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Tanks when I served in the army 93/94 had a range of averagely 4.5 km, I understand that SM Preds have replaced the battle cannon with las cannons, but their range is really about 4.5 km? If so you could snipe anything.

I wouldn't trust real-world ranges as good indications of official weapon ranges for WH40k tech.

They're almost certain to imply absurdly close ranges, as a method of making exchanges between 40k forces more exciting, with very rare exceptions.

 Unusual Suspect wrote:
I wouldn't trust real-world ranges as good indications of official weapon ranges for WH40k tech.

They're almost certain to imply absurdly close ranges, as a method of making exchanges between 40k forces more exciting, with very rare exceptions.

Then what does the SM have to compensate for range and power, according to fluff?

HexHammer wrote:

 Unusual Suspect wrote:
I wouldn't trust real-world ranges as good indications of official weapon ranges for WH40k tech.

They're almost certain to imply absurdly close ranges, as a method of making exchanges between 40k forces more exciting, with very rare exceptions.

Then what does the SM have to compensate for range and power, according to fluff?

Imperial Guard

 rawne2510 wrote:

HexHammer wrote:
Then what does the SM have to compensate for range and power, according to fluff?

Imperial Guard

So they can just snap their fingers and they drop some Basselisks/Leman Russ? ..then why wouldn't SM have them in their arsenal to begin with?

HexHammer wrote:

 rawne2510 wrote:

HexHammer wrote:
Then what does the SM have to compensate for range and power, according to fluff?

Imperial Guard

So they can just snap their fingers and they drop some Basselisks/Leman Russ? ..then why wouldn't SM have them in their arsenal to begin with?

SM isn't SUPPOSED to be used in every situation. Due to HH armies got split so that nobody can do everything alone.

There is SUPPOSED to be situations where marines just don't cut it and need support from others.

Oh and def don't start wondering ranges in game and ranges to fluff In game ranges should be so that even bolter would reach way beyond normal game table.

If in-game ranges were 1:1, you'd be playing on a football field, not a 6'x4' table. And that's JUST for the bolters.

HexHammer wrote:

 rawne2510 wrote:

HexHammer wrote:
Then what does the SM have to compensate for range and power, according to fluff?

Imperial Guard

So they can just snap their fingers and they drop some Basselisks/Leman Russ? ..then why wouldn't SM have them in their arsenal to begin with?

Thats not their tactical role.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 chromedog wrote:
If in-game ranges were 1:1, you'd be playing on a football field, not a 6'x4' table. And that's JUST for the bolters.

and the rest. current operational rifles have effective ranges of up to 300m for an individual and 500m+ for squads.

Fluff vs tabletop ranges?

Shadow in the warp blankets entire planets a week before the nids even enter orbit. On the table it's 12".

I'd agree with the above points in saying that ranges on the tabletop don't accurately represent ranges 'In real life' so to speak.

In terms of the lascannon itself, it's not intended as a long range weapon. Instead, think of it as analogous to the modern Javelin missile - lethal, precise and fairly portable, but with a maximum range that's nearly half of a ballistic round's maximum range (Royal Ordnance L11 firing HESH = circa 8000m, FGM-148 Javelin = circa 4700m). The major benefit of as lascannon is it's reliability and portability in relation to it's power. It's major downsides are it's low rate of fire compared to ballistic rounds and it's low 'magazine' capacity - often only one shot per cell in IG variants. Obviously, as a beam of light, it's range is infinite, but much of it's killing power is lost downrange due to bloom and distortion - the more so if the battlefield is obscured by particulates such as dust and smoke.

You have to remember as well that the SM's do not actually possess a great deal of actual 'tanks' outside of the old Legion vehicles. The Land Raider, Vindicator and their variants are more similar to assault guns such as the WW2 Stug or Panzerjager IV, and the Predator and Razorback, as variants of the Rhino APC, are closer to IFV's or Cavalry Tanks such as the M24 Chaffee, the British Warrior or German Marder. The only true dedicated, long-ranged MBT's that the SM's possess are the Fellblade/Glaive or the Sicaran. The SM arsenal is geared towards close range assaults - not protracted tank duels.

A few thousand meters on a planet, much much further in space, because diffusion

In Dark Heresy, it is written: 300m.
A lasrifle has a range of 100m.
However, remember that in DH, you can shoot and hit a lot longer than the range, double at least.

It travels exactly as far as plot needs determine

The ranges of the weapons serve the needs of the game, not the background material. Mind you, the game could function perfectly well if most weapons had infinite range on the tabletop. Only a few weapons need to be restricted to short range (flamers, shotguns, melta special effects) to reflect their special properties.

With 40k tech, it's worth remembering that there are 37,000 years' worth of development not just in terms of weapons, but also armour and electronics and all the rest of the tech that goes into a tank. A Lascannon may technically count as having a range of just 100 -150 metres, according to its rules, but this could translate to several kilometres of theoretical range IRL.

And then you hqve to consider that a Lascannon is designed not to penetrate steel or even composite armour, but the strange, ceramic wonder-materials of the Imperium. It might in fact only be able to do so at a range of 150m, but the demands of the time made the silly range worthwhile.

Considering the thickest armor that's not on a super heavy is the equivalent of 300mm of steel, you'd think the lascannon could punch through at any range, really.

 John Prins wrote:
The ranges of the weapons serve the needs of the game, not the background material. Mind you, the game could function perfectly well if most weapons had infinite range on the tabletop. Only a few weapons need to be restricted to short range (flamers, shotguns, melta special effects) to reflect their special properties.

provided you play the game with the correct amount of terrain, this is 100% true. Playing hammer and anvil with no terrain is already a bad idea. Giving everything unlimited range would be worse.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Considering the thickest armor that's not on a super heavy is the equivalent of 300mm of steel, you'd think the lascannon could punch through at any range, really.

Well that would depend on the definition of equivalence. Obviously steel is not materially equivalent to, for example, Ceramite, in terms of density, weight, flexibility, etc. When armouring something against a Lascannon what you're really after is opacity, and to make armour that's not only hyper-dense and shock-absorbant, but also extremely opaque, would require an entirely different paradigm in the material's science. The beam from a Lascannon is not imparting kinetic force, nor that much heat until it's been applied to a surface, meaning that our conventional methods of measuring armour 'thickness' (meaning resistance, really), are kind of redundant, and that comparing anything in 40k to materials we've only really tested under real-world projectiles, is pointless.

Basically, Lascannons are bloody great, and would make Swiss Cheese out of anything we currently have available.

That said, I wouldn't take those armor measurements very seriously, they were written by writers who themselves didn't really do much research.

No, there's litteraly a page where Forgeworld goes ''the armor of a Land Raider is the equivalent of 300mm of steel'' almost word for word.

I'm more than aware of this.

I stand by this statement:

 Melissia wrote:
That said, I wouldn't take those armor measurements very seriously, they were written by writers who themselves didn't really do much research.

 Spineyguy wrote:


Well that would depend on the definition of equivalence. Obviously steel is not materially equivalent to, for example, Ceramite, in terms of density, weight, flexibility, etc. When armouring something against a Lascannon what you're really after is opacity, and to make armour that's not only hyper-dense and shock-absorbant, but also extremely opaque, would require an entirely different paradigm in the material's science. The beam from a Lascannon is not imparting kinetic force, nor that much heat until it's been applied to a surface, meaning that our conventional methods of measuring armour 'thickness' (meaning resistance, really), are kind of redundant, and that comparing anything in 40k to materials we've only really tested under real-world projectiles, is pointless.

Basically, Lascannons are bloody great, and would make Swiss Cheese out of anything we currently have available.

Actually laser weapons are pretty easily defeated by materials that turn into opaque gases(smoke). That way the light ends up heating up gas away from the target. As with any heat weapon, you want materials that soak energy when getting hotter. Water takes a ton of energy to heat, and then even more to boil. A lascannon, or virtually any heat/laser weapon would be completely ineffective against a nurgly wall of putrid flesh.

 Exergy wrote:
Actually laser weapons are pretty easily defeated by materials that turn into opaque gases(smoke). That way the light ends up heating up gas away from the target. As with any heat weapon, you want materials that soak energy when getting hotter. Water takes a ton of energy to heat, and then even more to boil. A lascannon, or virtually any heat/laser weapon would be completely ineffective against a nurgly wall of putrid flesh.

But that assumes that a Lascannon operates under the same principles of wattage and focussing as modern lasers. Because the actual science behind a lot of 40k tech is never adequately explained, the comparison is impossible to make.

Incidentally, having technology that even people in-universe don't understand is awfully convenient from a writing point of view.

And yes, I doubt very much that a Fearless model with Toughness 5 or more, a 5+ Cover Save due to being obscured by clouds of crap, a 5+ Feel No Pain and multiple wounds, would care about being hit by a Lascannon.

 Exergy wrote:

Actually laser weapons are pretty easily defeated by materials that turn into opaque gases(smoke). That way the light ends up heating up gas away from the target. As with any heat weapon, you want materials that soak energy when getting hotter. Water takes a ton of energy to heat, and then even more to boil. A lascannon, or virtually any heat/laser weapon would be completely ineffective against a nurgly wall of putrid flesh.

This is true, but any armor in WH40K is going to be a huge compromise to deal with the huge variety of weapons it will face - plasma, melta, railcannon, missile, bolter, whatever 'lance' and 'gauss' actually is, etcetera. It would be comically easy to make a tank immune to lascannon fire, but then it's likely vulnerable to several other kinds of weapons. Modern composite armors already have to deal with this sort of issue, and it's going to get worse as we start deploying directed energy weapons in the near-future-ish.

And the problems you state could help justify its fairly short range on the table. In an ongoing battle with smoke and dust being kicked up, laser weapon effective ranges are going to degrade pretty quickly, unless they're firing pulses of force fields ahead of their laser shots to clear out the smoke, which is entirely possible given 40k tech levels.

Also, you have to keep in mind the user's ability to aim it, too. Most people cannot aim beyond a few hundred meters without computer assistance.

 Melissia wrote:
Also, you have to keep in mind the user's ability to aim it, too. Most people cannot aim beyond a few hundred meters without computer assistance.

? What about scope? A las weapon doesn't have any arc or magnus effect, nor are disrupted by earth rotation, to my knowledge.

HexHammer wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Also, you have to keep in mind the user's ability to aim it, too. Most people cannot aim beyond a few hundred meters without computer assistance.

? What about scope? A las weapon doesn't have any arc or magnus effect, nor are disrupted by earth rotation, to my knowledge.

A laser weapon would be much easier to hit with at long range than conventional ballistic weapons.

Are las weapons "normal" lasers though? I assumed that they were when I first started with 40k, but then I started reading Dan Abnett's books and his lasguns had recoil and the "lasbolts" ricocheted off of walls and generally didn't not act like lasers. The Tanith lascarbine was a departure from the lasguns I had read about previously in a number of ways, most of which could be chalked up to the wide variety of lasguns being produced on different worlds, but having recoil and shooting bolts that ricochet instead of more conventional laser beams doesn't seem like something that would be different between a Mars pattern lasgun and a Necromunda pattern lasgun.

Then again in DoW it looked like lasguns fired laser beams, so who knows. Is the whole not-really-lasers lasguns thing limited to just Abnett's novels?

Novels are a confusing mess of various authors getting tons of things wrong. Best not to consider anything in them to mean much.

to slice "even" through 300mm steel at range would require some serious high power laser IRL - something we can't achieve yet, at least not to my knowledge. Also "steel" - imperium uses plasteel, which could possess magical capabilities that we dont know of, which make it better then RL armored steel.

But yes the whole laser technology is very inconsistent and dodgy. Particulary weird are Dan Abnett's laser interpretations... Unsurprisingly, as a laserbeam that just slices everything would be quite overpowered. Which is why laserswords in SW also are only a meter or two long ^^ 40k isn't alone in this dilemma.

Dan Abnett thinks Imperial las-weapons are blasters from Star Wars (which are actually a sort of low temperature plasma weapon) which is unfortunate.

The thing is, the technology and mathematics to make las-weapons workable exists today, except for one thing: batteries.

There is nothing particularly extraordinary about the laser weponry that the studio describes except for the ridiculous energy density of their power packs, which is orders of magnitude higher than hydrocarbons.
To put that in perspective, if we had batteries that good now, we could build "brute force" hover cars with electric engines that used turbines for both lift and thrust, and still give them operating ranges of hundreds of miles; that's how insanely good lasgun batteries are.