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BlaxicanX wrote:lol. Melissia's SM hate is

Non-existent.

It courses through your veins, my young padawan!

BlaxicanX wrote:Frankly though, that entire thing about punching holes in the hull is bs. You never see Space Marines drop their bolters in favor of shotguns when fighting on ships. They use their bolters, and even use auto-cannons and plasma pistols and have massive fire fights in ships. So, busting the hull really isn't as big a deal as people think.

I'd assume this is because Space Marines generally are more disciplined and better trained in the use of their weapons, and the "punching through hulls" bit only matters when actually fighting near the hull. When you've got pirates storming your ship, the last thing you want is some idiot with a heavy bolter going Rambo on the airlock. Which is bound to happen, because Armsmen - just like ordinary crewmen - don't strike me as highly trained troops, but rather thugs that were handed shotguns because they're the next best thing to a trusted ranker you have on your ship.

Which also explains why Navy officers frequently carry better and more dangerous weaponry. They are more experienced / better trained and they don't fight at the forefront of the battle.

Plus, in the confined space that is a ship corridor, a shotgun may actually be better suited than a lasgun. In close quarters battle, what do you want with range or accuracy when you can have spread? Also serves well for putting down ship riots, by the way. Arbites swear by their combat shotguns for "dispersing" crowds.

They also use flamers a lot too, as it has a strong psychological effect and tends to do more damage to biologicals than to the ship.

There is also the fact that if Space marines cause a decompression its not much of an issue, seeing as they wear full suits of power armour. However the vacuum of space is less appealing wearing only carapace.

Depressurization is over-rated. Think about it. For one thing, starship armor is designed to shrug off nuclear scale weaponry of starship guns. Why would a bolt round or a lasgun shot be able to penetrate? Windows maybe, but not every part of a ship is going to have a window (and even then alot of windows, like bridges, tend to be multiple feet/metres tick and made of armour-glass or something tiny. And even IF you poked a hole in the hull (which according to FFG can be 10+ metres thick.. man I'd love a lasgun like that!) how big a hole is it going to be? Bolters are like 2 cm diameter tops, and the same is about true with a lasgun. It will take a long time for a multi-km long starship to lose atmosphere even if you get multiple holes poked in it.

What IS a concern inside a starship are all the pipes and delicate, highyl exposed machinery It would be a bad thing if your bolter/lasgun shot punctured a pipe full of drive plasma, boiling hot steam/water, or if your shot managed to destroy the all important enviromental controls. Shooting stuff up inside the ship is a bad thing, so controlling how firepower is used inside the starship will make sense.

BlaxicanX wrote:lol. Melissia's SM hate is never far away from a marine thread, even if ir doesn't have anything to do with actual space marines. : P

Anyway, it's mentioned in the GG books; it's also covered quite well in ADB's Soul Hunter. Basically dudes armed with shotguns.

Frankly though, that entire thing about punching holes in the hull is bs. You never see Space Marines drop their bolters in favor of shotguns when fighting on ships. They use their bolters, and even use auto-cannons and plasma pistols and have massive fire fights in ships. So, busting the hull really isn't as big a deal as people think.

SM have power armour... they couldn't care less about the cold vaccum of outer space.
Armsmen do not have power armour. They are worried about the cold vaccum of out space.

Melissia wrote:THe Imperial Navy has its own marine force, completely and utterly separated from the Space Marines.

You could even say that the Imperial Navy's marines are the REAL "space marines", semantically speaking.

She speaks the truth.

That akward moment when i saw the title of this thread and imagine an Imperial Guardsmen in Space Marine armor.

Brother Coa wrote:That akward moment when i saw the title of this thread and imagine an Imperial Guardsmen in Space Marine armor.

That awkward moment when I realize I want to buy a box of Space Marines just so I can put normal guardsmen heads on them and use them as normal guardsmen...

Connor MacLeod wrote:Depressurization is over-rated. Think about it. For one thing, starship armor is designed to shrug off nuclear scale weaponry of starship guns. Why would a bolt round or a lasgun shot be able to penetrate? Windows maybe, but not every part of a ship is going to have a window (and even then alot of windows, like bridges, tend to be multiple feet/metres tick and made of armour-glass or something tiny. And even IF you poked a hole in the hull (which according to FFG can be 10+ metres thick.. man I'd love a lasgun like that!) how big a hole is it going to be? Bolters are like 2 cm diameter tops, and the same is about true with a lasgun. It will take a long time for a multi-km long starship to lose atmosphere even if you get multiple holes poked in it.

What IS a concern inside a starship are all the pipes and delicate, highyl exposed machinery It would be a bad thing if your bolter/lasgun shot punctured a pipe full of drive plasma, boiling hot steam/water, or if your shot managed to destroy the all important enviromental controls. Shooting stuff up inside the ship is a bad thing, so controlling how firepower is used inside the starship will make sense.

Yeah, this. It's not depressurization that's the risk, it's damage to something valuable inside the ship. If someone rakes a hallway with heavy bolter fire during a firefight and blows open some life support pipes, that's going to cause problems. . . particularly since it might not even be discovered until after the battle is over.

There are lots of different sources that mention soldiers aboard Naval vessels, at least in passing. The Eisenhorn trilogy references "Naval Security", who are an elite formation of heavily-armored shock troopers who carry what are essentially SMGs; rapid-fire autoguns with low penetration but high stopping power. I would imagine that the names and qualities of the units on board Naval vessels would vary wildly from sector to sector, possibly from planet to planet; in some places they might be elite Stormtrooper-equivalents with high-quality equipment, while in others they might be just the more-trusted crew members with shotguns and flak vests.

There is also mention in some books of Arbites aboard Naval transports. Whether this means literal members of the Adeptus Arbites or whether 'Arbites' is just a general term for 'police/security forces' is anyone's guess; I would lean towards the latter.

purplefood wrote:
SM have power armour... they couldn't care less about the cold vaccum of outer space.
Armsmen do not have power armour. They are worried about the cold vaccum of out space.

In which case it makes you wonder why the Marines don't just shoot a couple holes in the hull in every engagement to auto-win space battles vs. the Guard/Navy.

Oh wait-

Depressurization is over-rated. Think about it. For one thing, starship armor is designed to shrug off nuclear scale weaponry of starship guns. Why would a bolt round or a lasgun shot be able to penetrate? Windows maybe, but not every part of a ship is going to have a window (and even then alot of windows, like bridges, tend to be multiple feet/metres tick and made of armour-glass or something tiny. And even IF you poked a hole in the hull (which according to FFG can be 10+ metres thick.. man I'd love a lasgun like that!) how big a hole is it going to be? Bolters are like 2 cm diameter tops, and the same is about true with a lasgun. It will take a long time for a multi-km long starship to lose atmosphere even if you get multiple holes poked in it.

This. It's a dumb concept.

It's actually a trope. Aliens made it famous with the humans always getting fethed by not wanting to accidentally shoot the hull/nuclear reactor/special machinery. And it also makes sense in real life, as airlplane/space shuttle hulls are very thin.

But in the 41st millenium? No.

Also, the idea that it's okay for Space Marines to use autocannons in front of the hull because of some super spyce muhreen firing discipline is, frankly, lulzy.

I did some research into this area because I was interested in adding some Naval support to my Imperial Guard.

The Imperial Navy maintains Naval Security Battalions to guard their ships, as well as having Armsmen within their crew who are authorized to use weapons during boarding actions.

They are issued shotguns because, much like in an aircraft, you don't want to run the risk of depressurization. As odd as it sounds, lasguns have more penetration power than a shotgun. Not to mention spamming shotgun rounds down a cramp hallway is going to hit something!

It might also be worth noting that the Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence operates a commando regiment who has a job similar to that of the Stormtroopers, but they work for the Navy specifically.

I think it's more the damage to internal systems rather than depressurization.

Also, not every ship in the IN is a warship with ten meters of adamantine armoring. Some of those supply boats are fairly thin-skinned.

Also, yes, an auto-shotgun is hell on wheels when you're fighting in what is, basically, a hallway.

Psienesis wrote:Also, not every ship in the IN is a warship with ten meters of adamantine armoring. Some of those supply boats are fairly thin-skinned.

Plus: those huge-ass three storey cathedral windows.
Whilst naturally not as thin and brittle as "ordinary" glass windows, personally I wouldn't wish to try out if they can really withstand a barrage of armour-piercing miniature rockets with mass-reactive explosive warheads. Shotguns, on the other hand? Knock yourself out.

Read the book 'Relentless', which is based entirely on an Imperial Cruiser.

There are Armsmen, who are constantly on guard against uprisings and boarding actions. They're armed with shotguns (with monofilament and shot rounds, as any hard round or lasgun could penetrate the ship's airtight bulkheads or damage vital systems) and wear flak armour.

But in the times of real distress, when a full boarding is underway, standard practice is to break out the strategically placed weapon caches and arm every single member of the crew* to repel boarders.

*Doesn't include the indentured/slave crews in the underdecks.

Aye, that's sorta how it was described in the short story "Retribution" (featured in a number of BL anthologies, such as Dark Imperium) by Andy Chambers as well. A very good story anyways, recommendable!

I would generally think that the munitorum officers would guard the ship?

I think that's also how they describe it one of the dark heresy supplements, hrm. The shotguns and flamers are standard affairs for dealing with crew insurrection, not for dealing with boarders. Except for the gatling autoshotguns, which are nasty no matter what they're facing against.

Hell there was even a type of flamer that was designed to burn but not kill, just to put the fear of the Emperor in to insurrectionist crewmates.

CrazedVaultBoy wrote:I would generally think that the munitorum officers would guard the ship?

That's the thing, this is modern day thinking. Dedicated marines didn't come into existence until 1537 - until then, all fighting was done by the sailors. Given how a lot of other military institutions work in the IoM, I'm not that surprised that this is how a lot of authors see the Imperial Navy.

For offensive boarding actions though, they'd DEFINITELY have trained naval marines.

I recall reading a mention of troopers serving as "Naval Security" in the Eisenhorn Omnibus. They wore grey and black body armour, with visored helmets equipped with rebreathers amd were all armed with autoguns.

Thats sounds stormtrooper'ish.

Melissia wrote:For offensive boarding actions though, they'd DEFINITELY have trained naval marines.

That's the impression I've gathered also. But boarding actions are rare with cruisers and battleships. The on-ship marines tend to be there for imposing order, internal security and protecting the ship's crew during off-world engagements, providing a honour guard etc. They're the first line of defence when boarded but, as per Relentless' story, if it's all going wrong, all the trusted crew will be given weapons and armour to fight back.

Boarding actions tend to be left to shock troops, something which the Astartes excel at of course, and occasionally some specialised Imperial Guard regiments or stormtroopers.

More often, not occasionally.

Marines almost invariably do boarding from their own ships, not from Imperial Navy ships.

Melissia wrote:For offensive boarding actions though, they'd DEFINITELY have trained naval marines.

Not from what I have read.

"Boarding actions are bloody, desperate battles between ships at very close range. The boarding vessel manouevres close to an enemy ship and sends a wave of armed crewmen across via teleporters, shuttles, life pods and in pressure suits to grab a foothold on the outer hull of the enemy ship. [...]"
- Battlefleet Gothic rulebook, p.34

Of course, there is no real obligation to stick with the studio material above other interpretations of the setting, including one's personal preferences.

That's how it was defined in Soul Hunter.

I always figured giving them shotguns was more out of practicality then safety measures. They have high stopping power at close range/confined spaces (the kind of firepower good for fights on spaceships) and they're also easy to use/maintain/produce, making them a preferred and practical weapon for the Imperium's vast fleet of spaceships. Lasguns are more general weapons intended for grand armies sending volleys of fire at semi-distant opponents.

Shot-pellets also bounce... which lasrounds can, too... but they come out in a cloud. The hallways of a ship are generally narrow, cramped spaces, all twists and turns and rises and falls and they go around pipes, conduits and what-all else a ship's internal structures need to be.

With a shotgun, you can point it at a wall and fire several rounds, which will ricochet those clouds of pellets around corners and into the faces of people who might be hiding around the edge of that wall, and the worst thing you've done is scratch the surface of your steel-plated bulkheads. Guys in a defensive position at the end of the hall? Bounce your shot off the ceiling, so that it comes down directly on top of their heads. Their barricades and low walls do nothing to stop an attack like this.

When you fill a two-meter wide hallway with twenty or thirty meter-wide clouds of steel pellets... you're going to hit something, generally lots of things, which don't stand up well to being shot with steel pellets. This is basically leaving your targets dead or mangled in piles on the floor, as they die in waves.

Flamers do much the same thing, although they do strain the oxygen supply of the ship, especially if the internal airlocks have been sealed, leaving sections of the ship with nothing more than its current oxygen supply to deal with. Hopefully, you will repel boarders in these sections, or take control of the airlock systems, before your troops in these areas run out of air to breathe.

Tearing open a bulkhead to the vacuum of space is a good way to deplete a ship of all its oxygen supply, especially if said tear covers multiple decks and thus bypasses the internal airlocks meant to seal off ruptured decks.

Psienesis wrote:
Tearing open a bulkhead to the vacuum of space is a good way to deplete a ship of all its oxygen supply, especially if said tear covers multiple decks and thus bypasses the internal airlocks meant to seal off ruptured decks.

This isn't going to happen from a couple of SMs popping off a few Bolt rounds, though. That kind of damage will only realistically occur from Starship-sized armament inflicted from the outside, either that or massive amounts of internal sabotage via Melta and/or Plasma based weapons, probably involving the ships Plasma drive(s).

It's against the latter kind of risk that is more probably as a reason for using auto-round weapons and flamers, rather than highly explosive or Melta/Plasma based weapons. Any external bulkhead breaches, if and when they occur from small arms fire, will be of a minor enough in nature to be neutralised via compartmentalised airlocking capability.