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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





Whenever I read about 40k, I as an engineer have a tendancy to stare long and hard at the tech, and I've noticed a few odd quirks. I was wondering if anybody else noticed these things.

40k Missile Launchers: These are described as hollow charge shaped charges, which would put then as second generation shaped charges. Which are about as effective as tossing stones at your enemy when compared to linear shaped charges that are our modern generation III, which make Generation II look silly.

Space Marine Bolters: here is what really points to most of the tech in 40k to being based on what the public knew in the late 70's/ early 80's. This is essentially a gyrojet system (all the rage in the 70's ), which is basically a gun that fires rockets instead of bullets. The game designers "fixed" the problem with the rockets limping out of the barrel by adding a small charge but forgot to add in that gyrojets have more energy the longer the distance to the target, instead they treat them as traditional firearms, which have more energy and penetration at shorter ranges.

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

Lascannons/Lasguns: these have recoil .... why? Exactly who high energy are these laser beams?

Missiles: or rather the lack of guidance systems on anything not space marine or hunter killers. Why do they still use unguided rockets like the Whirlwind, and exorcist (granted the manticore "rocket" lauancher is a guided system)

General Lack of tech on tanks: anything not space marine has basically WWII era tech with MAYBE a computer in it. There is never a mention of ablative ERA armor, or any kind of active protection systems, even though they see alot of missile/ rocket fire. No sabot rounds just a large heavy slug firing cannon. It seems the abrams or god forbid the challenger could tear them a new one. (basically having the equivalent of vanquisher cannons, which are Sabots if I remember correctly)

They did get one thing correct though. The Ma duce will still be around, only called a heavy stubber.

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Made in us
Martial Arts Fiday






Nashville, TN

It's things like this that make me glad I'm not an Engineer and can enjoy simple fantasy without thinking too much about it... lol

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Made in gb
Member of the Malleus





A fuedal world on the fringes of Segmentum Tempestus

hmm dont know i guess its to make the table top a little fairer
the novels give a better idea how the weapons perform
theres gonna be holes in any plot tho and in a back story as huge as 40k there are bound to be hundreds

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Domine, libra nos,
From the lighting and the tempest,
Our Emperor, deliver us.
 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





SlaveToDorkness wrote:It's things like this that make me glad I'm not an Engineer and can enjoy simple fantasy without thinking too much about it... lol

It wouldn't be that bad for me except for me actually getting my degree in physics not engineering. We're trained to notice stuff. but it's all still fun. 40k tech is based on what we were doing in the 70's and 80's when most people didn't know that much about what a shaped charge was, those who knew anything were really just copying what they knew about the iconic bazooka. which was a gen II. Then there was the multi-decade blunder into gyro jet research which at that time was cutting edge "when it arrives in full will revolutionize warfare" ..... kinda like railguns....... but that remains to be seen.

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Made in au
[MOD]
Making Stuff






Under the couch

gendoikari87 wrote:Lascannons/Lasguns: these have recoil .... why? Exactly who high energy are these laser beams?


Recoil on laser weapons is something that people often stumble over, due to the apparent perception that a laser weapon should essentially just be a battery and a light emitter.

The gas-based laser rifle prototype designs that have been floating around the internet for a few years now though have (or would have, if anyone ever actually built one) significant recoil. Something to do with the laser being generated by rapid movement and compression of the gas.

 
   
Made in ca
Annoyed Blood Angel Devastator





Edmonton, Canada

For being so far in the future the 40k universe is not an innovation based universe but making do with the tech that had been previously created and copying it to the best of their understanding , if they don't remember why things were made a certain way its understandable that they could take lot of steps backward so that it lines up with their limited scope
   
Made in us
Ultramarine Master with Gauntlets of Macragge





Boston, MA

My dad always called 40k "WWII in space" and I think he was about half right.

One time I was playing 40k with a buddy of mine at my FLGS and an obsessive military engineer type walked up to us. He would not stop trying to make real world parallels to what we had on table, and made a point to repeatedly tell me that my Sentinels would fall over if they were real. That was not a comfortable game.

Check out my Youtube channel!
 
   
Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight



Buffalo NY, USA

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


Ok college boy, let's here the explaination as to how a Lasgun is less efficent then what I will call standard firearms? I've defended this before but I've never gone up against a self described physicist, although I suspect a particular mod (KK) here of being something a kin to it him and I have never discussed this particular subject.

A 'bullet' uses the expanding gas of a charge to propel itself down the barrel of the weapon and toward the target, most of the energy from this expanding gas is wasted as it exits the barrel most commonly in a form called 'muzzle flash'. Then assuming that manufactoring flaws or damage in the barrel of the weapon, the casing, the primer, the charge or the load (the bullet itself as seperate from the round as a whole) did not cause a misfire and the load reached it's teminal destination without being drawn off course due to weather or gravity at longer ranges, the round acctually wastes it's kinetic energy in penetrating the target instead of flattening itself to deliver a massive 'punch' in fact a standard round relies on this flaw in itself to cause hydrostatic shock upon exiting the target to inflict the most damage to soft tissue. However if the round were designed to 'punch' instead of peneatrate the low amount of energy from these rounds would be aparent as they would not damage the target sufficently. Due to the second law of newtonian physics, a conventional firearm that uses ammunition to flatten itself out in this way cannot be made man portable.

A beam from a las-weapon from start to finish is the energy that is put into it. The loss in energy due to entropy is minimal as the energy changes states a fewer number of times. The rate at which a target heats up is proportional to the energy put into it, the beam once formed has no flaws in itself, it cannot be drawn off course from its target due to reasonable amounts of gravity or weather. A maximum amount of energy upon arriving at its final destination is transformed into heat and used to burn away at the target. And no mirriors probably wouldn't help.

This is my off the top of my head rant just regarding transitional and terminal ballistics. I plan on making it all into an article for Dakka but there are a few more holes I would like to patch up in some areas. Please people tear this apart so that I know what I have to fix for my article, I'll start a thread about it of my own soon I think.

ComputerGeek01 is more then just a name 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





insaniak wrote:
gendoikari87 wrote:Lascannons/Lasguns: these have recoil .... why? Exactly who high energy are these laser beams?


Recoil on laser weapons is something that people often stumble over, due to the apparent perception that a laser weapon should essentially just be a battery and a light emitter.

The gas-based laser rifle prototype designs that have been floating around the internet for a few years now though have (or would have, if anyone ever actually built one) significant recoil. Something to do with the laser being generated by rapid movement and compression of the gas.


Nope, this actually incorrect, the laser has near zero recoil. it does not have none but you aren't going to notice it unless you have the death star laserbeam in a gun the size of a pistol. When I get done with my homework I'll show you how (my current Quantum homework is a 500Mev photon collides with a proton and what is the maximum energy loss of the photon turns out to be about 260MeV whereas the mass of the single proton is about 900MeV/c2 so it's not going to be going very fast. and thats for a hydrogen atom... sorry an ionized hydrogen atom. )

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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





ComputerGeek01 wrote:
gendoikari87 wrote:Lasguns: Setting aside that lasers won't cause you to explode unless the beam covers your whole body, laser energy weapons are much less efficient than traditional kinetic at doing damage because a kinetic round needs only to break a few bonds rather than heat up the surrounding tissues to high energies. Even THV rounds which are meant to deal massive damage use shockwaves which simply tear rather than heat up the tissues. Granted Lasers can be recharged and don't require a supply train... that might have something to do with why the imperium uses lasguns instead of rifles.


Ok college boy, let's here the explaination as to how a Lasgun is less efficent then what I will call standard firearms? I've defended this before but I've never gone up against a self described physicist, although I suspect a particular mod (KK) here of being something a kin to it him and I have never discussed this particular subject.

A 'bullet' uses the expanding gas of a charge to propel itself down the barrel of the weapon and toward the target, most of the energy from this expanding gas is wasted as it exits the barrel most commonly in a form called 'muzzle flash'. Then assuming that manufactoring flaws or damage in the barrel of the weapon, the casing, the primer, the charge or the load (the bullet itself as seperate from the round as a whole) did not cause a misfire and the load reached it's teminal destination without being drawn off course due to weather or gravity at longer ranges, the round acctually wastes it's kinetic energy in penetrating the target instead of flattening itself to deliver a massive 'punch' in fact a standard round relies on this flaw in itself to cause hydrostatic shock upon exiting the target to inflict the most damage to soft tissue. However if the round were designed to 'punch' instead of peneatrate the low amount of energy from these rounds would be aparent as they would not damage the target sufficently. Due to the second law of newtonian physics, a conventional firearm that uses ammunition to flatten itself out in this way cannot be made man portable.

A beam from a las-weapon from start to finish is the energy that is put into it. The loss in energy due to entropy is minimal as the energy changes states a fewer number of times. The rate at which a target heats up is proportional to the energy put into it, the beam once formed has no flaws in itself, it cannot be drawn off course from its target due to reasonable amounts of gravity or weather. A maximum amount of energy upon arriving at its final destination is transformed into heat and used to burn away at the target. And no mirriors probably wouldn't help.

This is my off the top of my head rant just regarding transitional and terminal ballistics. I plan on making it all into an article for Dakka but there are a few more holes I would like to patch up in some areas. Please people tear this apart so that I know what I have to fix for my article, I'll start a thread about it of my own soon I think.


I'll go more in depth later but the effiiciency of a firearm is actually something I worked out a couple months ago, I'll dig out the papers tonight (I need to see about getting it published anyway). but the main difference isn't in the efficiency of transfering their energies to the target ( in that case the laser comes out on top almost always.) the main reason that kinetic weapons are so effective is that they tear tissue to do damage. Lasers heat up tissues so where you only need the energy to tear with a projectile weapon you have to raise the heat of the target to a combustable level with a laser and have many times more power than that to burn through the tissues at an acceptable rate.

think of it as tearing a piece of paper as opposed to heating it up. It takes much less energy to tear it than it does.

Take a .22 LR shell for instance it has around 150 joules of energy at muzzle velocity, to transfer the same 150 joules to the paper with a class IV Laser you would need to hold it for about 150000 seconds and yes it would get hot, and maybe burn a little but it would be slow, the .22 LR on the other hand will have penetrated several layers (probably a quarter to a half a reem Reem so the laser does at best a tenth of what the .22 LR does with the same energies. Now you could drastically reduce the beam size keep the same wattage and MAYBE cut through the paper in about the same time per sheet, but the beam is much smaller than the bullet and does less damage, as it cauterizes the wound as opposed to letting a target bleed out. Bullets also have a shock wave effect that tears internal tissues, lasers just make a neat surgical hole. Nice for breeching bulkheads but not damage.

so when it comes to stopping a man, a bullet is much more likely to drop him than a laser, and you also have to keep a laser still to burn a hole in something, more than likely you would end up making a curving arc on a mans chest of burnt tissues before you did any real damage, so the guy shot by the laser is going to be alright, a firearm... not so.

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Made in au
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BUT what none of you realize is that there in fact innocent 15 and 16 year olds reading these threads. Honest people that dont want to die from cranial implosion and severe internal bleeding from over-exposure to SCIENCE!

Not to be totally off topic, Gendoikari, I think the practicality of using lasguns over lets say m4's is clear. 20 neat laserholes in a man will kill him, so will 1 bullet BUT lasers are rechargeable, accurate, reliable, and do not ricochet without the help of mirrors, nor do they damage tanks as much (assumeably). The casualty rate from ricochet alone would be huge for an army like the imperial guard, not that that really matters with artillery and what not also being friendly fired into their lines, but if you think about it, the amount of spent shells (bullet casings I mean), the transport and deliverance of the munitions, and the sea's of blood the Imperial Guard would drown in if they used kinetic weaponry would all play a factor.


And to the OP, the imperium has just exited the dark age of technology, and a galactic scale civil war with their own best soldiers, and have lost all their technology. Look at the mark V tank from world war 1, it looks a lot like a land raider or leman russ. In one way the imperium is advanced, in another way they are horribley outmatched. They only have the standard template constructs to trust, and heretical alien technology. If the imperium was at all the way it was before or during the dark age of technology, every space marine would wield safe plasma guns, there would be columns of Executioner leman russ, and the galaxy would be conquered.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2010/08/23 01:18:40


 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





nor do they damage tanks as much (assumeably)


actually, lasers are MORE effective against tanks then humans, see we being made of Dihydrogen monoxide and carbon compounds have a very high specific heat, metals have lower specific heat and therefor absorb the energy faster.... granted steel has a really high melting point.

Not to be totally off topic, Gendoikari, I think the practicality of using lasguns over lets say m4's is clear. 20 neat laserholes in a man will kill him, so will 1 bullet BUT lasers are rechargeable, accurate, reliable, and do not ricochet without the help of mirrors, nor do they damage tanks as much (assumeably). The casualty rate from ricochet alone would be huge for an army like the imperial guard, not that that really matters with artillery and what not also being friendly fired into their lines, but if you think about it, the amount of spent shells (bullet casings I mean), the transport and deliverance of the munitions, and the sea's of blood the Imperial Guard would drown in if they used kinetic weaponry would all play a factor.


theres also the fact that any sufficiently advanced tech civilization would require laser weapons as I think rule 21 of science fiction. But from a technical standpoint an easily rechargeable weapon would be must for something as large and unweildly as the imperium. But if it were my I'd consider re-developing my Photo-ionic drive as a weapon as electrons are always in abundant supply and it would wreck any and all electrical systems on anything.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2010/08/23 01:40:04


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Made in au
[MOD]
Making Stuff






Under the couch

gendoikari87 wrote:Nope, this actually incorrect, the laser has near zero recoil. it does not have none but you aren't going to notice it unless you have the death star laserbeam in a gun the size of a pistol.


http://www.defensereview.com/352003/TIS1.pdf

The last line is the relevant bit:
Finally, it is estimated that the weapon will deliver a recoil force of approximately 90lbs in the forward direction upon discharge, thereby requiring the
employment of a recoil alleviation/mitigation system.



Just for clarity here, I'm not saying that all lasers have recoil. I'm saying that, at least going by what I've read over the years, certain types of lasers do...

 
   
Made in us
Purged Thrall





Locked in my Mind

Put to much thought into a game then the game becomes you. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it's the 40th millenium in someones mind and sure there's some sybolism to WWII tech and some stuff i've never cared to learn about. Look at Orks if they believe the gun will fire it will. Man if that worked for everything we'd all be screwed it's Fantasy SYFY people nothing has to make full sense just semblence of the term.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2010/08/23 04:24:45


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Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios

gendoikari87 wrote:

1)40k Missile Launchers: These are described as hollow charge shaped charges, which would put then as second generation shaped charges. Which are about as effective as tossing stones at your enemy when compared to linear shaped charges that are our modern generation III, which make Generation II look silly.

2) Space Marine Bolters: here is what really points to most of the tech in 40k to being based on what the public knew in the late 70's/ early 80's. This is essentially a gyrojet system (all the rage in the 70's ), which is basically a gun that fires rockets instead of bullets. The game designers "fixed" the problem with the rockets limping out of the barrel by adding a small charge but forgot to add in that gyrojets have more energy the longer the distance to the target, instead they treat them as traditional firearms, which have more energy and penetration at shorter ranges.

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

4) Lascannons/Lasguns: these have recoil .... why? Exactly who high energy are these laser beams?

5) Missiles: or rather the lack of guidance systems on anything not space marine or hunter killers. Why do they still use unguided rockets like the Whirlwind, and exorcist (granted the manticore "rocket" lauancher is a guided system)

6) General Lack of tech on tanks: anything not space marine has basically WWII era tech with MAYBE a computer in it. There is never a mention of ablative ERA armor, or any kind of active protection systems, even though they see alot of missile/ rocket fire. No sabot rounds just a large heavy slug firing cannon. It seems the abrams or god forbid the challenger could tear them a new one. (basically having the equivalent of vanquisher cannons, which are Sabots if I remember correctly)



each of these things is quite easily explained

1) Degradation of Impierial Technology and the fact the Impierium doesn't(unlike the Modern military) take preformance over cost. Hollow shaped charges may be easier/cheaper to produce and when you have to arm Billions of men and machines to fight war on a hundred different fronts you will try to cut costs.

2) the Fluff isn't represented on the table top. Bolter rounds are akin to the Rocket propelled grenades of today. they have an initial charge like a "Conventional" round that provides short ranged killing power. after the round leaves the weapon the rocket charge ignites. in the fluff bolters have good range and excellent killing power at long ranges. there is also hints that certain bolt rounds may have guidance systems.

3) the fluff rarely has Lasguns causing bodies to explode and that which does is from the lower rated authors. Lasguns are actually Plasma Pulse weapons NOT Laser based weapons. the weapon uses a laser to excite a catalytic gas to create a small plasma pulse which travels down a magnetic envelope to the target. the lasgun does transfer quite a bit of heat to the target, but heat is easily disapated and therefor lasguns suck. the Impierium uses lasguns as its primary infantry weapon because it is cheap to manufacture, easy to maintain, and has to all intents and purposes an unlimited ammo supply. according to the Munitorum Manuel.

4) because they involve gaseous agitation in the creation of the plasma pulse. the power for a lasgun is in the 19 megathule range. Lascannons, being roughly 3 times more powerful(in game terms), would operate in approximatly the 729 Megathule range. according to the Munitorum Manuel.

5) again it's likely a cost factor. it isn't the warhead that is expensive. it's the darn guidence systems and electronic dohickies that make Modern military's so expensive. how do the ukrainians make a F-22 that costs 1/3 of what the U.S. version costs? by making it have a non-electric throttle and using simpler systems. Also the degradation of Tech, which BTW isn't even across the entire Impierium.

6) cost and the fact that ERA armor has one weakness. if you get hit in the same spot again the Ablative/reactive armor is gone/weaker. better to have simple armor that has a good chance of stopping hits multiple times then one that is garunteed to stop the first few hits and then is gone. with the scale of 40k battles(the ordinance of all the wars used to date being used in the span of a few short Weeks or even Days) you want something that will last multiple hits without losing effectivness.

Ceramite and Adamentium(which we have no way of comparing modern armor to) are likely stronger then anything we have today. other then our Targeting systems we probably don't have an edge. the Abrams is hardly the bast tank in the world (that likely goes to the Murkava IV). the Weapon also needs consideration. the 105mm hasn't changed much as far as payload goes(there are experimental and special issue rounds, but they are special cases) it may be the same, it may be worse then a Battlecannon. i rate the Abrams as having an equivilant gun on a lesser armored chassie.(13, 12, 10 is generous)

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Made in us
Monstrous Master Moulder




Secret lab at the bottom of Lake Superior

I'm loving all the scientific discussions here, but here's the truth about 40k weapons.

40k is made by people in Britain whose job is to create, paint and make up rules and stories about tiny plastic toys. They are not scientists nor physicists. I'm not saying that they don't have some smart cookies over at GW, but read the generic biology terms they threw into the latest codex of space marines in the section on the process of becoming a space marine, and the ridiculous organs they have. Look at their explanation of a conversion beamer. The first half (matter into energy) makes sense, but the second half (the beam fired which turns matter, such as your enemy, into energy growing in power over the distance fired) makes little to no sense, at least to me. If the op can explain this to me, they get a free internet cookie.

Just for fun, look at Tau technology!

As long as I'm hatin' on 40k, I mind as well ask: how exactly does ork tech work? If they can hardly think of anything else besides fighting and WAAAGH!!!!, will you really be able to cobble together your own weapon and create your own bullets ( or make a gun and clip that can handle whatever scavenged bullets you have)?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2010/08/23 07:14:57


Commissar NIkev wrote:
This guy......is smart
 
   
Made in us
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It grows in power over the distance because the beam widens.

If you think about that, that'd weaken it, but GW thinks differently...

I guess think of a wave in the ocean. It grows in size until it hits the coast and smashes against it.

 
   
Made in us
Monstrous Master Moulder




Secret lab at the bottom of Lake Superior

But a wave grows inside because the ocean becomes shallower, and all of the energy of the wave beneath the surface gets pushed above, like how a tsunami wave can be only five to ten feet tall out at sea, but then it grows greatly as it nears the shore.

But, yeah, don't expect logic and/or science from GW.

Commissar NIkev wrote:
This guy......is smart
 
   
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Lord Commander in a Plush Chair






Computergeek01:

Bullets while transferring their energy also create shockwaves that disrupt tissues/organs, cause copious amounts of blood loss from both entry and exit wounds, and/or can ricochet of bone shredding internal organs.

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

Lasers as a weapon would never be feasible as man-portable weapons because they have no stopping power; heck even their kill-ability is rather limited.


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Made in de
Oberleutnant




Germany

In all your points your are assuming that we know at least as much about technology than the Imperium and this is not the case.

Missle Launchers: Even in our history some developments brought us back to a already discarded technology, because a single material made it better than it was before.

Laser: Indeed OUR Lasers would not do what 40k Lasers can do, and dont deliver so much energy. Perhaps that why we dont use them as guns.

Tech in Tanks: Only so far: Soviets in WWII. They had not High-Tech tanks, their optics were bad, a German Tiger or US-Sherman M4A8 was like a spacecraft compared in tech to them, but if you have enough mass you dont need all that stuff.
Even more so Tigers would been a disaster for the Soviets because they did not had enough skilled tankers.


 
   
Made in se
Stubborn Dark Angels Veteran Sergeant



Lost in the warp while searching for a new codex

gendoikari87 wrote:

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


THV is just a bullet with higher kinetic energy than a traditional bullet, why would they work any diffrent than a traditional one when it comes to how they deal damage?

gendoikari87 wrote:nor do they damage tanks as much (assumeably)


gendoikari87 wrote:actually, lasers are MORE effective against tanks then humans, see we being made of Dihydrogen monoxide and carbon compounds have a very high specific heat, metals have lower specific heat and therefor absorb the energy faster.... granted steel has a really high melting point.



Last time I checked Dihydrogen monoxide is more commonly refered to as water. Personally I would suggest that one uses the most common name when one wants to "debate" something in a non scientific forum. The only reason for not doing that would be to blittle the people one is arguing with or just to make it look as if one knows alot more than one does, neither of those attributes are something to strive for.

OnT:
The Imperium is supposed to be a backwards/anti-scietific society so IMO it fits perfectly well with the fact that designs of the equipment is not optimal by todays standards.




This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2010/08/23 10:20:45


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SlaveToDorkness wrote:It's things like this that make me glad I'm not an Engineer and can enjoy simple fantasy without thinking too much about it... lol


Nice call

But, apart from that, this is all waaaaaay to over my head. I am so glad I dropped all Sciences at the end of last year, and am now engaged in the theoretic arts of Advanced English and Modern History.

Peace

P.S: If you are annoyed because I didn't actually have any input into the thread, you have my deepest sympathies.

purplefood wrote:It's an army of a hellish dystopian state where they are forced to fight some of the most terrifying creatures mankind has ever seen, in the name of a god-emperor that might not even be alive, under commanders that do not care whether they live or die... what do you think? But hey laser guns!
 
   
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Remember you would also get "shock" effects from rapid heating of tissue - a few bL books mention that, while the initial wound may be cauterised, it causes massive damage to internal organs.
   
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micahaphone wrote:
As long as I'm hatin' on 40k, I mind as well ask: how exactly does ork tech work? If they can hardly think of anything else besides fighting and WAAAGH!!!!, will you really be able to cobble together your own weapon and create your own bullets ( or make a gun and clip that can handle whatever scavenged bullets you have)?


Ork technology works simply by the presence of orks, pg 10 of the current codex:
'Many captured ork weapons and items of equipment do not work unless wielded by and Ork. I theorise that many Ork inventions work because the orks themselves they the should work - the strong telekinetic abilities of the ork subconsious somehow ensure they function as desired'

Ork tech works because the collective subconsious of a large population of orks thinks that the tech works, and so it does!


Back on the original topic, I remember an interview or two with the IG designers in WD, they basically said that they wanted the IG to look technically backward compare to the beakies, so that it strikes a bigger contrast between the two and hammers home the fact that the IG are a borderline religious cult, where their own technological advancement is limited by the religious fanaticism that sees any alien technology as heretical, and is therefore not to be so much as touched, let alone researched and developed before being implemented against them.

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And that is why you hear people yelling FOR THE EMPEROR rather than FOR LOGICAL AND QUANTIFIABLE BASED DECISIONS FOR THE BETTERMENT OF THE MAJORITY!


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daveNYC wrote:The Craftworld guys, who are such stick-in-the-muds that they manage to make the Ultramarines look like an Ibiza nightclub that spiked its Red Bull with LSD.
 
   
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Lost in the warp while searching for a new codex

Doop Dude wrote:
SlaveToDorkness wrote:It's things like this that make me glad I'm not an Engineer and can enjoy simple fantasy without thinking too much about it... lol


Nice call

But, apart from that, this is all waaaaaay to over my head. I am so glad I dropped all Sciences at the end of last year, and am now engaged in the theoretic arts of Advanced English and Modern History.

Peace

P.S: If you are annoyed because I didn't actually have any input into the thread, you have my deepest sympathies.


Im so glad that I DIDNT drop all Sciences, I can enjoy simple fantasy without thinking too much about it in spite of the fact that Im working towards a PhD in High Energy Physics You can still be a science "geek" without being bothered the least bit about stuff liks this, its fiction not science

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2010/08/23 11:02:42


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insaniak wrote:
gendoikari87 wrote:Nope, this actually incorrect, the laser has near zero recoil. it does not have none but you aren't going to notice it unless you have the death star laserbeam in a gun the size of a pistol.


http://www.defensereview.com/352003/TIS1.pdf

The last line is the relevant bit:
Finally, it is estimated that the weapon will deliver a recoil force of approximately 90lbs in the forward direction upon discharge, thereby requiring the
employment of a recoil alleviation/mitigation system.



Just for clarity here, I'm not saying that all lasers have recoil. I'm saying that, at least going by what I've read over the years, certain types of lasers do...


I don't know where they're getting 90 lbs of recoil but to produce that much force with a laser beam you'd need I think something on the order of Tera watts or some other ungodly powerful exponent. a 1 gram equivalent would cut through a man in a low enough time to be considered a viable weapon. but the power wattage of that alone is incredible, Coincidentally thats my next homework problem I have to do. I'll be back tonight with the exact figure for 1 gram.


Lasguns are actually Plasma Pulse weapons


That actually makes things make SO much more sense now actually.

On the subject of the conversion beamer its obviously a point of GW forcefitting science to rules... which is fine it's still fun to poke at. But if they made the rules for the conversion beamer what it SHOULD BE welll heres what it would look like

Str 10 AP 1 Melta, 666" blast



THV is just a bullet with higher kinetic energy than a traditional bullet, why would they work any diffrent than a traditional one when it comes to how they deal damage?


THV rounds are something of a passion of mine, they are simple elegant and effective all at the same time. Their unique concave curving time (think sorry piece) creates a larger shockwave as it travels through the air and the small tip makes them great at soft body armor penetration, but due to the high "friction" due to the shape of the round it creates a high energy shock wave and looses all it's energy into the body. there were competing with frangbles for a while but due to what I can only surmise as a fear of the round, Frangibles won out. but there main pupose is to reduce overpenetration and ricochet kills, but by doing this the inventor created a much more powerful round, simple but elegantly genius work.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2010/08/23 11:35:22


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the leman russ is based on an old french tank that citadel used to make a model of before they did 40k or so ive heard

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No.

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

as it is, no tank in modern times works like ours do.

game designers tried to make it more insteresting with sponson weapons; most tanks have pintle mounts, and a hull mount machine gun at best. Turrets, sure, and small additional weapons such as missile launchers are a yesyes.

Most tanks have smoke launchers.

as for laser/lascannon:

Not quite true.

Currently, the strongest lasers can easily cut through human tissue. now, thats got a better consistency then plastic. From what I've heard, certain lasers are used to cut metals.

A laser could probably cut through thin layers of kevlar.

now, flash foraward couple thousand years.

how much mor epowerful would they be.

also, why does everyone consider things from a modern POV.
WE are talking about 38 thousand years later.

Though alot of tools seem very simple, they are based on imagination, and imagination is the bearer of invention.


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OP, you're obviously more qualified than most people toanalyse the fact/fiction balance of such things, but there's something I like to say when people get worked up about WH40k science.

Wars in the 41st millenium involve crossing the galaxy by magically transporting miles-long spaceships through hell itself, destroying any opposing fleet forces with massive torpedoes, fighter wings, some sort of physically unfeasible laser, enormous cannons, etc. Then, people fight with swords to decide things - these are the battles that are apparently the most important, since the winners of firefights and duels are always presented as the winners of overall conflicts.

I get obsessive about some things like this (I'm giving all my IG models 'autoguns' partly because I hate the weird fake laser-guns that most IG are supposed to have) but at the end of the day, all the WH40k background is an elaborate excuse to have people fight close quarters battle.

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Beijing

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

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