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In most depictions pulse rifles aren't shown to be *slow* to fire, just slower.
Heavy 1 would be way too much.

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:
And bolters (Astartes ones anyway) supposedly have enough recoil to prohibit regular humans from using them. Combine colossal recoil with gyrojet acceleration and you get an idea of the projectile energies involved.

Citation on that? I thought it was just they were big and cumbersome to carry.

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:

According to the 40k Wiki:
"Compared to other infantry weapons, the Pulse Rifle trades rate of fire for damage. When compared to a Space Marine Bolter, it fires at a far slower rate but does significantly more damage and possesses a greater effective range. Pulse Rifles also have significant recoil, which requires that the user be stationary to fire most effectively. This, combined with the Pulse Rifle's long range, means that Tau troops are best served by staying more or less stationary. Pulse Rifles still retain most of their effectiveness on the move nonetheless, and can be utterly devastating weapons when used correctly."

Sounds like the epitome of Heavy 1 to me.

(I might be wrong about past Heavy 1 status; that was based on my own memories from yonks ago).

That's because the old Rapid Fire rules required you to stay stationary to fire at full effect. They have more recoil because boltguns are gyrojet rockets and actually have very low recoil compared to the size of the projectile, since it accelerates all the way to the target. Recoil from plasma based weapons occurs because the magnetic field needed to impel the projectile towards its target pushes back on the weapon as well, creating a recoil effect.

Well Rapid Fire used to benefit from being stationary at long range, but at short range movement didn't matter. Now, going by the decriptions of pulse weapons in the lore, and current rules (where Heavy weapons can actually move and fire, unlike those earlier editions), Heavy 1 fits more appropriately IMO.

And bolters (Astartes ones anyway) supposedly have enough recoil to prohibit regular humans from using them. Combine colossal recoil with gyrojet acceleration and you get an idea of the projectile energies involved.

In 3rd when Tau were introduced Rapid Fire was only 1 shot at 12” if you moved, it wasn’t until 4th that you got 2 shots at 12” regardless.

So Pulse Rifles were much better stationary as they got 1 shot at 30” or 2 at 12” vs only 1 at 12” if they moved.

Incidentally it’s why GW considered the 12” assault 2 shuricats not that much worse than a bolter (or better than the S3 splinter rifle) - rapid fire got 1 shot at double the range if they stayed still, but shuricats got double the shots if they moved.

Hecaton wrote:

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:
And bolters (Astartes ones anyway) supposedly have enough recoil to prohibit regular humans from using them. Combine colossal recoil with gyrojet acceleration and you get an idea of the projectile energies involved.

Citation on that? I thought it was just they were big and cumbersome to carry.

It's hogwash to make the Marines appear cooler, there's examples of people firing Marine bolters with no ill effect other than having to deal with the massive weight (One of them being a pudgy, unaugmented noble of sorts, who fired two rounds from a bolt pistol). And it makes sense, a heavy weapon will have less recoil than a light weapon firing the same round, so a big, beefy Marine bolter made to fit their big armored gauntlets and reinforced so they can smack things without breaking the weapon, would impart less recoil than a human sized one firing a round of the same type.

Lord Zarkov wrote:


In 3rd when Tau were introduced Rapid Fire was only 1 shot at 12” if you moved, it wasn’t until 4th that you got 2 shots at 12” regardless.

So Pulse Rifles were much better stationary as they got 1 shot at 30” or 2 at 12” vs only 1 at 12” if they moved.

Incidentally it’s why GW considered the 12” assault 2 shuricats not that much worse than a bolter (or better than the S3 splinter rifle) - rapid fire got 1 shot at double the range if they stayed still, but shuricats got double the shots if they moved.

Shurikens should go back to range 24" rapid fire tbh.

kirotheavenger wrote:In most depictions pulse rifles aren't shown to be *slow* to fire, just slower.
Heavy 1 would be way too much.

It probably lies somewhere in-between Rapid Fire 1 and Heavy 1, but happy to let this one rest.

Lord Zarkov wrote:In 3rd when Tau were introduced Rapid Fire was only 1 shot at 12” if you moved, it wasn’t until 4th that you got 2 shots at 12” regardless.

So Pulse Rifles were much better stationary as they got 1 shot at 30” or 2 at 12” vs only 1 at 12” if they moved.

Incidentally it’s why GW considered the 12” assault 2 shuricats not that much worse than a bolter (or better than the S3 splinter rifle) - rapid fire got 1 shot at double the range if they stayed still, but shuricats got double the shots if they moved.

I didn't know that, first started playing in 4th. So basically -1 attack at all ranges if you moved? (Not sure why any weapon would get double shots if it moved... what was the rationale there?)

 Bobthehero wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:
And bolters (Astartes ones anyway) supposedly have enough recoil to prohibit regular humans from using them. Combine colossal recoil with gyrojet acceleration and you get an idea of the projectile energies involved.

Citation on that? I thought it was just they were big and cumbersome to carry.

It's hogwash to make the Marines appear cooler, there's examples of people firing Marine bolters with no ill effect other than having to deal with the massive weight (One of them being a pudgy, unaugmented noble of sorts, who fired two rounds from a bolt pistol). And it makes sense, a heavy weapon will have less recoil than a light weapon firing the same round, so a big, beefy Marine bolter made to fit their big armored gauntlets and reinforced so they can smack things without breaking the weapon, would impart less recoil than a human sized one firing a round of the same type.

"Hogwash"? Not according to this at least (backed up by this):

"The Space Marines are not the only warriors of the Imperium to carry Boltguns into battle, but the version carried by the Adeptus Astartes, the Mark Vb Godwyn Pattern Boltgun, is by far the largest and most devastating. By comparison, the smaller patterns of boltgun carried by the Adeptus Sororitas or the champions of the Astra Militarum are pale reflections. So large is the Godwyn Pattern that no normal man could heft one, let alone survive its unforgiving recoil."

"Like other Space Marine weaponry, Astartes Bolters are designed to be handled by their superhuman physique. The weight of each Godwyn Pattern Bolter means that most normal humans cannot handle the weapon comfortably without the aid of a supporting brace, and the weapon's handgrips are too large for a mortal to grasp without assistance. However, even if a mortal were to fire the Bolter, the resulting recoil would most likely rip his or her arm from its socket."

"However, the Space Marines wear massive suits of Power Armour that further enhance their already prodigious genetically-enhanced strength and allows them to control the powerful recoil of the weapon."

Yeah, as I said, hogwash, there's also lore of regular, unaugmented humans firing a Space Marine boltgun, the weight is the bigger issue, not the recoil.

20mm/.75 cal is nothing to write home about as far as caliber goes, and a gun that weight as much as a general purpose machinegun would kick while firing the round, but none of that overblown flowery text made to make people ''Space Marines are soooo cool''.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Yeah, as I said, hogwash, there's also lore of regular, unaugmented humans firing a Space Marine boltgun, the weight is the bigger issue, not the recoil.

Show me something that trumps what I just posted.

 Bobthehero wrote:
20mm/.75 cal is nothing to write home about as far as caliber goes

Lolwat? 20mm is a light cannon.

 Bobthehero wrote:
a gun that weight as much as a general purpose machinegun would kick while firing the round, but none of that overblown flowery text made to make people ''Space Marines are soooo cool''.

Disliking something doesn't magically make you right, you know.

20mm is also the caliber of 12 gauge shotguns, and I fired about a hundred of those last month. There's a solid argument to be made bolters don't even need too much recoil, they're rocket bullets, as such, the initial recoil felt to push the bullet outside of the barrel would be minimal, and then the main charge fires. Elephant guns, chambered in .700 are a thing, people don't near smash their shoulders apart when they fire those, and the guns are about .05 of an inch small in caliber than bolters. We also have actual 20mm Anti Material rifle, which are usually fired prone due to their bulk, although people have been fired .50 with little troubles.


Here's a bit from Shadowsword, it's cut because a few things happen between the moment Dostain (an unaugmented noble) picks up a Marine bolt pistol (which would kick massively more than a regular bolt gun, because it's lighter than a normal bolt gun and fires the same round), and fires the first and second shots:

Dostain reached for the bolt pistol with his right hand. It slipped free from its holster easily enough, but he nearly dropped it when he lifted it up. Sized for a Space Marine, the bolt pistol was too massive for a normal man to wield comfortably.

Snip Snip, jumping ahead.

Somehow , Dostain pulled the trigger without yanking the gun off target. The shot rang out.

More cutting extra text, none of which mentions the state of Dostain's arms, or how shattered they are.

'I am Planetary Governor. This is my world' said Dostain , and fired again. The second bolt hit Trastoon in the side, and his sword fell from nerveless fingers

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:

I didn't know that, first started playing in 4th. So basically -1 attack at all ranges if you moved? (Not sure why any weapon would get double shots if it moved... what was the rationale there?)

Well -1 attack if you were rapid fire 1. If you were rapid fire 2 it would be -2 attack(2 if you move, 4 if you were within 12" and didn't move).

And shuriken didn't get double shots as such. It was assault 2 weapon so it fired 2 shots either way. Bolt gun was rapid fire 1 so 2 shots if enemy was within 12" and you didn't move. If you did one shot. 2 shots double to 1.

Assault weapon was more mobile in that it didn't care did you move or not. Rapid fire very much cared

Bobthehero wrote:20mm is also the caliber of 12 gauge shotguns, and I fired about a hundred of those last month. There's a solid argument to be made bolters don't even need too much recoil, they're rocket bullets, as such, the initial recoil felt to push the bullet outside of the barrel would be minimal, and then the main charge fires.

Sure, but we're talking about 20mm armour-piercing shells. They need range and penetrating power. Same reason a 7.62mm rifle kicks more than a 9mm handgun, despite the latter being higher calibre.

Looking at something like the Anzio 20mm, it has 4x the muzzle energy of a 12.7mm round fired by a comparable rifle, and probably 15-20x the energy of a 12-gauge shotgun slug. Which is fine, it can be fired by a regular human... but not standing up, unbraced. That's consistent with the boltgun articles I linked earlier. 20mm rifles may not be perfect 1:1 analogues for a boltgun, but they're a good start.

And secondary propulsion is fine, but what if a Khorne Beserker is trying to mash your brains up close? The rounds need to be powerful at any distance.

Plus, if a Marine and their armour can handle huge recoil, why not take advantage of that and crank up the energies involved? That's why Astartes versions are so much bigger and heavier in the first place.

Bobthehero wrote:Shadowsword excerpts

Admittedly he seems to be able to fire the bolt pistol, but it is just a bolt pistol (not a full boltgun), and at the end of the day is contradictory at best... it doesn't invalidate the other core articles.

Personally I wouldn't look too closely at individual exerts from novels - authors are very inconsistent.

My favourite example is from the same book - in one of the Gaunts Ghosts novels one guy catches a lasgun round in the shoulder and it blows his arm off. The next guy catches a round in this throat and survives (albeit with a bionic voicebox later).

You can find some part of some novel to justify just about any particular weapon capability you want.

Personally I believe Space Marine bolters work more like large calibre rifles with a rocket assist for improved performance at range.
IE, the rocket is more the secondary propulsion method.

Whereas human bolters might be slightly lower calibre, rate of fire, and have less initial propellant. All to reduce the size and recoil of the weapon to manageable levels.

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:

Bobthehero wrote:20mm is also the caliber of 12 gauge shotguns, and I fired about a hundred of those last month. There's a solid argument to be made bolters don't even need too much recoil, they're rocket bullets, as such, the initial recoil felt to push the bullet outside of the barrel would be minimal, and then the main charge fires.

Sure, but we're talking about 20mm armour-piercing shells. They need range and penetrating power. Same reason a 7.62mm rifle kicks more than a 9mm handgun, despite the latter being higher calibre.

Looking at something like the Anzio 20mm, it has 4x the muzzle energy of a 12.7mm round fired by a comparable rifle, and probably 15-20x the energy of a 12-gauge shotgun slug. Which is fine, it can be fired by a regular human... but not standing up, unbraced. That's consistent with the boltgun articles I linked earlier. 20mm rifles may not be perfect 1:1 analogues for a boltgun, but they're a good start.

And secondary propulsion is fine, but what if a Khorne Beserker is trying to mash your brains up close? The rounds need to be powerful at any distance.

Plus, if a Marine and their armour can handle huge recoil, why not take advantage of that and crank up the energies involved? That's why Astartes versions are so much bigger and heavier in the first place.

Bobthehero wrote:Shadowsword excerpts

Admittedly he seems to be able to fire the bolt pistol, but it is just a bolt pistol (not a full boltgun), and at the end of the day is contradictory at best... it doesn't invalidate the other core articles.

Everything about this tells me 40k might not be the best fit for you, as far as settings go. 40k is a heavy metal album cover, not a mil-sim. Physics mean nothing, recoil is fake, armor is only as relevant as the plot. Something doesn't make sense? Space magic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Personally I wouldn't look too closely at individual exerts from novels - authors are very inconsistent.

My favourite example is from the same book - in one of the Gaunts Ghosts novels one guy catches a lasgun round in the shoulder and it blows his arm off. The next guy catches a round in this throat and survives (albeit with a bionic voicebox later).

You can find some part of some novel to justify just about any particular weapon capability you want.

Personally I believe Space Marine bolters work more like large calibre rifles with a rocket assist for improved performance at range.
IE, the rocket is more the secondary propulsion method.

Whereas human bolters might be slightly lower calibre, rate of fire, and have less initial propellant. All to reduce the size and recoil of the weapon to manageable levels.

Every gun in the setting fires space magic with some mumbo jumbo to make it sound vaguely plausible. Getting any deeper than that is asking for frustration.

ERJAK wrote:
Everything about this tells me 40k might not be the best fit for you, as far as settings go. 40k is a heavy metal album cover, not a mil-sim. Physics mean nothing, recoil is fake, armor is only as relevant as the plot. Something doesn't make sense? Space magic.

I feel like you're telling this to the wrong guy. I want these weapons to feel metal.

40k is military sci-fi. It's fun to talk and hypothesise about the tech in it. That's half the fun of all science fiction IMO. A boltgun is based on existing firearms. Las, plasma and melta weapons try fairly hard to align themselves within the realm of scientific possibility (if not probability). So do most non-Imperial weapons (Tau, Tyranid, Eldar, etc). Not to say there isn't space magic and handwavium aplenty, but there are also practical concepts that aren't too hard to visualise in reality.

ERJAK wrote:


Everything about this tells me 40k might not be the best fit for you, as far as settings go. 40k is a heavy metal album cover, not a mil-sim. Physics mean nothing, recoil is fake, armor is only as relevant as the plot. Something doesn't make sense? Space magic.

Then space magic means bolters don't kick back and don't break arms, I guess. And you can drop the condescending ''40k isn't for you'' bit.

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:

Bobthehero wrote:

Bobthehero wrote:Shadowsword excerpts

Admittedly he seems to be able to fire the bolt pistol, but it is just a bolt pistol (not a full boltgun), and at the end of the day is contradictory at best... it doesn't invalidate the other core articles.

Which only supports my argument, bolt pistols fire regular bolt rounds, and would be lighter, and therefore kick more, than a full sized bolter.

Bobthehero wrote:

I_am_a_Spoon wrote:
Admittedly he seems to be able to fire the bolt pistol, but it is just a bolt pistol (not a full boltgun), and at the end of the day is contradictory at best... it doesn't invalidate the other core articles.

Which only supports my argument, bolt pistols fire regular bolt rounds, and would be lighter, and therefore kick more, than a full sized bolter.

As a counterpoint, how much additional recoil would the longer barrel of a boltgun produce? I.e. more length for the bolt's primary propellant to accelerate it within the barrel and exert an opposing force on the gun.

My guess would be that it wouldn't matter as much, a bolter has much more mass over the pistol. Compare a .50 Beowulf and a .500 S&W, one is fired from a full sized rifle, the other from a revolver, the rifle takes in the recoil a lot better. I've seen people fire the Beowulf full auto, meanwhile, I know from personal experience that a S&W .500 requires a certain moment to recover after shooting, it's not long, but it's certainly more unpleasant to shoot than other big guns.

Is that just how much the weapon bucks off-target though, or how much actual force is imparted back into the firer?

The wikis clearly state that Astartes boltguns are outright dangerous for regular humans to fire due to their recoil. I assume that the excerpt from the book was an oversight, or that bolt pistols impart less force despite firing the same round.

A bit of both, short barreled rifles have a tendency to kick more, there's less weight to absorb recoil. It's the same principle with a bolt pistol vs a bolt, I am just chalking it to GW writers not knowing squat about guns in general and just writing up bit of lore that sound cool but don't work at all.

I disagree - I find the idea that Astartes bolters kick much harder than human bolters entirely reasonable.
It's like saying a battletank cannon kicks harder than a rifle. Of course it does, it's defined to be carried by a battle tank!

I think it's novels like Shadowsword that is the fault of writers not knowing or caring about the lore and picking what sounds good for their story.

Kicking harder is fine. It's a bigger round (but then again, the weapon is bigger, and thus would lessen the recoil felt), I just disagree with the whole breaking an arm or a shoulder off thing, which just sounds hyperbolic and senseless.

That is what the wikis describe happening though.

And I have an example that is the ideal conditions for such to happens that says otherwise.

The biggest problem for a non power armored human using a bolter would be the lack of a stock on the weapon. It would have absolutely terrible recoil control and aiming the thing (especially after the first shot) would be borderline impossible.

The mechanics of the bolter rounds is like a hybrid of a bullet and an RPG where the initial charge expels the round down the barrel but the rocket propellant kicks in to drive it the rest of the way. At .75 cal its basically slightly smaller than a 20mm grenade which can be fired from a rifle (either as its own sort of weapon system or as an underslung weapon). Doing some googling, some reference material said a SM bolter is around 40lbs and somebody calculated the force of a bolter around to be just under 30k joules of force. I suspect the travel speed that they used is slower than what a bolter round would probably be doing but a bolter is also rocket propelled with that calculated joule force being on the receiving end and not the pre-rocket assisted force. S I would say that 30K joules of force out the barrel is probably a decent baseline. With that as a rough ballpark, there is video of somebody firing a PTRS-41 (38lb gun with a 14.5mm bullet that expels about 30k joules of force) from the shoulder which isn't causing any immediate harm to the user.

Now this is obviously with a gun that probably has a better muzzle brake than what a SM bolter looks to have and (most importantly) has a stock to disperse the recoil force to the shoulder/torso. SM bolters lack a stock and are relatively short barreled impractical monstrosities of ergonomics so its probably more likely that the weapon would cause arm/wrist injury compared to a proper shoulder fired rifle design.

I have zero clue how the non SM bolters are somehow safer when they are supposedly a fraction of the weight but firing a bolter round with the same amount of lethality. Only way it would work is if they somehow made special ammo that was much weaker initial discharge and relied much more on the rocket propulsion to achieve the same amount of force delivery to the target. Then if that is the case then why not just do that for all bolter rounds?


As for the OP topic. Pulse weapons are suppose to be a similar sort of tech to plasma weapons but not the same level of oomph as the plasma used by the IoM or even the Tau's actual proper plasma weapons (which their proper plasma weapons are designed to be slightly less destructive with the trade off being that it doesn't kill the user).

What's the basis for saying human bolters fire the same rounds? Just that they're both S4 AP0 in 40k?

I've always just put that down to rounding in the game stats. In the RPGs Space Marine bolters are more powerful iirc and they're often described as being more powerful.

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:


Tau have actual plasma rifles, and they're more powerful than Imperial plasma guns (higher Strength, AP, and Damage... 1 Damage higher than even supercharged plasma guns).

When did this change? For many editions Imperial plasma guns were S7 AP2 Gets hot! (so dangerous), and Tau plasma rifles were S6 AP2 without exploding on 1's. The trade-off was supposed to be lower damage for safety, even though Tau plasma weapons were larger than plasma guns.

Tau plasma rifles changed as of the recent 9th ed codex.
They're now Assault 1, 30", S8, AP4, Dmg 3.
This profile is quite different from their old profile and plasma guns in general.

So they hit a lot harder, but are lower rate of fire. This was presumably done to differentiate them from the Cyclic Ion Blasters, which now essentially have the same sort of profile as Imperial plasma (S7/D1 or S8/D2 gets hot).

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Tau plasma rifles changed as of the recent 9th ed codex.
They're now Assault 1, 30", S8, AP4, Dmg 3.
This profile is quite different from their old profile and plasma guns in general.

So they hit a lot harder, but are lower rate of fire. This was presumably done to differentiate them from the Cyclic Ion Blasters, which now essentially have the same sort of profile as Imperial plasma (S7/D1 or S8/D2 gets hot).

Huh, I see. I think I would have preferred it if they had made them more like Starcannons but anyhow. I suppose Tau plasma rifles are more equivalent to plasma cannons being larger weapons carried by exosuits and vehicles, so making them into anti-materiel rifles does work.

...whichever member(s) of the 40k Design Team has a hard-on for anime mecha really needs escorting from the building.

Guess they made a breakthrough somewhere/found the on switch for their plasma rifles.

Bobthehero wrote:And I have an example that is the ideal conditions for such to happens that says otherwise.

1. A bolt pistol, not a full-sized boltgun.
2. One random excerpt from one random novel, as opposed to central wiki articles that support my argument.

Also Astartes bolt weapons are supposed to be gene-encoded to their firer... a fact the writer also overlooked (unless I'm missing something?).

Vankraken wrote:Doing some googling, some reference material said a SM bolter is around 40lbs and somebody calculated the force of a bolter around to be just under 30k joules of force. I suspect the travel speed that they used is slower than what a bolter round would probably be doing but a bolter is also rocket propelled with that calculated joule force being on the receiving end and not the pre-rocket assisted force. S I would say that 30K joules of force out the barrel is probably a decent baseline.

This one? Yeah, the muzzle velocity does seem a bit low.

He also could have factored in weapons like the Anzio 20mm I mentioned above, which fires a 20mm armour-piercing round that doesn't seem too dissimilar to how a 19mm bolter round might behave. That rifle fires at ~65,000 joules: about 4x the muzzle energy of a comparable 12.7mm rifle like the Barrett. A regular human can fire it... but not standing up, and it does need to be braced. That seems to gel pretty well with the wiki articles on bolters:

"The weight of each Godwyn Pattern Bolter means that most normal humans cannot handle the weapon comfortably without the aid of a supporting brace, and the weapon's handgrips are too large for a mortal to grasp without assistance. However, even if a mortal were to fire the Bolter, the resulting recoil would most likely rip his or her arm from its socket."

Vankraken wrote:I have zero clue how the non SM bolters are somehow safer when they are supposedly a fraction of the weight but firing a bolter round with the same amount of lethality.

They're much weaker than full-sized Astartes bolters in the lore, but tabletop doesn't reflect that.

"The Space Marines are not the only warriors of the Imperium to carry Boltguns into battle, but the version carried by the Adeptus Astartes, the Mark Vb Godwyn Pattern Boltgun, is by far the largest and most devastating. By comparison, the smaller patterns of boltgun carried by the Adeptus Sororitas or the champions of the Astra Militarum are pale reflections. So large is the Godwyn Pattern that no normal man could heft one, let alone survive its unforgiving recoil."

Vankraken wrote:As for the OP topic. Pulse weapons are suppose to be a similar sort of tech to plasma weapons but not the same level of oomph as the plasma used by the IoM or even the Tau's actual proper plasma weapons (which their proper plasma weapons are designed to be slightly less destructive with the trade off being that it doesn't kill the user).

Well the wiki articles on pulse weapons have this to say:

"Pulse Weapon rounds do a great deal of damage on impact, mostly due to the extreme thermal energy of the plasma mass and the speed with which the projectile impacts, which helps ensure that armoured targets are more heavily damaged."

That sounds a lot like conventional 40k plasma weaponry to me (if a lighter version of it). Would love to see some AP on pulse rifles/carbines/etc.

And yeah, as stated above, GW dropped that angle for Tau plasma. Now it's just straight up way more powerful that Imperial plasma.