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I'm fairly sure everyone has looked at an infantry Heavy Bolter and then a vehicle Heavy Bolter and been mildly irritated at the fact that they are such horrendously different sizes. And the same goes for all sorts of weapons throughout the model line. And while of course they are different sizes to fit different modelling needs (an Imperial Guard Heavy Weapons squad Lascannon would look ridiculously puny if you hung it as a Predator sponson and vice versa, for example)...

Do you think there could be a way to shoehorn the lore into giving this size difference a reason? Personally I like to think that vehicle weapons are larger because they are then easier to manufacture as they aren't as small and therefore less delicate. Thoughts?

 TheManWithNoPlan wrote:
I'm fairly sure everyone has looked at an infantry Heavy Bolter and then a vehicle Heavy Bolter and been mildly irritated at the fact that they are such horrendously different sizes. And the same goes for all sorts of weapons throughout the model line. And while of course they are different sizes to fit different modelling needs (an Imperial Guard Heavy Weapons squad Lascannon would look ridiculously puny if you hung it as a Predator sponson and vice versa, for example)...

Do you think there could be a way to shoehorn the lore into giving this size difference a reason? Personally I like to think that vehicle weapons are larger because they are then easier to manufacture as they aren't as small and therefore less delicate. Thoughts?

vehicles carries larger weapons that fires larger bullets/shells. lore reasons

Down to aesthetics purely imo. A marine heavy bolter attached to the side of a land raider is going to look ridiculous

Think about how puny a .30 cal machine gun looks on the pintle of a tank. Even .50 cal look pretty dinky.

How can everyone fit in most of their transports? It's just what looks good.

 TheManWithNoPlan wrote:
Personally I like to think that vehicle weapons are larger because they are then easier to manufacture as they aren't as small and therefore less delicate. Thoughts?

The vehicle also cares less about the weight of the guns than a single trooper or heavy weapons team. A tank-mounted weapon can have heavier barrels or cooling shrouds for better sustained fire capability. A squad MG will overheat in a minute of full auto and then you either swap the barrel or wait until it cools down, which sucks, but imagine how much it would suck to crawl out of your tank to swap the barrel of a defensive gun. ;-)

If you want an in-universe explanation, thy're probably built by different forgeworlds, or different sections within the same forgeworld, who have a terrible issue with communication.

A 'heavy bolter' from Forgeworld A strapped to a rhino could be only superficially similar to a 'heavy bolter' from Forgeworld B strapped to Lt Meatshield over there.

Spetulhu wrote:

 TheManWithNoPlan wrote:
Personally I like to think that vehicle weapons are larger because they are then easier to manufacture as they aren't as small and therefore less delicate. Thoughts?

The vehicle also cares less about the weight of the guns than a single trooper or heavy weapons team. A tank-mounted weapon can have heavier barrels or cooling shrouds for better sustained fire capability. A squad MG will overheat in a minute of full auto and then you either swap the barrel or wait until it cools down, which sucks, but imagine how much it would suck to crawl out of your tank to swap the barrel of a defensive gun. ;-)

There are a lot of factors that could make the vehicle ones better, that just aren’t reflected in the scale of the game. Ease of maintenance, better ammo supply/feed, etc. On the tabletop scale, constrained by a D6 system and designed to represent a one-off fight, these things are too trivial to bother differentiating.

In-universe explanation: vehicle guns are larger and more powerful. The rules are just an abstraction, and having the same stats for obviously different weapons is just another case of the rules not matching the fluff.