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In another thread we were discussing real life ranges for 40K weapons. One comment got me thinking: why are heavy bolters only Heavy 3? Heavy Bolters (and their alien contemporaries) are supposed to be futuristic Heavy Machine Guns. Modern Heavy Machine Guns have firing rates close to 1000 rounds per minute. Usually these numbers are only limited by overheating of the barrel or receiver. I would think with futuristic materials, techpriests would be able to over come these limitations.

What if another category of weapon types was introduced? The heavy bolter would still be Heavy 3, but like rapid fire weapons, within, say 18", it is increased to Heavy 5 (or 6). This would represent the guns ability to mow down opponents, when at close range they don't need to aim. Instead they can just stray fire into the on rushing xeno ranks.

What do you guys think of this concept?

Maybe just redo rapid fire weapon's rule and say that it doubles the amount of shots if the target is within 12 inches, and give it to the heavy bolter. That way it'd be roughly similar to what you proposed.

However the standard bolter is already suppose to be something akin to the Thompson submachine gun, or at the very least an assault rifle, so 2 shots might seem little from our point of view, but excessive in-universe. This would mean that the Heavy Bolter would be putting out even more shots in-universe as well.

PraetorDave wrote:In another thread we were discussing real life ranges for 40K weapons. One comment got me thinking: why are heavy bolters only Heavy 3? Heavy Bolters (and their alien contemporaries) are supposed to be futuristic Heavy Machine Guns. Modern Heavy Machine Guns have firing rates close to 1000 rounds per minute. Usually these numbers are only limited by overheating of the barrel or receiver. I would think with futuristic materials, techpriests would be able to over come these limitations.

What if another category of weapon types was introduced? The heavy bolter would still be Heavy 3, but like rapid fire weapons, within, say 18", it is increased to Heavy 5 (or 6). This would represent the guns ability to mow down opponents, when at close range they don't need to aim. Instead they can just stray fire into the on rushing xeno ranks.

What do you guys think of this concept?

Heavy bolter is a pretty high caliber machinegun (.75 to the M2 BMGs .50), and seeing it in the DoW2 games I would guess it has a ROF of 500-800RPM tops. The assault cannon probably has 1000-1500RPM though.

How many shots weapons have are based on game balance though. The assault cannon has heavy 4, while the punisher cannon has heavy 20. If the assault cannon has 1200RPM fire rate, then the punisher would be pushing 6000RPM (which seems unrealistic to me).

This has been discussed in the Proposed Rules forum.

I proposed making Heavy Bolters:

Rng36" S4 AP5 Rapid Fire, Blast

scubasteve04 wrote:
How many shots weapons have are based on game balance though. The assault cannon has heavy 4, while the punisher cannon has heavy 20. If the assault cannon has 1200RPM fire rate, then the punisher would be pushing 6000RPM (which seems unrealistic to me).

6000rpm does not seem unrealistic. Think about how young the firearm is. They are only about 500 years old. In 500 years we have gone from less than 1 shot per minute, to thousands of rounds per minute (miniguns). I'm surprised anyone is using solid state firearms 38,000 years from now. I would think that with advances in technology that the bolter would be close to 5,000 RPM.

PraetorDave wrote:

scubasteve04 wrote:
How many shots weapons have are based on game balance though. The assault cannon has heavy 4, while the punisher cannon has heavy 20. If the assault cannon has 1200RPM fire rate, then the punisher would be pushing 6000RPM (which seems unrealistic to me).

6000rpm does not seem unrealistic. Think about how young the firearm is. They are only about 500 years old. In 500 years we have gone from less than 1 shot per minute, to thousands of rounds per minute (miniguns). I'm surprised anyone is using solid state firearms 38,000 years from now. I would think that with advances in technology that the bolter would be close to 5,000 RPM.

But the Imperium has backward technology, mainly due to the age of strife, and the way the Mechanicum encorperates new technology within the imperium. Smoke stacks on most vehicles and dreadnoughts, bikes, chainswords, lots of solid-state weapons. Hell, most imperial guard tanks look like they came straight outta WW1.

Why would you even WANT to fire the bolter at 5000 rpm? You would empty a magazine within one third of a second.

Nurglitch wrote:This has been discussed in the Proposed Rules forum.

I proposed making Heavy Bolters:

Rng36" S4 AP5 Rapid Fire, Blast

So basically cheap frag missile launchers that can fire twice at close range?

Despite the fact that bolter shells don't have and never have had any fragmentation elements or a particularly large blast?

Melissia wrote:Why would you even WANT to fire the bolter at 5000 rpm? You would empty a magazine within one third of a second.

Nurglitch wrote:This has been discussed in the Proposed Rules forum.

I proposed making Heavy Bolters:

Rng36" S4 AP5 Rapid Fire, Blast

So basically cheap frag missile launchers that can fire twice at close range?

Despite the fact that bolter shells don't have and never have had any fragmentation elements or a particularly large blast?

This is a step in the right direction, but I think heavy 9 better represents time tken to set up the gun and mow down some xenos

Melissia:

The fluff is irrelevant to fitting the weapon into the rules so that it's a viable option for players. Currently the Heavy Bolter is good enough, but its viability isn't obvious enough.

And yes, Scout Heavy Bolters already have the option of switching their usual firing for a Hellfire round, a Poison (2+) blast.

There's a reason people tend to default to the Missile Launcher because it's not much worse than the Heavy Bolter, has longer range, and has anti-vehicle capability. Increasing the range or anti-vehicle capabilities of the Heavy Bolter just remakes the Missile Launcher, so it needs to be more the twice as good at anti-infantry as the Missile Launcher to make up for the range and anti-vehicle capabilities.

No, it's not a step in the right direction. Quite 180 of that...

I think toning down cover would be enough to make heavy bolters viable, along with plenty of other "weak" weapons.


The missile launcher is also twice as expensive as the heavy bolter, so I don't think the heavy bolter needs to necessarily be better.

The concept behind Rapid Fire is that an assault rifle is pretty inaccurate at 200+ yards but at close range it becomes worthwhile shooting more rapidly.

Heavy type weapons like tripod mounted machine guns don't lose significant accuracy at long range so they won't get a particular bonus at short range.

Killkrazy:

Sure, but if we're going to waste time thinking representationally, then the Space Marine Heavy Bolter is a great SAW, which suits a Rapid Fire weapon quite well, and the Imperial Guard Heavy Bolter is a great HMG, which suits a Heavy weapon quite well.

That's what I meant.

The heavy bolter is fine as it is.

I quite like your grenade machine gun idea representationally.

I might play a few games using this rule suggestion. Ill let you know how they go.

I like the blast template idea.

It suits the idea of that area being flooded with bullets.

Melkhiordarkblade wrote:I like the blast template idea.

It suits the idea of that area being flooded with bullets.

I thought it was a Blast Template because the Heavy Bolter shells are gigantic and explode.

The idea of a HB being able to rapid fire is pretty cool, with IG HWT it could be a case of panic and the team opens up to hell and shoots the crap out of anything coming near it, but desperation/panic would (imo) lower BS of a unt using em, plus HB are fitted on armour, say a predator what would happen then, preds are already pretty good but i think opening up the HB to be able to have more than 3 shots is a bit ott on them yet on a razorback it would make them really more of a light batte tank than a heavy transport.

Having them as blast weps is a better idea i think, not an explosion but could be representative of its rate of fire. Again with em being fitted on armour it makes the vehicle waaaaay more deadly.

grayspark wrote:

Melkhiordarkblade wrote:I like the blast template idea.

It suits the idea of that area being flooded with bullets.

I thought it was a Blast Template because the Heavy Bolter shells are gigantic and explode.

Maybe think of the blast marker as representing a hail of exploding shells.

A small blast template really won't increase the amount of shots unless you made it rapid fire. If the other guy has spread his guys out well, on a perfect scatter you will get mabye four guys under the template.

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:However the standard bolter is already suppose to be something akin to the Thompson submachine gun, or at the very least an assault rifle, so 2 shots might seem little from our point of view, but excessive in-universe. This would mean that the Heavy Bolter would be putting out even more shots in-universe as well.

This. Keep in mind that Storm Bolters can and do jam (at least in Space Hulk) under high stress, suggesting that they're quite capable of putting out a massive hail of rounds in a short period of time. So a weapon's rate of fire within the game isn't a 1/1 correlation with the number of rounds that the weapon actually fires in a turn.


Finally, if you still think that the Heavy Bolter's stats need an upgrade, then you're also going to need to look at similar "high-volume of fire" weapons in other armies.

I think that's why the thread is about Heavy Bolters as Rapid Fire Weapons. Being able to move and fire 2 blasts is fun. Space Marine Scout Bikers have access to Astartes Grenade Launchers which are Rapid Fire in both modes. But their blast markers are only S3 AP6, which is a serious step down from Bolter-level firepower when it comes to threshing infantry.

Plus it contributes to Bolter fetishism to imagine a Space Marine striding forward, Blaine with his Heavy Bolter blazing like in the Wolf Brigade.

Isn't the real reason to do with the fact that this is a futuristic game in which the designers want HtH combat to play a large part?

I imagine that realistic weapons, even if simply modern ones, would lead to a boring game.

There's fluff, of course, as discussed above, but I've always regarded this as "suspension of disbelief".

Or to take it a compeltely different route you could make the heavy bolter(+zenos eqiuvalents) a 2D6 shot weapon

I would find that heavy bolters aren't as viable because of the lack of shots they put out, i think the best way to solve it is to just give it a special ruling were if you move he heavy bolter fires 3 shots if you wish to shoot it, and if you stand still, then you get 'heavy 6', this to me makes a hell of a lot of sense

Heavy bolters need to be defensive weapons on vehicles. Tons of vehicles are set up to benefit from this (Preds, Speeders, Chimeras, Leman russes, ect)

Nurglitch wrote:This has been discussed in the Proposed Rules forum.

I proposed making Heavy Bolters:

Rng36" S4 AP5 Rapid Fire, Blast

I actually like this, but because I see the "Blast" more as representing the dense hail of bullets (don't know if this is the right term), in that you might actually be firing transversally, rather than straight on, thus hitting various adjacent targets.

The ST and AP aren't what I'd pick, though. But that is because I don't like the current concept of rapid fire, and I miss the 2nd edition rules for it.

Rapid fire heavy bolters?! Scary.....
Don't you think thats a bit extreme?

I think the way it is is fine. Look at it like this: It can put out that much firepower, that quickly, but you have to worry about accuracy, ammo supply and the possibility of the weapon overheating and prematurely detonating those explosive shells in the barrel. Heavy 3 is them firing three controlled bursts. That might sit wrong with some people, but I've never seen an issue with that.

Melissia wrote:No, it's not a step in the right direction. Quite 180 of that...

I think toning down cover would be enough to make heavy bolters viable, along with plenty of other "weak" weapons.


The missile launcher is also twice as expensive as the heavy bolter, so I don't think the heavy bolter needs to necessarily be better.

Heavy Bolters are not weak, SM are just strong against them. Orks, Nids, Eldar hate facing HB heavy armies because they bring the rain. Most balanced armies planning on all facers though dont put many in because AT is more important, and even if you are facing infantry, its usually MeQ and HB suck against MeQ