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.

Canonically:
You cannot spend your free time writing litanies of hate on laser bolts.
Hotshot bolts penetrate and perforate without distributing damage over a wider area- passing right through and cauterising. They are unsuitable for attacking targets larger than mansized, or mansized targets with above Astartes toughness such as plague marines, obliterators, tyranid warriors, Nobs, ogryns, large mutants, chaos spawn, and myriad other horrors of the 41st millenium.
They also are less efficient against mansized targets who are unarmoured or use less than carapace- Orks, grots, 'gaunts, daemons, cultists, zombies, rogue guardsmen/pdf, Eldar, mutants, beastmen, ratlings, genestealer hybrids.
(Unlike tabletop, Marines aren't typically fighting other marines.)
Orks do not respect laser weapons. The pyyyyyewpewpewpewpah pew of the gatling laser will not cow them. Similarly, many humans prefer auto weapons for the intimidation of hard rounds. Dakka is the preferred acoustic of war.

Speculation:
The Stormtrooper corps being armed with weapons that can defeat marine armour is no accident. After the heresy, hellguns were developed from existing technologies and Stormtrooper cadres were established by the Inquisition, given extensive anti marine training and then deployed against heretical uprisings etc- onhand whenever CSM were revealed to be the cause.
Stormtroopers working in conjunction with assassins have brought down many Chapters, off the books and quietly, the assassins remaining to clean up any loose ends.

They have been training and recruiting in recent years for the big push on Ultramar.

 Silverthorne wrote:


I agree and disagree with you. I think you're analysis of the weapon is totally off. The HSVG outclasses the boltgun in every way. But I think you are on to something with the employment.

I don't agree that hot shots do not deal massive bodily damage. The rate of fire alone is comparable to an assault cannon, which turns people into hamburger. Even basic, mass produced flashlights can blast a meter diameter hole through concrete walls. It has a pretty messy effect against an unarmored human or xeno. And this is the flashlight turned up to 11. I've never seen a reference in the background to HSVG stuggling with tougher targets, although I have seen the opposite. So if you could cite where you are getting that I could try to see what you are saying.

Ok, I'm basing this on what I understand hellguns to be.
Lasguns deliver light energy to a targets surface but are bad at dealing with armour ( probably because most armour in-universe is designed to beat LAS). They are the equivalent of dum dum rounds. Hellguns deliver super focused light energy that cuts through a target- the equivalent of high velocity Armour penetrating rounds.

The assault cannon doesn't fire more powerful rounds than a heavy bolter. It doesn't have merely 4 times the rate of fire of a missile launcher. When we see heavy 4, we understand that each of those 4 attacks represent many, many rounds, tearing apart the target. The sheer mass of space lead filling the air is what gives the gun strength 6.
The volley gun is the hellgun equivalent. Individually, each blast is a single hellgun shot, weaker than a bolter round but with better penetration. En masse, those rounds add up to 'bolter strength' shots ingame.

 Silverthorne wrote:
Where are you getting that HSVG are less effective against rank and file troops? Just because the gun is good at penetrating armor doesn't mean is bad at killing unarmored things. If I shoot you with a sabot round from a 120mm smoothbore and a 5.56, guess which one is more likely to kill you, even though it's designed to open up armor. Lasguns of all varieties work by instantaneously superheating the tissue of the target. If you are a target like an Ork, very fleshy and watery without a lot of armor, it stands to reason the HSVG would be even MORE effective, not less. And I've never heard of one piece of background stating that orks ran away because the noise of a bolter scared them. That sounds like the most unorky situation I can imagine, actually.

Consider shooting a deer with a bullet designed to defeat armour plate and it passing right through the leg muscle at high speed.
I don't have a quote at hand for the Ork thing- but I remember reading that's the rationale for why Orks don't use las weapons. The Human bit is from the Inquisitor rulebook- the solid slug weapons tables in the armoury.

Again, what I'm working with here is that HSVG doesn't deliver significantly more energy(per shot) 'to' the target than a regular lasgun. That was what the old hotshot guns used to do back in the day when they were just +1 lasguns (S4)
The shots focus energy on penetration rather than surface level damage.
It would deliver significantly more energy per second to the target because it has a high rate of fire.

I imagine that a lasgun shot burns or blasts an area the size of a golfball into a human chest. I imagine that hellguns bore a needle-thin hole all the way through a the chest of an unarmoured individual in an instant, leaving surrounding tissue relatively un-cooked. (HSVG would pepper the individual with such holes)
Bolter rounds being advanced mass-reactive rockets, detonate within unarmoured targets, shredding them or explode on the surface of armour they fail to penetrate, weakening it.

Another point is that the bolter is rifle form and the HSVG is support weapon form- designed to be fire from the hip and hose down targets.
The reason SM don't all take heavy bolters is so that other squadmates can cover the SAW guy with their rifles. So the real comparison is between the HSVG and
Plasmaguns which threaten vehicles
Meltaguns which are for killing vehicles
Flamers which kill more infantry
grav guns which are effective aginst vehicles and terminators
missile launchers which have range and AV power
plasmacannons which outperform HSVG in most situations and have AV power
Grav cannons which again, outperform HSVG in lost of circumstances.

And between the bolter and hellgun.

 Silverthorne wrote:
However, it makes sense that the IoM wouldn't be keen on too many SM chapters switching to HSVG. Can you imagine if the Astral Claws had carried HSVG instead of boltguns? Maybe not the best example, because if they had won at Badab they would have likely remained loyal, but you get the idea. If SM are issued SM-killing gear in mass, it becomes very hard to take them down.

This is really the best reason. The HSVG is essentially a specialist man portable weapon for killing armored elites. The Admech don't use it, meaning they likely think they've a better solution (involving radiation, no doubt) and there's no reason that Astartes would be equipped with it considering their regular enemies and the tools they have already.
The Inquisition/Tempestus arm of the Munitorum monopolising the hell out of hellguns ( ) makes complete sense from a background perspective, especially considering Inquisitors tend to use power armour themselves.

 Silverthorne wrote:
Still, without a law prohibiting it, as a Chapter master I would absolutely be decking my dudes out with HSVG.

And you'd be within your rights to do so, assuming you found some store of them in your travels.
However, the Admech arent obliged to supply you with high energy lasers any more than they are obliged to supply you with Death Strike ICB(vortex)M launchers and asking might earn you the same Inquisitorial attention as looting fallen Tempestus allies.

/IMHO

Full disclosure: I ran a narrative campaign that never finished, combining killteam and combat patrol elements.
An Iron warriors killteam were to sneak past the patrols of a hive's wall and infect the water treatment facilities with obliterator virus.
They triggered a patrol and Admech (counts as stormtroopers ) swung by and rappelled down from rapid response craft ( counts as valkyries)

After a shootout resulted in victory, the first thing my friend's Iron Warriors did was loot the hellguns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jhe90 wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
The boltgun has never been described as particularly reliable.

It's never been described as unreliable.

Indeed. It is in the middle.

Reliable. Requires a well trained user to be so however.ie a space marine.

A lot of this 'reliability' comes from Necromunda where you'd have weapons in the hand of violent gangs- played at the scale where reliability became an issue.
The weapons themselves were not the best examples of their craft in the first place, having been produced in some shop on necromunda itself and finding its way to the underhive either by being a reject or passing through many hands.
Then you had violent nut jobs with pointed metal teeth not maintaining them.
Bolter weapons in this environment were unreliable and prone to jam but powerful enough to take the risk. Even handguns were somewhat unreliable. Lasguns however were very reliable- requiring as they do almost no maintenance to keep running.

A marine knows how to strip and clean his bolter- and he has serfs and tech adepts to repair any damage.
A hive ganger has none of these things, and may have difficulty finding ammo for it!