Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Meltabombs are kinda like a very powerful thermite substance that seems to create extremely high temperatures (and thus a plasma substance capable of breaching most hulls). That's all we know. It's reasonable to assume that they're like Thermite on Steroids.

On the astral knights.

The main issue with the whole astral knights story is the lack of explanation of exactly what the World Engine looked like. It was the size of a planet; was it's interior pure metal? Was it hollow?

The thing to keep into account is, despite technology, etc., to power something the size of a planet would take power sources of such magnitude that they would be incredibly easy to spot; assuming the spacecraft was completely solid. If hollow, much of the sphere could be empty. Some illustrations even show it as only consisting of parts of an outer shell and a large powered center. In either system, it becomes much easier to discover suspect power systems.

In this case, it would not be hard to cripple a ship.

We must also remember that the world engine wasn't destroyed by the astral knights. They only disabled its shielding. I dislike Ward as much as the next dakka-ite, but it does not seem implausible that a Space Marine Chapter, throwing itself at an enemy, could find the sources generating a ship's shields (most likely not hard to find, the shield would be projected from something). From there it is a matter of destroying the system. From there the Imperial navy annihilated the ship.

So before we get even more boggled in ye olde "Melta Bombs took down the world engine" train of thought, we must remember that they didn't. They disabled one part of the ship, allowing conventional bombardments to reach it and then destroy it. That's not 100% implausible, as some would make it seem.