I_am_a_Spoon wrote:
According to
the 40k Wiki:
"Compared to other infantry weapons, the Pulse Rifle trades rate of fire for damage. When compared to a Space Marine Bolter, it fires at a far slower rate but does significantly more damage and possesses a greater effective range. Pulse Rifles also have significant recoil, which requires that the user be stationary to fire most effectively. This, combined with the Pulse Rifle's long range, means that Tau troops are best served by staying more or less stationary. Pulse Rifles still retain most of their effectiveness on the move nonetheless, and can be utterly devastating weapons when used correctly."
Sounds like the epitome of Heavy 1 to me.
(I might be wrong about past Heavy 1 status; that was based on my own memories from yonks ago).
That's because the old Rapid Fire rules required you to stay stationary to fire at full effect. They have more recoil because boltguns are gyrojet rockets and actually have very low recoil compared to the size of the projectile, since it accelerates all the way to the target. Recoil from plasma based weapons occurs because the magnetic field needed to impel the projectile towards its target pushes back on the weapon as well, creating a recoil effect.
Automatically Appended Next Post: 
Irbis wrote:
Which is utter gak nonsense because Tau plasma is supposed to be A) far more primitive than even Imperial version, B) never overcharged because Tau supposedly care about safety of their troops (though this was retconned away given they literally give weapon cells to infantry irradiating and killing them faster than even supposedly callous admech approach to rad weapons of 'disposable' skitarii
LOL)
I thought Tau were portrayed as having awesome plasma tech, even with a tech deficit compared to the Imperium's looting of their DAoT precursors.
Irbis wrote:
They are about as much ""plasma"" weapons as flamers are. Since fire is a plasma, therefore all flamers in the game should have -7
AP by your logic
Yeah there's no reason why different types of plasma weapons wouldn't have different armor penetrating capabilities.
Irbis wrote:
Eh, real life lasers also tend to fire pulses because continuous beam would melt it. Not to mention it's easier to gather energy for a single strong shot with capacitors and such than it is to output such energy continuously, which would melt battery and wiring, too.
Yup. And that means that something like a multi-laser would look like a flickering beam if there was enough smoke to show it. But because lasers shoot lased light, you wouldn't see it unless there was a lot of moisture in the air (fog basically) or it was shot right into your eye. At the emitter you might see a slight burst of light and energy, and then at the point of impact you'd see the same.
