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garret wrote:do shuriken weapons count as solid?

Well from what I've read in Codex Eldar:Shuriken weapons fire thin discs at sub-sonic speed. So in my opinion, yes shurikens count as solid ammunition.

Bash the Bosh wrote:

MenOfTanith wrote:....and not based on real life

Thats my point about this thread. People are trying to justify how a las-gun works using modern physics, talk of optic lenses, power-sources, the connection to modern weaponry etc.

Grey Templar had just said that Las-guns are cheap to produce: How much would it cost for the US Army's weapons division,using today's technology, to design,trial and produce Las-guns? Trillions?

The only fact is that Las-guns are not real. Therefore we pretend using stories that the lovely people from under the great umbrella of Games-Workshop have written for us.

This not an attempt to de-rail or upset. Just fighting the corner for Solid ammunition,as the OP stated

the thing is,

since 40k is really the real world in the far future.

we can use real world physics to describe things. in fact any Science fiction can be described using real world physics. otherwise the "Science" part of the name would be irrelevent.


now saying that it would cost the U.S. weapons division trillions to produce lasguns is true, BUT it has no bearing because we don't have the technology.

Lasguns are cheap in the 41st millenium because the design is easy to mass produce and they already have the design schematics.

the U.S. army doesn't have the schematics. it's actually RnD that costs billions of dollars. actual production is really the cost of the matierials + Labor + shipping so its not anymore then it would cost a civilian company(as opposed to a military contractor) to produce the same item for public use(assuming said item would ever be legal for civilian ownership)


When we are talking about how cheap said weapons are to make we are talking in terms of the 41st millenium not the 21st.

Sorry, being anal here, but it's currently the 2nd Millenium (AD of course) atm.

That sort of thing bugs me.
I also spell-check hatemail

S_P

Grey Templar wrote:

Bash the Bosh wrote:

MenOfTanith wrote:....and not based on real life

Thats my point about this thread. People are trying to justify how a las-gun works using modern physics, talk of optic lenses, power-sources, the connection to modern weaponry etc.

Grey Templar had just said that Las-guns are cheap to produce: How much would it cost for the US Army's weapons division,using today's technology, to design,trial and produce Las-guns? Trillions?

The only fact is that Las-guns are not real. Therefore we pretend using stories that the lovely people from under the great umbrella of Games-Workshop have written for us.

This not an attempt to de-rail or upset. Just fighting the corner for Solid ammunition,as the OP stated

the thing is,

since 40k is really the real world in the far future.

we can use real world physics to describe things. in fact any Science fiction can be described using real world physics. otherwise the "Science" part of the name would be irrelevent.


now saying that it would cost the U.S. weapons division trillions to produce lasguns is true, BUT it has no bearing because we don't have the technology.

Lasguns are cheap in the 41st millenium because the design is easy to mass produce and they already have the design schematics.

the U.S. army doesn't have the schematics. it's actually RnD that costs billions of dollars. actual production is really the cost of the matierials + Labor + shipping so its not anymore then it would cost a civilian company(as opposed to a military contractor) to produce the same item for public use(assuming said item would ever be legal for civilian ownership)


When we are talking about how cheap said weapons are to make we are talking in terms of the 41st millenium not the 21st.

Ok you got me on the Science fiction. Reading back over my post I didn't clarify what I was trying to say. I'm talking about the difference between Science Fiction and Science Fact.

We don't have laser weaponry in todays contempory armed forces. With that I mean standard issue small arms. We only have solid ammunition as the basis for the arguement 'Solid ammuntion: Good or bad' as anything arguing in favour for Energy Ammunition is purely hypothesis. Thats what I'm trying to get at. Posters on here are saying "Solid Ammunition BAD. Heavy,cumbersome etc". A bandolier of 240 5.56mm rounds weighs approx 2.4kg. A battery for a Bowman radio weighs in at 6.5kg (one of the most advanced batteries designed to be man-portable).

Judging from what we have here in todays modern times, with a pinch of background from 40k, in my opinion Solid ammunition is good. Its cheap to produce (9pence per 5.56mm round) easy to carry and easy to come across.

As for Las-guns being cheap to manufacture, how cheap? What value does the Departmento Munitorium place on a Las-gun? Does a Las-gun actually cost anything due to planetary tithes/Slave labour/Mass-production?

An L85A2 (the remodelled SA80) costs approx £690 without a weapon sight and ancilliaries. Thats considered cheap for a weapon proven to be the most accurate standard issued rifle given to a trained Soldier.

As for Las-guns being cheap to manufacture, how cheap? What value does the Departmento Munitorium place on a Las-gun? Does a Las-gun actually cost anything due to planetary tithes/Slave labour/Mass-production?

A standard mars-pattern Lasgun (Basically the most generic you can get) would cost a civilian 75 thrones to obtain. THe standard mars-pattern Autogun (again, the most generic you can get) would cost a civilian 100 thrones to obtain. Including a single full clip / full battery of ammunition, this increases to 90 / 101.5 thrones, respectively. The full clip of an Autogun would give you thirty shots. A fully charged battery for a Lasgun would give, depending on which author you ask, anywhere from sixty shots (bare minimum) to six hundred.

A single lasgun battery is, given what Dark Heresy tells us, roughly 0.4 kg, while 300 rounds of caseless Autogun ammunition (10 clips, including the weight of the clip itself) would roughly equate to 3.5 kg.

A lasgun battery pack is 15 thrones, while twenty bullets would cost a single throne, thus depending on which source you use, the ammunition costs roughly the same, except the lasgun battery takes up less space, weighs less, and can be recharged daily without diluting its effectiveness, or recharged quickly while reducing its effectiveness.

Thanks for some solid background Melissia. So we can establish then that in the 40k universe, Las-gun power packs are more cost-effective and are lighter on the old back

But what about effective stopping power? Earlier in the thread I talked about basic ballistics and behaviour of high-velocity rounds when hitting a man-sized target. Any hard evidence for damage caused by las-guns?

And what about range? The L85A2 being fired at section level (8 troops) has an effective accurate range of 600m. Copule this with a Light Machine Gun with an effective range of 800m (Section support weapon) and two Underslung Grenade Launchers and you have a very effective base of fire.

Discounting fluff concerning Las-cannons (Which require a large power-source) and other ranged energy weapons such as plasma/melta guns etc.

I'm talking about mass-produced,general issue small arms that are easy to train men and women to use.

The lasgun and autogun are generally considered equally effective. In Dark Heresy, the damage of an autogun depends on what pattern, but most of them have equivalent damage (1d10+3 energy damage for lasguns, versus 1d10+3 impact damage for standard autoguns-- both have zero penetration). So they're roughly equivalent, though the kind of damage isn't the same.

In comparison, a bolter is 1d10+5 explosive damage, and you roll twice on the 1d10 and pick the highest. This combined with 4 penetration allows it to pretty much kill or disable a single solder every shot-- a standard Guardsmen would probably have 11-15 wounds, unless they're particularly veteran (in which case they're probably wearing carapace armor anyway!).



The ranges given in Dark Heresy aren't very realistic. A heavy stubber's range (36" on the tabletop) is listed as 120 meters, or roughly 393.7 feet. "Extreme" range is three times this much, 360 meters or roughly 1181.1 feet. You literally cannot hit and damage a target beyond this with the weapon. A hunting rifle (effectively a low grade sniper rifle) or Long Las both have 150 meters range, up to 450 for extreme range (or roughly 1500 feet). In comparison, the Barret M98 has an effective range of 1200 meters. An M16 has an effective range of 550 meters.

The issue I have with this kind of argument is that lasers don't work with current technology due to factors such as power supply and their difficulty in penetrating mirrors and smoke.

Of course, these can be got around in an SF story by assuming some advance in technology to solve the problem.

If you do that, why wouldn't technology also improve bullet guns?

For example, if super-dense power supplies are invented, you could get rid of the propellant part of bullets and fire them by a gauss accelerator or rail gun instead.

If we are going to seriously look at this issue, we should be considering the possible characteristics of future bullets compared with future lasers.

For example, bullets could be filled with a variety of fillings such as gas or explosives. They could be guided in flight.

Lasers have the advantage of not creating a recoil and having zero flight time at battlefield ranges.

Well, the way to damage something is to transfer energy from once place to another. i put Kinetic energy into my club, club transfers energy to your skull, your skull gains kenetic energy and goes flying.


Energy weapons skip the club part and go right from energy source to energy destination.


the deal here is we are comparing 40k and modern solid slug weapons with 40k energy weapons. the best solid projectile weapon that exists in the 40k universe is the exact same thing our modern millitary is currently testing right now.

Also Railguns don't have recoil either and Lasguns are actually small scale Plasma weapons.

In real life i would imagine we will be carrying Railrifles around on our shoulders long before we have man portable laser weapons. especially considering railguns exist now, at least in tank and battle ship sized versions, and don't require as much power as lasers made using modern technology(although it is still prohibitive to a man portable power supply)

Kilkrazy wrote:The issue I have with this kind of argument is that lasers don't work with current technology due to factors such as power supply and their difficulty in penetrating mirrors and smoke.

Lasguns don't technically fire lasers, they fire "lasbolts". What, exactly, lasbolts are noone from GW has decided to tell us.

they are a very tiny amount of plasma.

Source?

There is nothing wrong with solid ammunition, some of you are looking at the issue fairly narrow minded. Think about this, if you have a solider wearing armor that can stop bullets there are really two ways you can design a round to defeat that armor. The first is what most people will think about, where you design a round that will penetrate the armor and then enter the body. But you can also defeat the armor by transfering enough force into the armor to cause massive damage to the person wearing it.

I don't think anyone is arguing there is anything wrong with solid ammunition from a damage perspective. But energy-based ammunition is more efficient from an economic perspective in the 40k universe.

Bolters are rediculously inefficient from an economic standpoint. They're used for their raw effectiveness in elite forces, but when we're talking about supplying uncounted billions of Guardsmen with the equipment needed to maintain a succession of long campaigns? That's where lasguns come in play.

Catyrpelius wrote:There is nothing wrong with solid ammunition, some of you are looking at the issue fairly narrow minded.

I mean no offense, but have you read the whole thread?

We've been talking about the usefulness of solid ammuntion in todays modern age. What we are now discussing is the fact that laser technology is far more effective on a military logistical scale due to the face that there is no wastage. I mean after we (16 Air Assault Brigade) returned from Op Herrick VIII, we got through 750'000 5.56mm rounds alone. Thats means that 750'000 shell casings litter the afghan desert. That compared to, theoretically speaking, Las-guns, there are NO spent shell casings. Therefore no wastage.

My arguement is that there are flaws to laser technolagy that we know now, such as KillKrazy correctly pointed out with mirrors and smoke.

To be honest, there is no real discussion to be had when it comes to comparing todays solid ammunition to the 41st millenium's energy weapons. But thats all we have for now.

Believe me, I have seen the effects that high velocity rounds have on the human body,and on modern body armour. It is devastating and cruelly effective.

Actually, special ammunition is one of the main reasons that the Inquisitorial forces use auto and stub weaponry. You can't exactly bless a lasgun's power pack in the same way you can bless an autogun's caseless rounds.

Sorry about that last post, I only got so far in typeing up what I wanted to say before someone needed my opinon for something very important...well it wasnt important at all but that didnt stop him from wasteing my already wasted time.

Anyway, about todays modern ammunition and wastage;

All i can say is "major" militaries are now in the process of testing and converting over to caseless small caliber ammuntion. Unless it is kicked down, which is not vary likely at this point, those countries will only field caseless small caliber ammuntion within the next 10 years. This lets us design a smaller round with the same velocity and stoping power as a conventional round with a roughly 30% reduction in weight.

When you compare the inefficancies of one system to another neither is better when you really think about it. I once had a general tell me, "Son if you could give me everything I wanted, you'd design me a round that weighed nothing, was made from dirt and could stop an elephant, unfortunatly I'll have to settle." Thats stuck with me thriugh my entire short carrer. There are tradeoffs with everything. From a pure cost standpoint you have to look at the entierty of a weapon system. While it may be true that once you build an energy cell for a las weapon your shots are free, you have to look at what goes into makeing that cell. It could contain rare materials or complex parts which drive up the cost of the weapon through its entire life cycle. Currently I can buy .223 ammunition manuactured at a private plant for the US Army at 10 cents a round. With future manufacturing technology and more advancded materials I can only see a price like this going down. You'd have to be able to make an energy cell pretty damn cheap in order to compete.

From a reliablity standpoint, wether the Imperial Guard would like to admit it or not the lasgun is a fairly complex peice of equipment all things related. While it may not jam in the conventional sense it would most certainly be prone to failures due to its componenants. It really does not get much simpler then a gas operated projectile weapon.

Just thought I'd add my two cents to the fire. This is actually a discussion I've had before it just didnt deal with the 40k universe, it delt with what people thought our current laser technology should be ablt to do. Sorry if my last post turned out badly, I was planning on it also includeing what I typed here. With the added benefit of it being edited to not make me sound like an ass.

While it may not jam in the conventional sense it would most certainly be prone to failures due to its componenants.

Except it doesn't. The lasgun is, simply put, the single most reliable and durable piece of technology the Imperium has at its disposal.

It really does not get much simpler then a gas operated projectile weapon

That is very true. The fundamental design for any automatic weapon is the gas feed back system, using the gases from the expelled round to re-cock the weapon. That to me sounds far simpler than complex optics and light cells that react to form a solid ball of light.

But this is science fiction we are talking about. Maybe in the 41st millenium, Las-guns will be as cheap and easy to produce as AK47s and M16s.

It doesnt in the fluff, but there has never been nor will there ever be something that doesnt break, and the more complicated the device the higher its chances of failure.

Or it could be that the Imperium has created the first ever perfect machine.

Homwever I would argue that the game and the fluff of 40k are not based around weapon failures from the Imperial side of things atleast, except for plasma weaponry. I cant remember one spot in any of the codex's or books that I have read where someones weapon breaks or jams. But then gain I have a bad memory.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bash the Bosh wrote:

It really does not get much simpler then a gas operated projectile weapon

That is very true. The fundamental design for any automatic weapon is the gas feed back system, using the gases from the expelled round to re-cock the weapon. That to me sounds far simpler than complex optics and light cells that react to form a solid ball of light.

But this is science fiction we are talking about. Maybe in the 41st millenium, Las-guns will be as cheap and easy to produce as AK47s and M16s.

Gahh that would be scary, then we'd have every street thug and third world dictator armed with freakin lasers

Catyrpelius wrote:It doesnt in the fluff, but there has never been nor will there ever be something that doesnt break, and the more complicated the device the higher its chances of failure.

So it's apparently not very complicated, yes?

Dark Heresy, which has to deal with weapon failures for almost every shooting weapon, has Lasguns of at least mediocre quality always be remarkably reliable. And even poor quality lasguns are just as reliable as an autogun or stubber rifle.

I wonder what happens if you accidently bung up the barrel of a lasgun with dirt.

Theres only one way to find out...







Drunken Pizza Party!

Kilkrazy wrote:I wonder what happens if you accidently bung up the barrel of a lasgun with dirt.

Supposedly it can still fire. You can leave a lasgun leaning against a tree, barrel down against the dirt, for an entire year, and then come back and pick it up and it'll still work just fine.

I should have thought the lasbolt would vapourise the dirt, causing an explosion in the barrel.

Don't ask me, I'm not the one that write's GW's fluff. Just look at how silly the vehicle armor comparisons are in Imperial Armour 1.

Grey Templar wrote:Also Railguns don't have recoil either

Um, no - of course railguns have recoil.

There is no force pushing backwards in a Railgun. its magnetic acceleration. No gas compression = no recoil.

there is a sonic boom from the speed of the projectile, but no actual recoil.

the round goes from 0 to mach5 instantly. there is nothing that would cause a recoil.

Kilkrazy wrote:I should have thought the lasbolt would vapourise the dirt, causing an explosion in the barrel.

I would have thought that the first shot would have superheated the dirt, turing it to glass, the second shot then exploding the glass.

So it either shreds the guardsman, the guy in front, or shoots pretty sparkles =3

S_P

Kilkrazy wrote:I should have thought the lasbolt would vapourise the dirt, causing an explosion in the barrel.

I think trying far too hard to look for some kind of consistent logic to 40k. None of the mechanics behind the 40k universe make a whole ton of sense when examined closely. Some, such as space marine creation are just down right hilariously absurd.

I find with these sorts of things it's best not to just ask questions and just accept them as they are. The physics of 40k are held together by Duct Tape, Rule of Cool and the light reflected off bald heads. It's actually part of why I like it. It's not concerned with realistic or reasonable in any way, it just lets fly with whatever and that makes it awesome.