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 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

dusara217 wrote:Yes, but Bolters detonate INSIDE of the target. That's like when Jack Sparrow shoved a cherry bomb into the skeleton guy right before he turned human again and blew up. The Bolter is a .75 Calibre (which is enough to make a human explode, even without detonating)

Maybe. It's all about energy transfer. A .50 machinegun round is projecting a 42-45 gram round at a muzzle velocity of around 3000 feet per second (900m/s).

A .50 AE is only 21 grams and traveling at 470 m/s. Half the weight, half the velocity, same projectile diameter. It's going to put an unpleasant hole in somebody, but it's not going to be removing any limbs.

Without knowing the specifics of its grain weight and muzzle velocity, it's rather difficult to tell what a bolter round would do on its own. It's safe to say it would be a good way to put somebody down, but making a human "explode" on its own might be a stretch. Fortunately, the round itself explodes which should usually make its ballistic qualities moot so long as it can penetrate the armor.

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

This. Such armour that would be almost immune to any kind of small arms fire would be exceedingly expensive and only used by the specialist of Special Forces (see: Space Marines, Sisters of Battle, Inquisition). In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry, which can be deflected by Terminator and Artificer Armour. Why? Because technology and alloys have advanced to the point that only the hottest of materials can weaken them enough to be penetrated (It's been forty fething thousand years, look at how far we've come in just the last 500, and you think that's impossible?). And this is now why we have assault marines and the like, because a.) psychological effect of seeing a monster smashing an entire squad without taking a scratch using a friggin knife and b.) The only way to penetrate this armour is at extremely close range, where the accuracy necessary to hit those joints and other weak spots is available.

 dusara217 wrote:
In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry

A stub pistol can kill a Space Marine.

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

Except it's already happened. And it didn't result in weapon technology regressing, but surprise surprise, ballistic weaponry instead advanced to meet the new required conditions and made armor of the time obsolete. I also don't think you even understand exactly how hilarious your claims are, because we are never going to advance to a point where armor renders ballistic weapons almost obsolete- it merely leads to ranged weapons becoming more powerful. It doesn't matter if your armor stops something from penetrating- you merely develop a ballistic weapon that delivers enough concussive force to turn the person inside the armor into jelly. The strength of the armor merely further scales up the weapons used, possibly even to the level of the Davy Crockett.

No realistic force is ever going to return to using swords as a viable method of war. It doesn't matter if it's an effective terror weapon against enemy morale, or armor takes some "incredible" leap forward, melee warfare in a civilian on our level of tech or further is quite simply fething stupid- there's no other way to describe it. You may see the occasional melee charge bayonet charge once in a blue moon, but stuff like Assault Marines, the Black Templars, Khorne Zerkers, Orks, etc would never work. If 40K were truly realistic, with its level of technology, the Imperium would be defended by a self replicating swarm of Von Neumann drones armed with laser weapons capable of fighting in orbit and on the ground that drown everything in shear numbers and firepower. Hell combat in 40K shouldn't happen at all because a thing called orbital superiority exists.

And again, it's not immune to small arms fire. Literally every single goddamn faction in 40K has weapons that can be wielded by basic infantry that will turn anyone wearing power armor into a smoking piece of ash. Weapons that fire globs of plasma that burn at over twenty million degrees are not only usable by infantry, but COMMON. Not to mention that melee weapons wouldn't do jack gak against somebody wearing power armor unless they were hilariously strong or had something like a power weapon. Instead, chain weapons are among the most common weapons in the galaxy, despite being the singular dumbest, outright impossible weapon design in all of 40K.

You have to either be living under a rock or have some really straaaange view of warfare to think 40K makes even a lick of sense. Wake up you two. It doesn't. 40K is silly as feth and makes about as much sense as a turtle in an Abraham Lincoln costume riding on top of a unicycle. We're talking about the universe where TITANS and IMPERIAL KNIGHTS exist, when they should be instantly killed as soon as they're deployed by either a massive lance strike from orbit or several cruise missiles. 40K isn't realistic at all. It's Warhammer Fantasy set in space. It's how its started out and how it will always be unless it cuts almost all of the factions in the game.

If your armor is so good that it can tank plasma guns or bolters, melee weapons aren't doing jack gak. Ever heard of something called energy density? Yeah. A bolt is focusing a lot more energy into a much finer area then a chainsword or normal blade ever will. Seriously, are you even both self aware of how crazy the stuff you're saying is?

 j31c3n wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:
In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry

A stub pistol can kill a Space Marine.

Depends where you hit. Repeated hits to the eye socket? Possibly.

Astartes have displayed the ability to shrug off massed lasfire and similar on multiple occasions.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:
In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry

A stub pistol can kill a Space Marine.

Depends where you hit. Repeated hits to the eye socket? Possibly.

Astartes have displayed the ability to shrug off massed lasfire and similar on multiple occasions.

Yeah, if they keep rolling that 3+ save, sure.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:
In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry

A stub pistol can kill a Space Marine.

Depends where you hit. Repeated hits to the eye socket? Possibly.

Astartes have displayed the ability to shrug off massed lasfire and similar on multiple occasions.

On the subject of realism, that's why god gave 'Murica the FGM 418 Javelin.

Hell combat in 40K shouldn't happen at all because a thing called orbital superiority exists.

by that logic infantry combat today should never exist because of nukes. no matter the level of airpower, you will need boots on the ground at some point or another if you need to take targets intact

So my question is what makes them so resilient? Say if a Vindicare Assassin had his rifle trailed on Angron's helmet-less head and put a round right into his eye ball, would the round explode his head like it would almost anything else or would it bounce off his eye-ball Man of Steel style? Because to me, that just seems silly, it's perfectly OK to have these larger then life characters doing amazing feats, but if someone shoved a Melta Gun (Say some Sister of Battle...) down a Primarches throat and fired, why wouldn't they at least be down for the count for a good while? Knowing how Melta guns are supposed to work, if fired off inside a Primarch i'd like to know what would happen.

BrianDavion wrote:

Hell combat in 40K shouldn't happen at all because a thing called orbital superiority exists.

by that logic infantry combat today should never exist because of nukes. no matter the level of airpower, you will need boots on the ground at some point or another if you need to take targets intact

Or you just use precision strikes from high orbit. Lance batteries are largely dial-a-yield, doing anything from cutting up continents to dropping precise shots on small targets from very far away. Ground troops wouldn't be that useful is the enemy is capable of wiping them off the map quite literally, with no fear of annoying things like fallout radiation or Geneva conventions. It'd be the 40k version of a cruise missile, only a hell of a lot more effective with literal laser precision.

Plus if you're capable of making planetoid sized space stations like the Imperium, you don't need planets anymore except for raw materials.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
So my question is what makes them so resilient? Say if a Vindicare Assassin had his rifle trailed on Angron's helmet-less head and put a round right into his eye ball, would the round explode his head like it would almost anything else or would it bounce off his eye-ball Man of Steel style? Because to me, that just seems silly, it's perfectly OK to have these larger then life characters doing amazing feats, but if someone shoved a Melta Gun (Say some Sister of Battle...) down a Primarches throat and fired, why wouldn't they at least be down for the count for a good while? Knowing how Melta guns are supposed to work, if fired off inside a Primarch i'd like to know what would happen.

Considering Corax took lascannon shots and survived, they're probably lose an organ. Which they can walk off and either replace with a transplant or bionics. Horus for example had part of a ship fall on him and "just" suffered a punctured lung, and Angron had several tonnes of rocks dropped on him- neither really doing any damage.

Of course, Primarchs have more in common with Greater Daemons then humans.

What makes Primarchs so resilient, in my opinion, is the warp juice inside them. Pair that with the finest armour and the unnatural gene science of the Emperor and you have a tough sob.

If it weren't for the warp juice, they wouldn't be quite so hard to take down. More than likely about as tough as a Custodian on a par with Valdor maybe?

Like Wyzilla says, more like Greater Daemons than humans.

They have a very different biology even to Space Marines. When Curze is almost dead in Prince of Crows it says he has over 100 wounds that would kill a space marine, and the Apothecaries can't make enough sense of his biology to actually do much. I imagine they have lots of ablative organs, extra hearts, lungs etc as back ups, generally tougher skeleton, very very fast healing capacity, maybe like valves that shut off to stop blood loss, basically all the extra stuff a SM has over a human but more so.

They are as tough as the plot needs them to be - no more, no less.

RG was nearly killed by a Alpha Legion hit team armed with nothing more than Bolters IIRC in Unremembered Empire...................others have took incredibly powerful hits and not flinched.

Its 40k, It depends.

 Pilau Rice wrote:
What makes Primarchs so resilient, in my opinion, is the warp juice inside them. Pair that with the finest armour and the unnatural gene science of the Emperor and you have a tough sob.

If it weren't for the warp juice, they wouldn't be quite so hard to take down. More than likely about as tough as a Custodian on a par with Valdor maybe?

Like Wyzilla says, more like Greater Daemons than humans.

Not surprising either. Their creation was inherently magical and probably involved the Emperor stealing knowledge from the Chaos Gods to learn how to create souls. Hell they're stronger then Greater Daemons even, what with Sanguinius making a habit of breaking Bloodthristers in combat. Stronger then Daemon Princes as well. It's a shame we so rarely see the Daemon Primarchs actually take to the field- Magnus pretty much broke the Space Wolves upon his mission of vengeance.

 Wyzilla wrote:

Not surprising either. Their creation was inherently magical and probably involved the Emperor stealing knowledge from the Chaos Gods to learn how to create souls. Hell they're stronger then Greater Daemons even, what with Sanguinius making a habit of breaking Bloodthristers in combat. Stronger then Daemon Princes as well. .

He still died. Couldn't be that tough.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

Not surprising either. Their creation was inherently magical and probably involved the Emperor stealing knowledge from the Chaos Gods to learn how to create souls. Hell they're stronger then Greater Daemons even, what with Sanguinius making a habit of breaking Bloodthristers in combat. Stronger then Daemon Princes as well. .

He still died. Couldn't be that tough.

He died to Horus though, who was also a Primarch so as tough as Sanguinius normally, and also amped up with Chaos power on top of that. I mean, Horus almost destroyed the Emperor...

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

Not surprising either. Their creation was inherently magical and probably involved the Emperor stealing knowledge from the Chaos Gods to learn how to create souls. Hell they're stronger then Greater Daemons even, what with Sanguinius making a habit of breaking Bloodthristers in combat. Stronger then Daemon Princes as well. .

He still died. Couldn't be that tough.

He was killed by a being able to permanently cripple the Emperor of Mankind himself, the single most powerful psyker in the 40K universe. Sanguinius was extremely powerful and tough.
It's been suggested that perhaps only a Primarch can kill another Primarch, while it is not true (Konrad Curze and to some extend Horus and Vulkan). But considering just how convoluted the methods and how sophisticated the tools involved in mortals killing a Primarch, the authors of the Horus Heresy might be driving the point that Primarchs are tough because they are Primarchs.

Wasn't Dorn killed by sheer weight of numbers of IW at the Iron Cage? Or was he actually killed by Perturabo?

 ImAGeek wrote:
Wasn't Dorn killed by sheer weight of numbers of IW at the Iron Cage? Or was he actually killed by Perturabo?

Lexicanum says Dorn is missing, presumably killed, after an assault on a Chaos Battleship during a Black Crusade.

Rogal Dorn is missing and presumed dead after attacking a Black Crusade fleet with a vastly outnumbered force. Seeing the importance of attacking the enemy fleet while they were still preparing he relied on hit-and-run attacks until his reinforcements could arrive. Dorn went missing on board the Despoiler Class Battleship Sword of Sacrilege after leading a desperate attack on its bridge. Only his hand was recovered which is kept in stasis by his chapter.

I'm pretty sure Dorn was alive and well after the Ultramarines came to the Imperial Fists' rescue. Although I vaguely remember reading he getting killed in the Iron cage on Lexicanum.

Weird, I always thought he died at the Iron Cage for some reason, and all the IF could recover of him as they retreated was his hand.

 dusara217 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

This. Such armour that would be almost immune to any kind of small arms fire would be exceedingly expensive and only used by the specialist of Special Forces (see: Space Marines, Sisters of Battle, Inquisition). In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry, which can be deflected by Terminator and Artificer Armour. Why? Because technology and alloys have advanced to the point that only the hottest of materials can weaken them enough to be penetrated (It's been forty fething thousand years, look at how far we've come in just the last 500, and you think that's impossible?). And this is now why we have assault marines and the like, because a.) psychological effect of seeing a monster smashing an entire squad without taking a scratch using a friggin knife and b.) The only way to penetrate this armour is at extremely close range, where the accuracy necessary to hit those joints and other weak spots is available.

What a stupid logic....anything that close combat can do... Range can do better. If you were to suggest that special diamond tip chain sword can cut armor...then they can make a saw weapon with the same diamond tip that can shoot out like a catapult....

Human muscle can't never beat ballistic projectile....strength

Unless it is something like Dune shield...where fast moving will be block out....so slow hand held knife can penitrate THe shield....oh wait..they even have slow bullet or missile thAtteavel so slow that it can penetrate the shield.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Weird, I always thought he died at the Iron Cage for some reason, and all the IF could recover of him as they retreated was his hand.

Nah, that's never been the case as far as I can recall. The Index Astartes states that the Iron Warriors could have wiped them out at any time of their choosing but that Perturabo enjoyed tormenting them too much. Then the UM came to the rescue and they withdrew because they didn't want to fight two legions at once. The missing hand thing happened later, as Icmiracle said.

david choe wrote:
What a stupid logic....anything that close combat can do... Range can do better. If you were to suggest that special diamond tip chain sword can cut armor...then they can make a saw weapon with the same diamond tip that can shoot out like a catapult....

Human muscle can't never beat ballistic projectile....strength

Unless it is something like Dune shield...where fast moving will be block out....so slow hand held knife can penitrate THe shield....oh wait..they even have slow bullet or missile thAtteavel so slow that it can penetrate the shield.

Power weapons in melee might make sense in this context in that they might be too difficult to manufacture or impractical to use in a projectile form (they need to be attached to a power source as well I think). They'd probably be ridiculously expensive if you were spending them in projectile form.

God knows where I got that from then!

 ImAGeek wrote:
God knows where I got that from then!

Nah, it's an easy to make. It's probably because the Iron Cage is much more memorable than some random Black Crusade.

Would've fit better if Dorn really did perish there. If I could I'd change it to nearly all IF going to the Iron Cage, with Sigismund and some others left behind as a precaution or sent on some mission. Then he'd come to the rescue like a boss but only find the remains of his Primarch. Both tragic and awesome

 ImAGeek wrote:
It really, maybe more than anything else, depends who's writing them. Lorgar survived being shot with a Titan plasma weapon in Betrayer. Guilliman almost got killed by bolter fire in Unremembered Empire.

This and a wide variety of inconsistencies make me think the Primarchs have at least an unconscious part in how they die. If they truly are beings of the warp, their emotions play into their physical attributes. Guilliman was a sad sack piece of crap when this attack happened. It's possible that matters, but again...these insane inconsistencies are what seems to define Primarchs.

david choe wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

This. Such armour that would be almost immune to any kind of small arms fire would be exceedingly expensive and only used by the specialist of Special Forces (see: Space Marines, Sisters of Battle, Inquisition). In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry, which can be deflected by Terminator and Artificer Armour. Why? Because technology and alloys have advanced to the point that only the hottest of materials can weaken them enough to be penetrated (It's been forty fething thousand years, look at how far we've come in just the last 500, and you think that's impossible?). And this is now why we have assault marines and the like, because a.) psychological effect of seeing a monster smashing an entire squad without taking a scratch using a friggin knife and b.) The only way to penetrate this armour is at extremely close range, where the accuracy necessary to hit those joints and other weak spots is available.

What a stupid logic....anything that close combat can do... Range can do better. If you were to suggest that special diamond tip chain sword can cut armor...then they can make a saw weapon with the same diamond tip that can shoot out like a catapult....

Human muscle can't never beat ballistic projectile....strength

Unless it is something like Dune shield...where fast moving will be block out....so slow hand held knife can penitrate THe shield....oh wait..they even have slow bullet or missile thAtteavel so slow that it can penetrate the shield.

When you travel to the future can you bring me the lottery numbers, as you clearly know everything that can possibly happen, must be quite the gift.

We know that NOW with our current understanding that it is silly, what we don't know is what could happen, how can we?

in a thousand years time ballistic tech might be utterly obsolete, personal weaponry might become the norm and then the future version of you might pop on the future version bof dakka and say "don't be stupid, why would we use guns when we have the butter knife 5000 and we can melt armour with that better than some guns, stupid newbs"

Let's simmer down here and get back to discussing why a titan shot didn't kill Lorgar but bolter shells almost killed Guilliman.

Didn't the book say he put up a shield that deflected most of it?

 Formosa wrote:
When you travel to the future can you bring me the lottery numbers, as you clearly know everything that can possibly happen, must be quite the gift.

We know that NOW with our current understanding that it is silly, what we don't know is what could happen, how can we?

in a thousand years time ballistic tech might be utterly obsolete, personal weaponry might become the norm and then the future version of you might pop on the future version bof dakka and say "don't be stupid, why would we use guns when we have the butter knife 5000 and we can melt armour with that better than some guns, stupid newbs"

I remember reading a post on this forum stating how no matter how far technology for armor advanced, there's just no way EVER that a Space Marine wearing power armor would be able to withstand a shot from a modern tank. That kind of thinking seems pretty naive to me.

So yea, I'm at least willing to entertain the idea that a lot of things that don't make sense now might make sense in the future, especially since we can't foresee future developments in technology and warfare. Plus a lot of the beings we're discussing couldn't even be considered human nor would they follow the same rules (what with the Warp and all).