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In novels and fluff Bolter is described as exploding either per impact or penetrating it's target and then exploding.

Why then GW present Bolter in every other media as machineguns?

Brother Coa wrote:In novels and fluff Bolter is described as exploding either per impact or penetrating it's target and then exploding.

Yes.

Brother Coa wrote:
Why then GW present Bolter in every other media as machineguns?

Where? This is wrong.

Yes they explode, but no they don't explode like grenades, they are more like super-hollowpoints. It is like how a firework can blow off fingers in a closed fist but only cause superficial burns in an open palm.

So they do act like and are used like assault rifles, it is just that they have a friggin TON of stopping power, e.g. blowing chunks of flesh out and blowing limbs off, at least on a human sized target. On orks and other space marines who are extra dense and/or wear armor it makes it effective, not amazing like it would be on humans.

Of course this isn't something you can usually illustrate in visual media at a pg-13 rating. The SM video game did it pretty well though. Not perfect, but heads would pop.

Joey wrote:
Where? This is wrong.

Comics, Movies, Video Games....
In every other media Bolters acts like machineguns.


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riplikash wrote:Yes they explode, but no they don't explode like grenades, they are more like super-hollowpoints. It is like how a firework can blow off fingers in a closed fist but only cause superficial burns in an open palm.

This is how Bolters work according to fluff:

Yes, I know, and that is exactly my point. It isn't a grenade, it doesn't have shrapnel casing, the charge isn't that big, and it blows chunks off a target, it doesn't blow torso's off.

It is an armor piercing assault round with fantastic stopping power. When a charge, even a small one, goes off in flesh it causes massive amounts of damage. But it isn't an area affect weapon.

Also flesh doesn't work like it did in that animation, where it crumbled. The bone and deltoid would have held on, so he would have had a big hole in his chest/under his arm, but not lost the whole arm, which would have been danlging by muscle and sinew.


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And that is on a human target. GW usually portrays bolts doing exactly that to regular humans. Space marines and orcs are another matter entirely. They are massive enough and dense enough that they are not going to lose a limb, or even be taken out by a single shot in a non vital area. But it will put them down where a traditional round would not have the stopping power.

Bolter has in itself an exploding ammunition, logic is that when round hit something it can't penetrate with ease ( power armor or tank armor ) it explode regardless. Just like an RPG or exploding bullets explode on impact because they carry much more charge then ordinarily ammunition.

And in Space Marine Bolters are like ordinary machine guns, not mini rocket launchers. In "Ultramarines" Severus kills Chaplain with bolt round in the head, I was expecting that head will explode when hit by Botler round.

I would disagree on the space marine game. Guard practically disappear when hit. Orks will have their heads pop. Other CSM don't show any special damage, but then they are wearing armor. Not sure what else people want without a complex damage engine like they had in Wolverine to demonstrate chunks coming off of orks chest.

And they ARE closer to assault rifles with special ammo than min-rocket launchers. They do explode outside of bodies, but the explosion is going to be more like a big fire-cracker than an RPG. Even actual grenades explode with a bang of dust rather than a fiery explosion. Again, a fire cracker exploding in flesh is going to cause tons of damage, it doesn't take much in an enclosed area like that.

Even blowing a space marines head off is more than it would likely do. You would have a hole, a VERY large and bloody wound, but he isn't going to lose his head. And they aren't going to show that in a pg13 movie.

Brother Coa wrote:

Joey wrote:
Where? This is wrong.

Comics, Movies, Video Games....
In every other media Bolters acts like machineguns.

Video games don't have the graphical power to simulate a small area of an enemy being blown to chunks.
Never seen the space marine movie (though I do have it) but I assume, similar to the video game, they don't have the time or resources to put into simulating thousands of tiny, overlapping explosions on someone's flesh.

i was under the impression that the bolter rounds in the space amrine game were quite realistic, heads popping , torsos going "flup " etc.

A bolter is a "machine-gun" by definition:

An automatic gun that fires ammunition in rapid succession for as long as the trigger is pressed.

Heavy Bolters more or less fulfill the duty of a modern-day heavy machine gun in the Imperial Guard at least. Just it has way more stopping power then even a .50 Cal M2

Space Marine depicted the Bolter pretty well. The one who fumbled was the DoW series where the rate of fire, firing sounds, and damage sustained isn't accurate at all. But for gameplay reasons I guess this was understandable.

Brother Coa wrote:Why then GW present Bolter in every other media as machineguns?

To be fair, I'd say that most of the time it isn't actually GW but someone who got the license, like Relic/THQ. When they can turn meltas into shotguns they can turn bolters into full auto machine guns just as well. Compare that to games such as "Chaos Gate" and you'll see that there are lots of different takes on how bolters work. Weapon sounds/visuals/effects are simply as varied as any other fluff detail depending entirely on who made the product you are looking at. Myself, I kinda like the idea of comparing the boltgun to an AA-12 set to single shot or four round bursts. Just the right RoF, imo.

I think a 300-400 rpm is the best for a bolter. Not having a full automatic weapon would be drastically inefficient for the Astartes, as most of infantry combat is laying down suppressive fire (not hitting the enemy). Of course this is still drastically less rpm then most modern assault rifles.

Harriticus wrote:I think a 300-400 rpm is the best for a bolter. Not having a full automatic weapon would be drastically inefficient for the Astartes, as most of infantry combat is laying down suppressive fire (not hitting the enemy). Of course this is still drastically less rpm then most modern assault rifles.

Having a full automatic weapon would be drastically inefficient for the Astartes. How many rounds do you think they carry with them? Most of infantry combat is killing the enemy; often suppressive fire is part of that; but that's what squad-level automatic weapons (ie, the SAW, or Heavy Bolter) and accurate semi-automatic fire is for.

An M16A4 fires around 800 RPM at cyclic rate, meaning that it could, theoretically, with a large enough magazine and optimum operating conditions fire at that RPM. Firing more than three magazines in a minute, or 90 rounds, would be rather impressive. Let alone firing accurately enough even as "suppressive fire" to make the enemy consider you a threat, and therefor be suppressed.

All in all, there are very sound combat doctrine reasons why the subsequent models of both the M16 and the M4 didn't have automatic fire capabilities.

Burst fire is far more accurate and far less likely to empty the entire magazine in a few seconds in the heat of battle, which is why the M16A2 (the model I carried) and later models do not have full-auto fire. It wasn't necessary when you had a couple guys lugging an M60D or M249 SAW and a few dozen belts of ammo for the same, those guys were your bullet-hoses.

The bolter, as well, doesn't need to be a fully-automatic weapon, though this capability is featured in several fluff sources. This may also be a variance in pattern of the bolters carried between one Chapter and another. However, when a single bolter round is capable of blowing through most body armor worn by the staggering majority of your enemies, penetrate their bodies and then explode inside them... you don't really need to shoot someone twenty-five times to kill them.

In WW2, the German infantry squads were based around the machinegun, not not as modern infantry squads today are, they used the rifle men to surpress the enemy allowing machineguns to get the kill. Now, they put down surpessive fire with weapons such as the Kar 98 and mp 40, note that the Kar98 is a bolt action. You don't need a machinegun to put down surpression.

Now looking at the round in the video there are a number of problems:
1) no way to set off the explosive charge.
2) based on the position of the explosive charge, it is not intended to explode within a target, it is designed to impact a hard surface, detonate, and push the slug through, not explode within.

Now things i found interesting:
1) the rifleing is on the bolt, not the inside of the barrel. this means that when the Marine is cleaning his bolt gun he does not have to wory about damaging the rifleing, making it easier to clean, and more acurate.
2) I noticed that the rocket ports were poorly designed, instead of drilling straight in it would have beem more effiecent to use a nosel.

> < shaped like this, to force the expanding gasses through a smaller area, and focusing them in making more thrust.

then to place the nosels at an agle to direct the flow of gasses to produce a faster spining motion, increaseing acuracy.

3) the flesh, indeed, was not realistic, nor a good representation of the intended target. The boltgun was designed to engage targets with thicker armor.

In conclusion, the bolt guns explosive charge is not built to cause damage, but to increase penetration. its a .75cal projectile, it doesn't need to explode.

How many times have we covered this topic, Coa, and how many times have you just ignored everything that we've said to bring the same exact damned thing up again and again?

I think of a bolter firing as either a slow firing automatic rifle or a semi automatic, firing one or two bullets per second. With a space marine behind it that is all you will need. Precision is everything. I dont think that they fire explosive bullets, sure they might be specialist ammo that covers that but as mentioned earlier I think of it more as a incredible hollow point round with the stopping power of something like the .950 JDJ round. An absolute monster. I would imagine them being about the same size, massive bulky things.

They do fire explosive rounds, the rounds just are more low explosive-- that is, they pop open to create a more deadly wound, they don't explode in a fiery ball of gas, death, and shrapnel.

Basically what a hollow point round will do. They are designed to expand on impact so that a larger area of tissue is damaged. Due to the shape of the tip of the bullet it will expand is size thus causing alot more internal damage to the target. As far as I understand it this is fairly close to what a bolter round does. There is really no need for the explosives. Having worked with commercial grade explosives for over a year now I can safely say that the amount of explosives that would be able to fit into a bolter round is enough to cause massive damage to whatever it hits, military explosives are on a whole other level.

Adding explosives to the bullet would be useless unless you add a significant amount, enough to cause a serious explosion, rather than having a small charge that will simply tear tissue as the hollow point will essentially do that for you. They are also made this way to increase the kinetic force of the round which is exactly what a SM would want.

Im sure in the 40k universe explosives are much more effective than they are now and smaller amounts are needed for the desired effect to occur but I doubt that the round would have a HE effect or anything similar to it.

Basically what im trying to say is why use explosives as a means of doing something when there is already something else on the market doing it for you? Unless ofcourse you want it to be completely overkill which, according to my understanding of the bolter ammunition, it isnt. I believe that was what the OP was trying to ask.

Mental note... Late night rambling is not good for you..

Thatguy91 wrote:Basically what a hollow point round will do.

Except... better.

Why does everyone act as if all wounds are equal?

Thatguy91 wrote:Basically what im trying to say is why use explosives as a means of doing something when there is already something else on the market doing it for you?

Because explosives also add to the suppression effect, because bolt weapons also get used against lightly armoured vehicles, and because the enemies on the battlefields of the 41st Millennium are occasionally a bit tougher than your squishy contemporary soldier that half the time doesn't even wear flak armour.

This kind of ammunition is also growing popular with today's armies, mind you.

http://airbornecombatengineer.typepad.com/airborne_combat_engineer/2005/05/frag12_heap_sho.html
http://www.defensereview.com/exclusive-video-aa12-machine-shotgunfrag-12-grenade-weapon-system-test-fired/

Also, shaped charge ftw. Even when the projectile fails to penetrate and detonate inside the target, you still have the explosion as a secondary effect.

Well, a bolter round is, at the outset, frigging huge. It puts a large hole in the target going in.

Then it explodes.

This makes an even larger hole. Possibly one going in and going out. This generally means that the body part around said hole(s) is no longer attached to the main body of whatever it was just got shot. If that thing was human, this might actually cause its torso to separate at the spine, causing the lower abdomen and the legs to fall off, the upper torso, head and the arms falling away from the other half of the body. Quite literally being blown in half.

In regards to the ROF, The Astartes are not mere men, right? So with their advance technology and physiology wouldn't they be able to fire a fully automatic weapon with significantly less recoil then we're used to seeing a regular human shoot a fully automatic weapon? And also, when you shoot something with a mini rocket and it doesn't die, and keeps barreling at you maybe its to your benefit to be able to hip-fire as fast as you can?

If bolt weapons would pose an issue of recoil, they would have stocks. Limiting the consumption of ammunition in a firefight is a viable theory for why fully automatic fire may be unavailable - then again, you're quite correct regarding the possibility of situations where "firing as fast as possible" would come in handy.

As far as I'm aware, GW themselves never really went into details concerning bolter RoF in the technical sections of their books. They do talk about burst fire in the 3E rulebook (see this scan), but even there it's not really clear whether or not they can be set to another mode by simply flipping a switch. As most of us are aware, licensed publications differ greatly in their portrayal, ranging from single shots only (SSI's computer games) to full-auto machine guns (THQ's computer games), not to mention the many different novels. So it once again comes down to "pick what you like most".

To be fair, bolters do have folding stocks in the non-Astartes variants. It's only the Astartes variants which don't, and that's more because they can do things like "lock" their armor to absorb recoil better per the fluff.

The Bolter is an evolved version of the Gyrojet firing a SAPHE style warhead similar to what the Neopup PAW-20 fires..

Personally, I've always pictured Space Marines using their bolters on single fire or short bursts and double-tapping their targets. By the time he has power armor and a bolter, a Space Marine has superhumanly keen senses, decades (at a minimum) of combat experience, psychological conditioning (and potentially advanced brain surgery) to repress fear or excitement reactions that commonly throw off accurate shooting, and targeting assistance built into their equipment. Given all that, I don't think accuracy is much of an issue for them, and they're already very well designed as psychological weapons, so the psychological impact of suppressive fire is probably less important to them than to modern soldiers. I think they're more interested in killing the enemy than in forcing them to take cover, which is the main use of full-auto.

They're shock troopers blended together with special forces and ramped up to 11. They don't appear to carry a whole lot of ammunition; 30 rounds per magazine, say they have 6 or 7 magazines stashed away somewhere in that armor, that's only a few hundred rounds per Space Marine. However, given that their assaults are mostly supposed to be quick in-and-out operations and they aren't supposed to miss often if ever, that makes sense. The drop pod lands, the doors blow out, Space Marines charge outside and nail whatever targets they see immediately at hand with rapid, accurate single-fire; one round for goodnight and one more for good luck. They complete the mission as fast as possible, taking out the rebel Governor or military leader or heretic preacher or whoever it is, set whatever they have time for on fire to spread confusion, and then leave as soon as the Thunderhawk arrives. There's more ammo in the Thunderhawk; reload and get replacement magazines in flight, then either get dropped off somewhere else on the planet or return to the Strike Cruiser to be redeployed via drop pod.

That being so, I imagine that bolt rounds ARE designed for massive overkill against a human target. They're a psychological weapon as much as anything; massive gun, eardrum-bursting sound, bullet not only kills the target but also drenches his friends in gore and bone fragments; that's pretty damn scary. Space Marines mostly fight human separatists, and against that kind of enemy the sheer psychological impact of the heavily-armored giant literally exploding people with his side-arm could have a very important effect.

Kanluwen wrote:To be fair, bolters do have folding stocks in the non-Astartes variants.

In some BL novel, I guess?

This miniature doesn't use a stock on its bolter. This one neither. Nor do these Enforcers.

I've never, ever seen a GW miniature that features a bolter with a stock.

Though that is pretty stupid, to be fair. Even with recoil being negligible, a stock always increases accuracy. But for the Space Marines I suppose there's no room for it, anyways. Must be hard enough as it is wielding the gun with that much armour in front of the chest. Limited mobility for the arms and all that.

You actually have to look for older models. The older "boltgun" styled guns did have stocks.

You can also actually still see them on the bike-mounted Bolters.