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Anyone ever wonder why Heavy bolters and assault cannons have such a low shot output?

I know balance comes into play, but the Deathwatch/Dark Hersey Heavy bolters have a fire mode of Full auto 10 (10 shots every time you pull the trigger)

Just makes me laugh to look at Heavy 3 in the Heavy Bolter Statline, not to mention they have to be stationary to fire in 40k mini's (the marines in Deathwatch/Dark Hersey can shoot on the move as well)

Game balance.

The shot output is laughable, was the point.

I said I know its for game balance, but that aside, I think they should have made them have more shots.

A bolter in Deathwatch can fire 1 shot, 2 shots or 4 shots on Semi-auto/Burst/Full auto modes.

makes one wonder why they went with such a low shot count for Heavy bolters.

Deathwatch is a ROLE-PLAYING GAME.
40K IS NOT.

40k played with DW weapons and rofs would take forever.

Time scales and game balance comes into it amongst other things.

And once upon a time, it was possible to move and fire with heavy bolters if one had the right equipment (only possible with the "relentless" rule these days).

It is not a matter of game balance, but of abstraction. The amount of abstraction could range from a straight simulation game - where everything is as close to "reality" as can be - to a complete abstraction, where both players roll a die and the one who rolls higher has won the battle. Since RPGs usually handle a lower number of things in a more detailed way, they are closer to the simulation end of the spectrum, whereas a tabletop wargame is closer to the abstraction end, because otherwise it would take weeks to complete. But mind that even the RPG is not a complete simulation, there are a multitude of abstractions in there, too.

I tihnk Skylifter put it best, Abstraction plays a large part. An average game can take 1-2 hours, yet in actuality the battle is maybe 10-20 minutes. So perhaps they're only taking 1 or 2 shots whilst moving between cover. Maybe only two shots were even close to target to warrant a dice roll. Also, Most weapons in the 40k universe are made through ritual and superstition rather then science and technology. So there's chances that the weapon could be jamming which would decrease your shot output as well.

Three dice rolls does not equal three shots. It is a representation of the weapon's rate of fire when compared to other weapons. You have to take into account all of a weapons statistics to get an idea of its rate of fire. For instance, the higher strength of an assault cannon, plus the rendong rule, show that it has a much greater rate of fire than the heavy bolter. The one extra dice it gets doesn't mean it gets one extra bullet, just that it is somewhat faster.

I usually think of each of the dice representing a burst of fire (it just happens that every time one of these bursts connects, it only hits one enemy), but on the other hand I think it's more likely that if rapid-fire weapons could use an amount of dice that truly equalled how many shots they fire when the trigger is pulled they'd become horribly overpowered. I dread to think how many dice you'd have to roll for a Leman Russ Punisher...

While we're talking about this, here another thing about Bolters. As far as I know, altough they look like a machine gun or other kind of rapid fire weapon, a Bolter shoots more like a small Grenade Launcher, right?
Because I have troubles imagening a Storm- or Heavy Bolter like that.

Pretty sure a bolter fires like an assault rifle. The bullets are just explosive.

The storm bolter would fire twice the grenades,while a Heavy Bolter would just fire massive exploding death.

Probably time differential.

A Dark Heresy combat round, with characters doing a bunch of things like moving about, shooting widely, etc.., might just be 3-times or more longer than a 40K-table-top-turn, which rarely covers more than a short dash of movement and/or a double-tap from a weapon for even the best, of the best, of the best the galaxy has to offer.

Two things: The shots in deathwatch are not all going to hit, and deathwatch shooting is all OP all the time.