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This is something i dont get. Weeponsizes.
How can a lascannon carried by a space marine have the same power as one that is used by dreadnought?
Same goes for things like Assault Cannons or Auto cannons.
Flamers make the least sense. How does a flamer have the same AOE as a Flamestorm cannon?
Sense they are bigger shouldn't they have more power?

The same way a .50 cal machine gun has the same firepower whether it's man-portable on a tripod or mounted on a tank, it's the same gun. An assault cannon is an assault cannon, a lascannon is a lascannon, etc. Things like ammo capacity, where the size of a dreadnought or tank would start to matter, have no impact on the short duration battles 40k is supposed to represent.

Flame weapons used to have two different template sizes back in 2nd edition, but they got rid of that, so now everything, no matter how big, basically uses the same template (at least outside apocalypse games).

A tank mounted weapon generally has the same power as an equivalent man portable weapon, just the ammo capacity differs. Also Marines are pretty much walking tanks anyway.

The slightly differnt sizes of weapon are more about mdel aesthetics than anything else. Also weapons are more weapon-classes than actual individual weapons. In the game the single dice roll made for a Davastator lascannon might represent athe effectiveness of a number of smaller las-pulses, rather than a longer/more powerful pulse out of a vehicle mount.

Hand flamers, flamers and heavy flamers all used to have different template sizes but then everything got standardised for ease of play.

Are we talking about game stats? If so then it's because its an abstraction meant to streamline gameplay. Game stats are very tricky to 'interpret' for real life because of abstraction and it may or may not correspond to how things function in real life.

The only difference 40k uses is, vehicles got superior coolant systems and rules like gets hot doesn't apply to mounted weapons like they do to infantry models. The bigger plasma cannon of the dread may not suffer from overheating like the plasma cannon of the devastor does. Still both use the same stat line, even when some vehicle mounted versions are bigger than the man-portable versions. As said already in this thread, the major advantage of the mounted weapons, more ammo/energy/fuel capacity isn't coming into play in games.

It can mostly been seen to be an abstraction to make the game run smoothly and maintain balance just like why is a guardsman the same strength as an ork boy? The system has to make generalisations and streamline things for balance and ease of play.

They could say make a dreadnought assault cannon heavy 6 str 7 AP 3 rending for example but then a dreadnought would be a far more expensive item on the field and all their other weapons would have to be upgraded as well or people would only ever chose assault cannons on dreads.

I think some weapons would be more powerful/better range on tanks
Eg: longer barrels/ larger lazer beam

but as has been said it makes the game more streamline for lascannons to just be lascannons.

don't get me started.

just a few hours ago.

"Wait a sec, that catachan's binoculars are the size of his chest! why can't anything make sense?

"Inthe grim darkness of the far future, there is only incredibly oversized an obscenely phallic weapons."

The Dreadnought assault cannon is larger than the one used by Terminators, yet do the same amount of damage, despite the (most likely) larger caliber of the Dreadnought Assault Cannon. I can see how this can make little sense

Remember, the advantage of mounting weapons on a vehicle is not always simply that you can mount a larger weapon, but also the ability offer increased stabilization for more effective employment of that weapon, greater portability, and an vastly increased ammunition capacity while maintaining that portability.

That, and the weapons on the dreadoughts really aren't that much bigger.

Another thing to take into account is the actual ammunition itself, armor piercing rounds might have the same punch as flat nosed of a larger caliber.