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It's almost as if it's a science fantasy setting

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, there's 39,000,000 years of technological advancement between now and 40k. So I'm guessing restrictions we experience as easily bypassed by then.

Thirty Nine Million Years?

This has come up before. The suspension of disbelief, etc etc, and as before, that's all well and good, but there still has to be rules to the setting. If your setting says, it's the future but they still use ballistic projectile firearms and explosives, then th rules for those things should still apply.

 SeanDavid1991 wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, there's 39,000,000 years of technological advancement between now and 40k. So I'm guessing restrictions we experience as easily bypassed by then.

Thirty Nine Million Years?

I derped! 39,000 years. That’s better!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
This has come up before. The suspension of disbelief, etc etc, and as before, that's all well and good, but there still has to be rules to the setting. If your setting says, it's the future but they still use ballistic projectile firearms and explosives, then th rules for those things should still apply.

The rules as we understand them at the moment.

It’s well established that Eldar and Necrons have technology which confounds our understanding of physics.

And there’s every chance humanity, pre-dark age of technology, had similar, whether self invented or adaptation of relic stuff.

Im not an expert but bolter round are the same size as soda cans so you can imagine turning target like non marine heretic into soup.

You must have some pretty small soda cans in Poland

Heroic scale modelling notwithstanding, bolt rounds are about 20mm in diameter.

Too small to fit a shaped charge along with its features, plus a rocket motor says I.

yeah but miniaturization of components has exponentially increased in the past 30yrs. What used to take an entire circuit board dedicated to a specific function, you can now have IC's that will do the work of hundreds and we also have single chipsets that contain more computing power than the entire planet did in 1980.

so there is that.

Current shaped charge warheads utilize copper to provide the jet of plasma. who knows what exotic metallurgic alloys they have?
Electrically ignited initial charge would reduce the amount of individual components of the casing, allowing for more propellant & payload.

But its 40k, if it really made sense....would it still be interesting?

 Flinty wrote:
You must have some pretty small soda cans in Poland

Heroic scale modelling notwithstanding, bolt rounds are about 20mm in diameter.

19.05mm if we're being precise. .75 cal is 3/4 of an inch which is 19.05mm. Even heavy bolters are 'only' 1 cal, which is 1 inch diameter or 25.4mm. Ever so slightly bigger than an old round GW base.

Which is small compared to some things, but for a bullet both of those are truly massive diameters. If you can pack enough explosives into a 7.62mm bullet to blow heads into mist, you could do something truly horrific with a 19 or 25mm bullet. At which point you are really using artillery caliber weapons.

Plenty of space in a round that size for a small rocket booster and any of the other payload flavors that bolter shells come in. Pack that in a conventional brass casing and you've got a bolter.

Which is why I think bolters are a very interesting weapon. They're a sci-fi weapon that could actually exist. All of the technology exists now. Its just a question of fiddling with it to make it all come together.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
This has come up before. The suspension of disbelief, etc etc, and as before, that's all well and good, but there still has to be rules to the setting. If your setting says, it's the future but they still use ballistic projectile firearms and explosives, then th rules for those things should still apply.

that seems a REALLY arbitary demand to make though given that there are numerous other weapons in 40k that don;t work as they should accroding to what we currently know. Chainswords for example.shouldn't really work

 Flinty wrote:
You must have some pretty small soda cans in Poland

Heroic scale modelling notwithstanding, bolt rounds are about 20mm in diameter.

It depends but still bolter rounds are bigger than 0.50 cal who can pierce apcs and light tanks. Still bloody soup

Well. Bolters are closer to .50AE in terms of cartridge characteristics than .50 BMG.