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iproxtaco wrote:

BaronIveagh wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:What? That this adaptation wasn't actually about dissipating heat? That's a hole in your reasoning, not mine.
Regardless of whether Plasma is a gas, solid or a form of matter similar to gas ( which I admit is a big mistake on my part), it still has properties which Gorgon exploited, but which had no effect on the lasgun.

Because if it doesn't dissipate heat, then it has no way to stop a plasma round. Anything that would shield the target from a plasma weapon would also shield it from a lasgun.

It's like saying it's shielded against hellguns but not lasguns.

Why? Different properties, which the adaptation obviously exploited. Not that difficult to understand. It says nothing about dissipating heat. It protects against pulse-rifle hits, not against lasgun hits, therefore, NOT HEAT.

Pulse rifles do their damage through heat.

If it doesn't protect against heat, then they're not protected.

Therefore, they're protected from heat.

iproxtaco wrote:What? That this adaptation wasn't actually about dissipating heat? That's a hole in your reasoning, not mine.
Regardless of whether Plasma is a gas, solid or a form of matter similar to gas ( which I admit is a big mistake on my part), it still has properties which Gorgon exploited, but which had no effect on the lasgun.

Because Gorgon adapted to Pulse Rifles and Ion Weapons when it encountered them, you believe they wouldn't adapt to lasguns and bolters upon encountering them?

Lasguns maybe, but not bolters.



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Nerivant wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:

BaronIveagh wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:What? That this adaptation wasn't actually about dissipating heat? That's a hole in your reasoning, not mine.
Regardless of whether Plasma is a gas, solid or a form of matter similar to gas ( which I admit is a big mistake on my part), it still has properties which Gorgon exploited, but which had no effect on the lasgun.

Because if it doesn't dissipate heat, then it has no way to stop a plasma round. Anything that would shield the target from a plasma weapon would also shield it from a lasgun.

It's like saying it's shielded against hellguns but not lasguns.

Why? Different properties, which the adaptation obviously exploited. Not that difficult to understand. It says nothing about dissipating heat. It protects against pulse-rifle hits, not against lasgun hits, therefore, NOT HEAT.

Pulse rifles do their damage through heat.

If it doesn't protect against heat, then they're not protected.

Therefore, they're protected from heat.

Yes, but the properties of plasma are different from that of light. They both have heat as the method they damage the target, but the Gorgon adaptation clearly took advantage of the properties of plasma to protect it's warriors. The lasguns of the Cadians worked, so the adaptation worked on a property which plasma has but light does not.
Therefore ITS NOT HEAT that the adaptation dissipates.

Why can't they adapt to be immune to bolt guns?

iproxtaco wrote:Lasguns maybe, but not bolters.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nerivant wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:

BaronIveagh wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:What? That this adaptation wasn't actually about dissipating heat? That's a hole in your reasoning, not mine.
Regardless of whether Plasma is a gas, solid or a form of matter similar to gas ( which I admit is a big mistake on my part), it still has properties which Gorgon exploited, but which had no effect on the lasgun.

Because if it doesn't dissipate heat, then it has no way to stop a plasma round. Anything that would shield the target from a plasma weapon would also shield it from a lasgun.

It's like saying it's shielded against hellguns but not lasguns.

Why? Different properties, which the adaptation obviously exploited. Not that difficult to understand. It says nothing about dissipating heat. It protects against pulse-rifle hits, not against lasgun hits, therefore, NOT HEAT.

Pulse rifles do their damage through heat.

If it doesn't protect against heat, then they're not protected.

Therefore, they're protected from heat.

Yes, but the properties of plasma are different from that of light. They both have heat as the method they damage the target, but the Gorgon adaptation clearly took advantage of the properties of plasma to protect it's warriors. The lasguns of the Cadians worked, so the adaptation worked on a property which plasma has but light does not.
Therefore ITS NOT HEAT that the adaptation dissipates.

There is no way to dissipate the plasma without dissipating the heat. The heat has to go somewhere; and unless every Gorgan Tyranid was warping the plasma elsewhere, they were affected by the full shot's worth of heat. They had to have a higher than normal function to dissipate the heat, or they would be damaged.

iproxtaco wrote:

BaronIveagh wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:What? That this adaptation wasn't actually about dissipating heat? That's a hole in your reasoning, not mine.
Regardless of whether Plasma is a gas, solid or a form of matter similar to gas ( which I admit is a big mistake on my part), it still has properties which Gorgon exploited, but which had no effect on the lasgun.

Because if it doesn't dissipate heat, then it has no way to stop a plasma round. Anything that would shield the target from a plasma weapon would also shield it from a lasgun.

It's like saying it's shielded against hellguns but not lasguns.

Why? Different properties, which the adaptation obviously exploited. Not that difficult to understand. It says nothing about dissipating heat. It protects against pulse-rifle hits, not against lasgun hits, therefore, NOT HEAT.

You have got to be trolling at this point. There is no way anyone is this dense.

I'll try one last time:

As far as the target is concerned, there's no difference to exploit, since the target doesn't magically know if the heat it's being bombarded with comes from a plasma gun, a melta, a lascannon, the humble lasgun, OR AN EXPLODING fething STAR!

ON IMPACT THEY'RE BOTH HEAT. BOTH work by irradiating the target with large amounts of infer red energy (among others). It's actually be EASIER to adapt to the lasgun, which only releases energy in a small portion of the spectrum, where as the chunk of plasma is giving it off across the board. It's like saying it's immune to armor piercing battleship rounds, but a jacketed steel core should do the trick.

Kanluwen wrote:
The lasguns weren't "doing nothing".

But it was taking alot to put them down. Their hellguns and meltaguns were what was effectively winning the day, so in typical Krieg fashion...the lasgunners kept fire going and did everything they could to ensure that the Grenadiers armed with both were able to stay in the fight.

I might point out that even in the case that they were able to do some small damage against Necrons, they lost, and so, in this case, against a foe vastly more numerous, who are totally immune, would they not, logically, lose that much faster?

Been over this a few times. Whereas lasguns and pulse-rifles use methods which could be countered through various means, for example the Gorgon adaptation rendered pulse-rifles useless by exploiting a property of the plasma which the lasgun did not contain. A bolter round relies on sheer kinetic force to penetrate the target, and the relies on the kinetic force from the explosion to kill the target. The only way to stop it from penetrating is to develop thick or very strong armour on the outside to absorb or dissipate the massive impact. Whereas the Gorgon pulse-rifle adaptation was cheap and relatively simple, very advanced, thick or tough armour would be inefficient and expensive on behalf of the fleet to invest in to protect against bolter rounds when the current methods of the Tyranids do fine.

Quite clearly, there is something you just can't get. Pulse rifles were ineffective, lasguns were, hence there is something about plasma that can be exploited which renders the shot useless. Since both use heat as a method of damage, and one is effective when the other is not, it is not heat which the coating dissipates, else the lasgun would have been useless as well. Hence there is a property specifically unique to plasma that we don't understand.

iproxtaco wrote:Lasguns maybe, but not bolters.

Your reasoning is that the Nids wouldn't develope a carapace capable of stopping or at least largely nullifying a bolter because they wouldn't have the biomass.

That means that they could nullify a bolter by having the biomass.

That means they could stop the bolter.

All they have to do is stop the lasgun which they could do. Obtain the biomass, then null the bolter.

It's fortunate that Gorgon wandered into Tau space instead of Imperial, had it gone through a few PDF defended worlds in the Imperium, it may very well have been a much larger threat to the galaxy.

iproxtaco wrote:Been over this a few times. Whereas lasguns and pulse-rifles use methods which could be countered through various means, for example the Gorgon adaptation rendered pulse-rifles useless by exploiting a property of the plasma which the lasgun did not contain. A bolter round relies on sheer kinetic force to penetrate the target, and the relies on the kinetic force from the explosion to kill the target. The only to stop it from penetrating is to develop thick or very strong armour on the outside to absorb or dissipate the massive impact. Whereas the Gorgon pulse-rifle adaptation was cheap and relatively simple, very advanced, thick or tough armour would be inefficient expensive on behalf of the fleet to invest in to protect against bolter rounds when the current methods of the Tyranids do fine.

You keep saying 'well they exploited some difference between the two...'


THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE TO EXPLOIT.

iproxtaco wrote:Been over this a few times. Whereas lasguns and pulse-rifles use methods which could be countered through various means, for example the Gorgon adaptation rendered pulse-rifles useless by exploiting a property of the plasma which the lasgun did not contain.

Expect that the adaption doesn't have an effect until after the plasma transfers it's heat to the Tyranid.

Well, there obviously IS. Else it would have worked on them both.

iproxtaco wrote:Well, there obviously IS. Else it would have worked on them both.

The difference between a lasgun and a plasmagun in this case is the following:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DidNotDoTheResearch

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StoryDrivenInvulnerability

BeefCakeSoup wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:Lasguns maybe, but not bolters.

Your reasoning is that the Nids wouldn't develope a carapace capable of stopping or at least largely nullifying a bolter because they wouldn't have the biomass.

That means that they could nullify a bolter by having the biomass.

That means they could stop the bolter.

All they have to do is stop the lasgun which they could do. Obtain the biomass, then null the bolter.

It's fortunate that Gorgon wandered into Tau space instead of Imperial, had it gone through a few PDF defended worlds in the Imperium, it may very well have been a much larger threat to the galaxy.

Well, we're talking specifically about Gorgon, thus it did not have near enough to adapt every organism against the Astartes. However I agree, if it did, we may well have had a lot more to talk about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
OH, I see! You were talking about this clearly fictional story in the context of real-life physics! That's your mistake. Still stand by my point though.

BaronIveagh wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:Been over this a few times. Whereas lasguns and pulse-rifles use methods which could be countered through various means, for example the Gorgon adaptation rendered pulse-rifles useless by exploiting a property of the plasma which the lasgun did not contain. A bolter round relies on sheer kinetic force to penetrate the target, and the relies on the kinetic force from the explosion to kill the target. The only to stop it from penetrating is to develop thick or very strong armour on the outside to absorb or dissipate the massive impact. Whereas the Gorgon pulse-rifle adaptation was cheap and relatively simple, very advanced, thick or tough armour would be inefficient expensive on behalf of the fleet to invest in to protect against bolter rounds when the current methods of the Tyranids do fine.

You keep saying 'well they exploited some difference between the two...'


THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE TO EXPLOIT.

Maybe it has to do with numbers. Lasguns are deployed in mass, where pulseguns are deployed in teams of 12. Maybe they adapted a reflexive organ that releases a fluid that dissipates with heat. (You know like sweat only a ,lot, better.) The organ can only work so many times before it wares out, so blasting away with lots of mini pin pricks wear it out a lot faster then a few powerful shots.

PS iproxtaco gets no credit for this. He is still wrong.

It's not fully explained. Just that the Tyranids developed this new armour which renders the pulse-rifle shots useless, but has no effect against lasguns.

Edit : Credit taken good sir!

nomotog wrote:
Maybe it has to do with numbers. Lasguns are deployed in mass, where pulseguns are deployed in teams of 12. Maybe they adapted a reflexive organ that releases a fluid that dissipates with heat. (You know like sweat only a ,lot, better.) The organ can only work so many times before it wares out, so blasting away with lots of mini pin pricks wear it out a lot faster then a few powerful shots.

PS iproxtaco gets no credit for this. He is still wrong.

When was the last time you saw nids deploy in numbers that didn't dwarf even IG? Even against IG an individual nid is probably only going to get shot once.

Perhaps the plasma round is more like that of a shotgun, covering a wider area and thus doing more damage simply through being larger and gaseous, while a lasgun is a pinprick that delivers a slightly smaller, but still massive, amount of energy over a few nanoseconds. The carapace developed to be more resistant to the spread out plasma blob, but a sharper point was able to put it down.

Or there were just more lasguns, so quantity made up the difference. Or all the other, vastly superior, weapons the Guard had did. Could go either way, really.

Ah, but remember, the pulse-rifle has a lot more HEAT than the lasgun. Not that it makes a difference.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Perhaps the plasma round is more like that of a shotgun, covering a wider area and thus doing more damage simply through being larger and gaseous, while a lasgun is a pinprick that delivers a slightly smaller, but still massive, amount of energy over a few nanoseconds. The carapace developed to be more resistant to the spread out plasma blob, but a sharper point was able to put it down.

Or there were just more lasguns, so quantity made up the difference. Or all the other, vastly superior, weapons the Guard had did. Could go either way, really.

No, because if it was like a shotgun it wouldn't have any penetration at all. This isn't like napalm, it's more like willy pete.

iproxtaco wrote:Ah, but remember, the pulse-rifle has a lot more HEAT than the lasgun. Not that it makes a difference.

Yeah, it does make a difference.

Nah, it doesn't though.

Also, to a degree real world physics have to exist in 40k or people wouldn't exist there. Without the usual rules for heat and chemical reactions, human beings would fail to function at a cellular level.

Even as really soft Sci-fi on the Fantasy boarder, there still needs to be a certain amount of 'reality' involved or it falls apart.

BaronIveagh wrote:

nomotog wrote:
Maybe it has to do with numbers. Lasguns are deployed in mass, where pulseguns are deployed in teams of 12. Maybe they adapted a reflexive organ that releases a fluid that dissipates with heat. (You know like sweat only a ,lot, better.) The organ can only work so many times before it wares out, so blasting away with lots of mini pin pricks wear it out a lot faster then a few powerful shots.

PS iproxtaco gets no credit for this. He is still wrong.

When was the last time you saw nids deploy in numbers that didn't dwarf even IG? Even against IG an individual nid is probably only going to get shot once.

So it only takes one lasgun hit to take out a Nid? Maybe the fluid just works once.

Oh here is an idea. Maybe it works just as well on lasguns, but the IoM dosen't notice because lasguns almost never work.

Oh, I agree with you completely outside of the 40k fiction. In the story though, the obvious physics/logic doesn't apply in the same way. The plasma clearly is still being dissipated in another way other than heat within the context of the story, and the logic works, but the real-world physics just doesn't fit.

BaronIveagh wrote:Also, to a degree real world physics have to exist in 40k or people wouldn't exist there. Without the usual rules for heat and chemical reactions, human beings would fail to function at a cellular level.

Even as really soft Sci-fi on the Fantasy boarder, there still needs to be a certain amount of 'reality' involved or it falls apart.

This is why we need a Warhammer 40K Fluff book dedicated to Bible duty for facts.

iproxtaco wrote:Oh, I agree with you completely outside of the 40k fiction. In the story though, the obvious physics/logic doesn't apply in the same way. The plasma clearly is still being dissipated in another way other than heat within the context of the story, and the logic works, but the real-world physics just doesn't fit.

The in-world physics doesn't fit either, it's just another case of GW not caring about what they're writing as long as us morons keep buying it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BeefCakeSoup wrote:
This is why we need a Warhammer 40K Fluff book dedicated to Bible duty for facts.

AMEN

I still think it fits IN-GAME. But my interpretation of it makes sense only within the fictional-world. I've explained what I think may times, so won't go again.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:

This is why we need a Warhammer 40K Fluff book dedicated to Bible duty for facts.

We only need it so people that have hard on's for marine uberness can be held in check.

This thread has completely digressed off topic, return to topic already.

If the entire black templar chapter attacked the tau empire, the black templar chapter would raze a few worlds and get obliterated, in space and then on the ground. With kroot alone, enough can kill a marine, and the ratio of marines to kroot is something like 1 to 100.

juraigamer wrote:

If the entire black templar chapter attacked the tau empire, the black templar chapter would raze a few worlds and get obliterated, in space and then on the ground.

Basically, yeah. They just don't have the numbers to take out an entire empire.

BaronIveagh wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Perhaps the plasma round is more like that of a shotgun, covering a wider area and thus doing more damage simply through being larger and gaseous, while a lasgun is a pinprick that delivers a slightly smaller, but still massive, amount of energy over a few nanoseconds. The carapace developed to be more resistant to the spread out plasma blob, but a sharper point was able to put it down.

Or there were just more lasguns, so quantity made up the difference. Or all the other, vastly superior, weapons the Guard had did. Could go either way, really.

No, because if it was like a shotgun it wouldn't have any penetration at all. This isn't like napalm, it's more like willy pete.

It's AP5: it could just be a wide enough spread to always hit the weakpoints in the armor or splash onto an unprotected area. Or cling long enough to set flak armor on fire. It's not like Imperial plasma, which can actually pierce heavier armor, after all. If the Tau were expecting it to never fail to penetrate, perhaps they panicked and ran away, while the Guard knew that it took more than one shot and so kept shooting. Perhaps the Tyranids had already scrapped the upgraded armor when the Tau stopped using pulse weapons, and being a mindless beast didn't think to redeploy it.* Perhaps the lasguns were accurate enough to give them laser eye surgery, and they were so grateful at the complimentary medical service they just up and left, not wanting to be rude to their impromptu surgeons.


*This actually makes the most sense, unless it was explicitly contradicted in the text; everything has a cost, and if it was no longer working against the weapons the Tau deployed it may have been deemed outdated, and so scrapped in the search for something that could resist the new weapons. As the Imperium deploys a far wider range of weapons, with special weapons in every squad, it may not be feasible to produce something able to resist everything.