively the more advanced piece of technology there, cramming significantly better protection into a smaller package, while maintaining a degree of dexterity; it's less efficient, however, because the Crisis Suit is comparatively mass produced, instead of being a delicately crafted relic, and the crisis suit is more strategically useful due to its greater macro-scale maneuverability.

the color purple wrote:No denying the bolter is a good weapon. But eventually the Imperium will simply lose its ability to make bolters

Considering that new patterns of Boltguns have been developed over the millenniums, this is false.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DarknessEternal wrote:

Belexar wrote:Even so, you can ger the same results with a Bolter pistol than with a Slugga, which is basically a big gun made from scrap metal.

Actually, it's only the same result an ORK can get with a slugga. Sluggas may not actually work when wielded by a non-ork.

Yes it does work in the hands of a non-Ork.

But a slugga is definitely inferior to a boltgun.

iproxtaco wrote:The bolter is not real, everything we have been told about it, is what the bolter is. If it's described as complicated and requiring heavy maintenance, that's just how it is.

actually, the basic mechanics which a bolter uses are quite real.


the Gyrojet was a weapon class that was developed to fire caseless rocket propelled solid rounds.

it had problems with accuracy beyond a certain distance, it wasn't lethal within 30 feet, and the rockets often misfired(sometimes igniting a minute after you fired it). you could literally do the Loony Toons thing and stop it with a finger down the barrel.


the Bolter solves the lethality problem by adding an explosive stage when fired. accuracy we can assume is solved with advanced stabilization systems built into the bolt round(the Gyrojet was invented during the 60s so the technology wasn't advanced nearly to the capacity of the idea)



as far as the complexity,

the bolter can't be any more complex then a Lasgun. a Lasgun has all sorts of wierd things to fire its lasbolts(which is actually a plasma pulse fired down a laser. basically, its a low grade pulse rifle)

the bolter simply has the componants we have in modern firearms. mag feed, breech, barrel...

it will have additional equipment in the form of targeting relays which interface with the Power Armor's HUD, but these are extras and have nothing to do with the actual weapons technology.


I would venture to say that it would be entirely possable to make a working bolter right now.

Oh Grey Templar, so very wrong, but I'm tired, so utter obliteration will have to wait unitl morning or someone else will have to step up.

Melissia wrote:Yes it does work in the hands of a non-Ork.

But a slugga is definitely inferior to a boltgun.

You mean Bolter? or Bolter Pistol? The slugga is the Ork Pistol. Their regular rifle would be the Shoota.

sure they require maintanence, but its no more then our modern firearms. possably less, but 40k fluff tends to dramatise things.

Space marines do occasionally get forced to fight a straight up battle, but that is very rare.


the Battle for Maccragge is also a bad example. they Ultramarines were fighting on their own turf. they would definitly have had massive stockpiles of ammo.

As I said before, Marines know their weapons very well. I think they have a bond with it much like a samurai had with his katana. They're perfectly capable of giving it maintenance themselves.

Grey Templar wrote:sure they require maintanence, but its no more then our modern firearms. possably less, but 40k fluff tends to dramatise things.

Definitely more. They're temperamental weapons in every single fluff source that mentions it, but then again, it was comparing them to the lasgun, which is as reliable as a weapon gets without being a rock.

The boltgun might seen complicated to us but so no much to the Marines. I used to think it was hard to dissarm a car's starting system, give it maintenance and put it back toguether. After five lessons, I could do it with my eyes closed. Well, maybe with one eye open.

of course, this could be because they might not know how everything works exactly. so realativly speaking, they might be fairly reliable weapons.


kinda like an M-16. it works very well, but if it gets dirty it will jam on you.

the lasgun has a dirt and grime tolerance of a AK-47. it requires cleaning, but won't jam as often as a bolter might.




Space Marines also compensate for the Bolters higher maintanence requirements by being super humans. this is all they do. they are fully mentally in the fight and live for war. they don't take any spare time off llike a guardsmen will(whose thoughts will be on other things)

the Marine has nothing to do but clean and maintain his Bolter. he cleans it every time it gets used. so what if it jams when it gets dirty, it never stays dirty for long.

First:

(which is actually a plasma pulse fired down a laser. basically, its a low grade pulse rifle)

That's Star Wars. Lasguns are not and have never been plasma rifles. We've been over this.

Grey Templar wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:The bolter is not real, everything we have been told about it, is what the bolter is. If it's described as complicated and requiring heavy maintenance, that's just how it is.

actually, the basic mechanics which a bolter uses are quite real.


the Gyrojet was a weapon class that was developed to fire caseless rocket propelled solid rounds.

it had problems with accuracy beyond a certain distance, it wasn't lethal within 30 feet, and the rockets often misfired(sometimes igniting a minute after you fired it). you could literally do the Loony Toons thing and stop it with a finger down the barrel.


the Bolter solves the lethality problem by adding an explosive stage when fired. accuracy we can assume is solved with advanced stabilization systems built into the bolt round(the Gyrojet was invented during the 60s so the technology wasn't advanced nearly to the capacity of the idea)



as far as the complexity,

the bolter can't be any more complex then a Lasgun. a Lasgun has all sorts of wierd things to fire its lasbolts...

the bolter simply has the componants we have in modern firearms. mag feed, breech, barrel...

it will have additional equipment in the form of targeting relays which interface with the Power Armor's HUD, but these are extras and have nothing to do with the actual weapons technology.


I would venture to say that it would be entirely possable to make a working bolter right now.

Yes, we could make something that is more or less a bolter if we felt like it, and it would be relatively simple. The bolters in 40k are ridiculously complex, far more than they need to be to do what they do. Imperial tech is comprised of the remnants of what was basically a post-scarcity society, with some improvements over the remnants here and there. Everything is ridiculously complex and advanced, even if it could be done with something simpler and more straightforward.

Beaten to the punch by Pseudo. A Lasgun is a pulse rifle now? Fantastic Grey Templar, what they feth would give you that idea?

Grey Templar wrote:of course, this could be because they might not know how everything works exactly. so realativly speaking, they might be fairly reliable weapons.


kinda like an M-16. it works very well, but if it gets dirty it will jam on you.

the lasgun has a dirt and grime tolerance of a AK-47. it requires cleaning, but won't jam as often as a bolter might.




Space Marines also compensate for the Bolters higher maintanence requirements by being super humans. this is all they do. they are fully mentally in the fight and live for war. they don't take any spare time off llike a guardsmen will(whose thoughts will be on other things)

the Marine has nothing to do but clean and maintain his Bolter. he cleans it every time it gets used. so what if it jams when it gets dirty, it never stays dirty for long.

Last I heard, modern variants of the M16 were more reliable, even under the worst conditions for them (a sandstorm, I believe it was), than modern AK variants under those same conditions. The original AK-47 was more resilient against long-term neglect than just about any other gun ever produced, but even it would jam occasionally, no less, and possibly more than, modern M16s kept in good condition.

Also, lasguns can't jam, they don't have any moving parts aside from the trigger.

Grey Templar wrote:the lasgun has a dirt and grime tolerance of a AK-47.

Oh hell no. The lasgun makes the AK47 look dainty and needy.

not from the fluff i have read.


any way,

the Munitorum Manuel actually gives some insight to a Lasgun's firing mechanisim.

it mentions a gas chamber which the laser agitates. that sounds like a pulse rifle to me.

Grey Templar wrote:not from the fluff i have read.


any way,

the Munitorum Manuel actually gives some insight to a Lasgun's firing mechanisim.

it mentions a gas chamber which the laser agitates. that sounds like a pulse rifle to me.

That's how a laser is produced. See wikipedia on lasers.

I know that.


it mentions agitating the gas and then releasing it in a plasma form.

it says that this is why Las beams are visable to the naked eye.

Grey Templar wrote:not from the fluff i have read.

I have never read of a lasgun jamming. Ever.

It's not in a plasma form though. The description of the laser isn't like what a pulse rifle is either.

Melissia wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:not from the fluff i have read.

I have never read of a lasgun jamming. Ever.

maybe,

but they do occasionally overheat or explode if the interor gets dirty.

Where? The only time I've seen lasguns exploding was when some form of energy or munitions hit the power packs.

So we're on lasguns now? It's okay. Lasguns are cool, though I don't know too much about them. I'll have to do some research. So, to sum up, Bolters are great weapons with a power to be feared, as long as their user keeps it nice and clean.

Melissia wrote:Where? The only time I've seen lasguns exploding was when some form of energy or munitions hit the power packs.

Lets see, I think it was in one of the Tanith novels.

I think its the one where they were on the planet with loads of dust storms and were fighting cultists.

some random banter in the book about how you better clean the lasgun of the dust or it might explode.


of course, it could be more propaganda so they keep their guns clean(the idea is keeping the guns fully functioning of course)

So is it safe to say that the portrayed of a bolter in Warhammer 40,000: Firewarrior was closest to correct?

Well no, as It's used by a Tau, therefore it is HERESY!

I would say the closest thing would be the one in Space Marine.

The upcoming game, not that movie.

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