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DogOfWar wrote:I think most people would argue that the Space Marine battle preparations would include such things as loading ammunition, blessing it, bumming it, etc. Granted it's pure fluff, but if someone really wanted to house rule something along those lines I doubt I'd have a problem with it.

OK, I'm hoping that is some military term I don't know - otherwise the question as to whether SM still have all their "equipment" has been answered in a rather bizarre way

Witzkatz wrote:Now, what I noticed was: While a normal boltgun, which everyone of you knows, has a breechblock clearly meant to eject spent bolt casings, a stormbolter does not feature a breechblock or any kind of other visible device to eject spent casings.

I'm not sure which storm bolter models you're looking at but the captain's SB, the rhino's SB, the terminators' SBs (current, 3rd ed. and old) all have an ejection port on the right.

But only one.

So, presumably, the two bolters fire simultaneously (doubling the recoil) and the case from the left bolter is kicked all the way through the right bolter's breach.

Dubious indeed. It would make much more sense for both sides to have ejection ports and to alternate firing, giving the same rate of fire and recoil but allowing much more sustained firing (as each side has twice as long to cool). If you optimised the bolts and recoil springs/buffers for this lower rate of fire you could significantly reduce felt recoil, giving you a gun that you could happily blaze away with - especially with a nice pair of drum mags.

But real-life has little to do with 40K, especially as applied to weapons. (just check out some of the necromunda artwork - revolver barrels that are clearly 3-4x the diamater of the chambers. Autopistols with very deep (long) magazines in front of the grip and much smaller ones in the grip. etc.


ETA, there is a real-life equivalent (in prototype at least). An M16 based pintle weapon was developed that was two m16s on top of each other (the top one upside down). Each was a complete weapon with drum mag but the gas tubes were crossed (so when the bottom one fired it cycled the top one and vice versa) and the top one had it's trigger locked back.

Each pull of the trigger was two shots and the ROF was the same as normal but it was much more capable of sustained fire since it was firing from alternate barrels.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

DogOfWar wrote:I think most people would argue that the Space Marine battle preparations would include such things as loading ammunition, blessing it, bumming it, etc. Granted it's pure fluff, but if someone really wanted to house rule something along those lines I doubt I'd have a problem with it.

OK, I'm hoping that is some military term I don't know - otherwise the question as to whether SM still have all their "equipment" has been answered in a rather bizarre way

Might be an 'Americanism' I've picked up in the last 10 years, so I apologise for the confusion.

To 'bum' means to mooch something off of someone else generally through begging, whining, sympathy, etc. (e.g. "Hey man, can I bum a smoke?")
Not to be confused with 'bumming' as in 'buggering'... which I should have known, but didn't think about beforehand!

This being said, there's a whole lot of Space Marines in that one Battle Barge for a loooong time...

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Oh and just to throw a bit of interesting pseudo-trivia out there, I read somewhere that Marines carry their spare bolter magazines in their backpacks. This means they actually share their ammunition in a 'buddy method' since it can only be logically accessed by another Marine (without removing the pack). With an electronic, networked system to keep track of how much ammunition each Marine has remaining you can distribute it as effectively as giving each Marine access to his own magazines.

Not sure how that applies to the whole "ONE MAN ARMY" concept, but I thought it was an interesting idea.

DoW

Question has been answered and we're wandering off-topic. And as we all know, that only leads to trouble.