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Wait, the only advantage that a .50 cal has is range. Without range, that means that you need to charge forward to get in range yourself. Good thing you're wearing power armor, which makes you nearly immune to light machine gun fire.

Given that this disadvatage is accounted for, really it's a matter of what can a bolter do that a .50 cal can't? Well, shooting through concrete walls and blowing up light vehicles is a good start...

Just Dave wrote:

Melissia wrote:Las weapons are quite deadly. The thing is, everything in 40k is quite deadly.

You clearly haven't played against Necrons.

Joking aside, in the fluff, Necron weapons are some of hte most devastating weapons in existence.

blackclaw1 wrote:i've read it meniontioned that normal bullets are useless against orks as they ignore pain , youy need to destroy them , tha was what led to he developement of the bolter , a heavey stubber is the closestt your gonna get to a normal gun

I read that too. That makes 40k make no sense though. If you can kill an ork with a shotgun (Weak compared to even a lasgun, if you think about it. A lasgun is a laser, a shotgun is just that) then they're not that tough.


But yes, I see your point

The Defenestrator wrote: You wouldn't ask a samurai to trade in his katana for a pike because it's 'cheaper and has better range', would you?

excellent analogy!

Ailaros wrote:
Given that this disadvatage is accounted for, really it's a matter of what can a bolter do that a .50 cal can't? Well, shooting through concrete walls and blowing up light vehicles is a good start...

LOLWUT?

Samus_aran115 wrote:

blackclaw1 wrote:i've read it meniontioned that normal bullets are useless against orks as they ignore pain , youy need to destroy them , tha was what led to he developement of the bolter , a heavey stubber is the closestt your gonna get to a normal gun

I read that too. That makes 40k make no sense though. If you can kill an ork with a shotgun (Weak compared to even a lasgun, if you think about it. A lasgun is a laser, a shotgun is just that) then they're not that tough.


But yes, I see your point

Shotguns and lasguns were, until fifth edition C:SM, the same strength IIRC (IE, in the same strength category). They changed the shotgun to S4 in C:SM for balance reasons I think.

Melissia wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:

blackclaw1 wrote:i've read it meniontioned that normal bullets are useless against orks as they ignore pain , youy need to destroy them , tha was what led to he developement of the bolter , a heavey stubber is the closestt your gonna get to a normal gun

I read that too. That makes 40k make no sense though. If you can kill an ork with a shotgun (Weak compared to even a lasgun, if you think about it. A lasgun is a laser, a shotgun is just that) then they're not that tough.


But yes, I see your point

Shotguns and lasguns were, until fifth edition C:SM, the same strength IIRC (IE, in the same strength category). They changed the shotgun to S4 in C:SM for balance reasons I think.

Because the shotgun is supposed to be a rapid fire weapon labeled as assault instead. You know what I mean? But yes, they had to make shotguns vaguely similar to boltguns, so they gave it another stregnth.

Melissia wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:

blackclaw1 wrote:i've read it meniontioned that normal bullets are useless against orks as they ignore pain , youy need to destroy them , tha was what led to he developement of the bolter , a heavey stubber is the closestt your gonna get to a normal gun

I read that too. That makes 40k make no sense though. If you can kill an ork with a shotgun (Weak compared to even a lasgun, if you think about it. A lasgun is a laser, a shotgun is just that) then they're not that tough.


But yes, I see your point

Shotguns and lasguns were, until fifth edition C:SM, the same strength IIRC (IE, in the same strength category). They changed the shotgun to S4 in C:SM for balance reasons I think.

Those are Astartes class Shotguns. They have super-high-calibre "manstopper" ammo that would tear a normal mans arm off when firing. Normal folk still get S3 shotguns.

Yes, I know.

Waah waah our troops don't carry S5 guns with AP to take out MEQ. Hmm... does any army? As if everything else wasn't handed on a platter statline and special-rules-wise now we want a better gun?! Bolters are tough, do their job, and if they were awesomer you'd be seeing a lot of points increase and some Marine armies numbering about 20 at 1500 points.

How about the fact that one bolter round to the head would make your head explode, it's intimidation factor.

Well fluffwise a laspistol is a threat if pointed at your head too. How often does that happen though? Bolters are cool. I appreciate the STR and range. let's face it the 40k galaxy is a S4 T4 kind of place. Bolters make the above average T4 into a standard, even when it was meant for a 3 statline to be average. Bolters up the ante from stuff like lasguns, autoguns, stubbers and so on which were on a level with statline 3 troops. We don't see many statline 3 troops any more since so many MEQ armies are out there, so the bolter is just one-upping the ante on everyone's toughness. So sorry it can't crack armor yet... wait till next edition.

The thing that gets me is assault compared to shooting. I mean a bolter shot is .75 exploding warhead. A marine, while enhanced punches that hard?

A better example however is, why is an imperial guardsmen punching as hard as a weapon stronger than a modern day assault rifle.

CrashCanuck wrote:How about the fact that one bolter round to the head would make your entire upper body explode, it's intimidation factor.

Fixed

tiekwando wrote:The thing that gets me is assault compared to shooting. I mean a bolter shot is .75 exploding warhead. A marine, while enhanced punches that hard?

A better example however is, why is an imperial guardsmen punching as hard as a weapon stronger than a modern day assault rifle.

Strength means potential to do damage, rather than outright strength (which explains why orkz are S3--they are too unfocused when not charging to do S4 worth of damage, even though your average boy probably has as much raw strength as a Space Marine). Space Marines are expertly trained in close combat, and have their already impressive 'natural' strength augmented by their powered armour. Would they be able to do as much damage as a bolter round in one punch? No, but if you get up close with one in single combat, it's not going to matter whether he had a bolter or not, because at the end of the day, you WILL be in pieces.

In the fluff, the average Ork Yoof has the combat instincts of a veteran, and they only go up from there. Stats are there to balance, not to represent the fluff perfectly.

After all, Sororitas in power armor have much greater strength than humans outside of power armor. Yet they have no strength bonuses for it.

There seems to be some sort of confusion about Stubbers and Autoweapons
I remember reading somewhere that Autoweapons were caseless and this makes sense with the Autoguns as a lot of them have no visible ejection ports. Whereas a stubber is a more typical modern weapon. A heavy stubber is a catch all catagory for a larger stub weapon, so it could be anything from a 30.cal to a 50.cal the statline is just a better way of simplifying it,

Same with the Lasgun some lasguns are Semi Automatic only similar to the British L1A1 and some are fully automatic carbines similar to the American M4, both completely different weapons which have a completely different effectivness in different environments the stats just combine all these possible variations of a lasgun under one simple group it prevents the game being too complicated.

BenManicom wrote:There seems to be some sort of confusion about Stubbers and Autoweapons
I remember reading somewhere that Autoweapons were caseless and this makes sense with the Autoguns as a lot of them have no visible ejection ports. Whereas a stubber is a more typical modern weapon. A heavy stubber is a catch all catagory for a larger stub weapon, so it could be anything from a 30.cal to a 50.cal the statline is just a better way of simplifying it,

Same with the Lasgun some lasguns are Semi Automatic only similar to the British L1A1 and some are fully automatic carbines similar to the American M4, both completely different weapons which have a completely different effectivness in different environments the stats just combine all these possible variations of a lasgun under one simple group it prevents the game being too complicated.

Thank you for making the point I was trying to earlier. The point is not every heavy stubber is gonna shoot the same thing, and in my opinion most would not be either .50 or .30 it would most likely be some completely different caliber weapon seeing as it is the year 40,000 there would be something around 38,000 years for new rounds to come about and go with new needs and purposes.

I like how you ignored the posts mentioning the old wargear book that saysa heavy stubbers = .50 cal machine guns.

kill dem stunties wrote:I like how you ignored the posts mentioning the old wargear book that saysa heavy stubbers = .50 cal machine guns.

Well yes, that would contradict his argument.

Does it say directly that they are .50 cal or very similar?

Pretty Much (Apparently):

Kommissar Kel wrote:

RedGuardian73 wrote:

There is no way that the heavy stubber is a .50 cal, where is your proof that it is? Just because it looks like one doesn't mean it is. Stat wise it is more likely a smaller caliber machine gun round.
Also I am not one of those people that thinks that modern day armies could kill 40K armies, to even think such is silly. I am a person that likes to try to fit the fluff, physics, real life, and the game mechanics together to be "realistic"


As cool as that is a .50 cal could do it too.

Our Proof Comes from the 2nd (or 4th) edition Wargear Book(I don't remember which) that expressly states "To all intents, a heavy stubber is similar to a twentieth century heavy machine gun in appearance and effect, much like a M2HB .50 calibre machine gun used by the U.S. army and various other armed forces"

That's not directly from a codex


Automatically Appended Next Post:

CrashCanuck wrote:How about the fact that one bolter round to the head would make your head explode, it's intimidation factor.

So would a .50 cal, but I do get the point now. Its all intimidation and fear tactics, thats what the Astartes are for.

.50s will rip a chunk out of your head, but it will still be there.


you will be missing 1/4 of your head with a .50 cal, a bolter makes the head go away

yeah and a .50 cal can shoot a lot further than 24". I don't get these real-world approximations in a game where the gun barrel is the size of his fist and doesn't blow his whole arm off just firing it in the first place and the ammo clip is smaller than the barrel. It ain't meant to be realistic it's meant to be awesome and full of awesomeness and improbably huge guns and swords that have absolutely no real world equivalent save that the 'look' may come from something that exists in reality, remodelled, made huger, and sold as fantasy.

The shotgun goes way back to 2nd ed. and necromunda. It used to have a s3 blast template or a S4 solid 'manstopper' round. A real shotgun can shoot a heck of a lot more distance with a solid shot than the approximated 12" game scale. I just can't see trying to justify any arguement about fictional guns in a fictional universe in a turn based game on anything remotely close to what we know as "real". There's a lot of military/ex-military guys that play 40k and this seems to be a hangup for them trying to make sense of this galaxy that doesn't make sense. A 'Queen' can't really take out a 'Knight' either, but hey that's the rules of chess. Play for the game, not the realism.

Price isn't a Problem because all Chapters are sponsered by the Big "E"

Price isn't a Problem because all Chapters are sponsered by the Big "E"

Azezel wrote:

What is this from?

I think that would be more on the level of a sniper rifle. Bolters fire ridiculously large rounds that lodge in people's head then detonate causing them to become red mist. That thing in that vid is a well-placed pinprick by comparison.

Sageheart wrote:but at the same time i wonder why they dont use a more efffective weapon such as meltaguns or something similar?

The same reason a modern US fireteam mostly has M4s with one guy having a M249 SAW and one guy having a M24 sniper rifle - specializing too much makes them less effective when you face a variety of threats.

cadbren wrote:
What is this from?

It's from the movie Wanted, which was enjoyable if dumb.

Because Chuck Norris invented them...shhhh it's a secret...