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.

@Pyriel: I wonder if they have like an ancient virtual training thing that's never mentioned, or if they, being in some cases warriors before being indoctrinated, already have an almost natural ability to use the weapon. Plus, if the marines using bolters have been using them for hundreds of years, why practice.
I've always wondered, as a side note, how many rounds can one clip hold. It seems that it'd be lucky to fit 10, unless I'm overstating the round size. 20 sounds to much just because when you look at how big the size of the hole the bullets fly through, and then see the clip size, it just doesn't seem to add up.
Granted, one bolter shot can obliterate most enemies, still, how could it stand to horde armies.

Well, anything sumulated has proven time and time again to be far from enough compared to actual practice.
The one instance in the fluff where a virtual reality training machine was being used by marines (forgot the chapter) was a catastrophe as such machnies ar prone to deamonic possession so GW scrapped that one.

Also, practice is needed, no matter how long your chapter has used bolters. I could tells you that pilots dont need to practice simply because the air force has been using planes for a long time or doctors dont need to practice since they have all been using scalpells for hundreds of years (or just untill graduation) but I bet you wouldnt want to be operated by such a doctor now would you

Dark heresy says 30 rounds can be held and even bore in box magazines and belt feeds.

Bolts vs hordes could be powerful actually.
If they have a proximity fuse setting they could go of metres from their target spraying an area in front of them with sharpnell maybe killing/wounding 4-5 targets in an oncoming horde rather then just one.
It still doesnt help vs things like nids and orks that have more numbers then you can shake a stick at and that dont care about wounds.

You do realize that what I posted is verbatim from GW fluff, right, and that that is the exact reason THEY give for it?

I also DO happen to know how real magazines work, thanks. Complain to GW if you have a problem with it.

Nope, obviously I didnt realize this or I wouldnt have written what I did, sorry to have stepped on your manhood implying you dont know your weapons.
Wasnt my intention.

1. Propaganda
Assume the fluff is just propaganda and actually SMs are a fairly common, slightly special force not like the SAS but more like Paras.

2. Super Special Forces
Assume SMs are the equivalent of the SAS. They only fight in small unit actions such as recon and sabotage missions. All the fluff pictures of them fighting hordes of Orks or Nids are just propaganda.

Hehe, they have stormtroopers for their SAS equivalent

Or we can assume the propaganda pictures certain things very un-accurately like the big rounds they use.
Look at pictures of our own medeval knights. When they storm castles they look bigger then the walls themselves. They ride horses smaller then they are and their swords are bigger then their horses AND they are all squeeky clean.
In reality they were mud caked and dirty with blood, crap and intestines, their sword would look realistic and the castle walls were REALLY big.

I imagine SM are the same, portraited as clean knights with BIG guns with intimidating barrels but as with the medeval knight pictures there would be nothing realistic about that.

With advanced tech (miniaturisation), both chemical (propellant) and metallurgical (round composition) there is no need to have such a big callibre. If the small sized assault cannon rounds can tear through armour and flesh better then a coke bottle sized bolt round why even use the big thing in the first place.
Having normal say 7.62 ammo in that futuristic high velocity, armour piercing and explosive versions would be more then enough. With the marine carrying capacity a squad of marines could lay down the fire worth of a small guard army and be able to do what they do in the fluff.
A single SM bolter magazien would easily be equal to a whole box full of SAW rounds and a rhino could carry around bucketloads of spares just in the underseat compartments.

Pyriel- wrote:

@Pyriel: I wonder if they have like an ancient virtual training thing that's never mentioned, or if they, being in some cases warriors before being indoctrinated, already have an almost natural ability to use the weapon. Plus, if the marines using bolters have been using them for hundreds of years, why practice.
I've always wondered, as a side note, how many rounds can one clip hold. It seems that it'd be lucky to fit 10, unless I'm overstating the round size. 20 sounds to much just because when you look at how big the size of the hole the bullets fly through, and then see the clip size, it just doesn't seem to add up.
Granted, one bolter shot can obliterate most enemies, still, how could it stand to horde armies.

Well, anything sumulated has proven time and time again to be far from enough compared to actual practice.
The one instance in the fluff where a virtual reality training machine was being used by marines (forgot the chapter) was a catastrophe as such machnies ar prone to deamonic possession so GW scrapped that one.

Also, practice is needed, no matter how long your chapter has used bolters. I could tells you that pilots dont need to practice simply because the air force has been using planes for a long time or doctors dont need to practice since they have all been using scalpells for hundreds of years (or just untill graduation) but I bet you wouldnt want to be operated by such a doctor now would you

When I was talking about practice, I meant for each specific brother. These guys participate in a lot of battles, are trained hardcore from their acceptance from the chapter, and also given that each one is possibly at least like 80 years old with 60 some odd years in training as scouts and even their experience fighting on their home planet, practicing outside of battle doesn't seem as necessary to happen often enough to warrant the rosk of wasting too much ammo.

When I was talking about practice, I meant for each specific brother. These guys participate in a lot of battles, are trained hardcore from their acceptance from the chapter, and also given that each one is possibly at least like 80 years old with 60 some odd years in training as scouts and even their experience fighting on their home planet, practicing outside of battle doesn't seem as necessary to happen often enough to warrant the rosk of wasting too much ammo.

You have no point.
Practicing isnt needed if you instead are in constant battle, so far so good but did you consider where their ammunition comes from that they use during all this constant combat? Do they spend 80 years in battle throwing rocks? Using guard pistols? borrowing rounds? Buying bolt rounds on the black market? Stealing them?

Well, I lied there, practice is still needed as it allows you to be good at more then one thing. If your missions are mostly on ice worlds then you wont be any good in other enviroments unless you practice them as well (if combat mission types cant be varied for some reason).

There is no escaping the fact that you either "waste" tons of ammunition on practice or you "waste" tons of ammunition during combat and that ammunition needs to come from some place and marines go through a crapload of it daily, they need to in order to either be damn good in doing what they do or in dispatching the enemies of the Emperor, they dont stand guarding doors, they are USED as much as possible paying themselves of for all the time and material invested in them.

I am going to throw my two cents in hear, the fluff states that bolter rounds are .75 caliber, when we picture a round in our head we picture it looking like a big 40mm grenade launcher round, but with micronization technology, the case that holds the bolter shell could be very small alowing the bolter shells to stack, the propellant could be miniscule and the bollter shell itself could weigh next to nothing, if made of superlight materials, but still retain tons of strength and explosive power, the bolter shell itself could be a full .75 caliber but be very small leangthwise allowing for many bolter shells to be housed in each regular curved clip(thus the thirty shells per clip instead of 10-15) and if they were made of super light material the clips could be stored anywere on the space marine with minimal discomfort or problematic weight issues. although i would ignore the official gw stuff and say that marines are packing miniaturized rounds by the thousands, and that bolter round rarity is an outright lie. rhinos could have thousands in cargo holds (usually found in the floors of futuistic fighting vehicles).well thats my two cents on the subject.

Are you sort of saying the ammo is kind of dehydrated and gets inflated to full size when it loads into the firing chamber?

It's an interesting idea.

It's a well known fact that Space Marines carry One in a Million bolters, so they never run out of ammo.

abadon09 wrote:I am going to throw my two cents in hear, the fluff states that bolter rounds are .75 caliber, when we picture a round in our head we picture it looking like a big 40mm grenade launcher round, but with micronization technology, the case that holds the bolter shell could be very small alowing the bolter shells to stack, the propellant could be miniscule and the bollter shell itself could weigh next to nothing, if made of superlight materials, but still retain tons of strength and explosive power, the bolter shell itself could be a full .75 caliber but be very small leangthwise allowing for many bolter shells to be housed in each regular curved clip(thus the thirty shells per clip instead of 10-15) and if they were made of super light material the clips could be stored anywere on the space marine with minimal discomfort or problematic weight issues. although i would ignore the official gw stuff and say that marines are packing miniaturized rounds by the thousands, and that bolter round rarity is an outright lie. rhinos could have thousands in cargo holds (usually found in the floors of futuistic fighting vehicles).well thats my two cents on the subject.

Interessting but not feasable since it defies the laws of physics.
Although you could explain it with "magic" as is quite common inthe 40k world debates.

Light rounds mean low kinetic energy on impact as well as a very rapid energy loss over range. This is why you see rounds that are ment to be used in dangerous spaces made out of light materials. They wont produce enough power to punch through whatever mustnt be damaged.

The entire concept of bigger callibre is not to look cooler but to simply delivermore kinetic energy at the target by increasing the weight of the round. You loose out on velocity but the overall effect is better. Take the 5.56 round, you increase the callibre only to 7.62 and by doing this little you more then double the energy on impact.

Light rounds just wont work other then at ridiculous speeds but that opens up a whole can of additional problems.

The lenght of the round also follow basic laws of physics and aerodynamics and cato short.
The propellant minutarisation is a decent idea though but it still doesnt lessen the rounds callibre although with a minimal and maybe solid propellant cartridge perhaps two rounds could fit in a row, one behind the other and the overal cartridge would only be as high as the bolt shell and not as the often wider cartridge. Perhaps if this was utilized up to 90 rounds could fit in a standard magazine.
It goes against all GW fluff but then I rather prefer logical thinking then GW mistakes.

Cool idea man, smart thinking

Wait a minute...is everyone forgetting the fact that bolters only fire two shots at best?If a game lasts 6 turns they are only using 12 bolt rounds(assuming of course that they are in two shot range). So one clip of 20 bullets is good enough.

Heh, and they walk at most 36 inches during a battle too. Must be damn slow but that is probably due to the ammo weighing them down>P

Kilkrazy wrote:SMs do not make sense if you take the fluff at face value.

There are two different ways they do make sense.

1. Propaganda
Assume the fluff is just propaganda and actually SMs are a fairly common, slightly special force not like the SAS but more like Paras.

2. Super Special Forces
Assume SMs are the equivalent of the SAS. They only fight in small unit actions such as recon and sabotage missions. All the fluff pictures of them fighting hordes of Orks or Nids are just propaganda.

Neither of these make sense. You might as well just say "I will take anything I want in 40k and say it is propaganda, and replace it with whatever the hell I want". You can't ignore such a huge % of codexes, stories, and books. If SM as they are depicted are propaganda, then why do we have 1st person books detailing space marines, stories that the public would never know and therefore can't be propaganda.

Space marines can't logically be dismissed as propaganda.

those things are called air wents, derrr.

I guess Space Marines are like videogame characters - they just store their tonnes of equipment in the huge Storage Area in their arses

ph34r wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:SMs do not make sense if you take the fluff at face value.

There are two different ways they do make sense.

1. Propaganda
Assume the fluff is just propaganda and actually SMs are a fairly common, slightly special force not like the SAS but more like Paras.

2. Super Special Forces
Assume SMs are the equivalent of the SAS. They only fight in small unit actions such as recon and sabotage missions. All the fluff pictures of them fighting hordes of Orks or Nids are just propaganda.

Neither of these make sense. You might as well just say "I will take anything I want in 40k and say it is propaganda, and replace it with whatever the hell I want". You can't ignore such a huge % of codexes, stories, and books. If SM as they are depicted are propaganda, then why do we have 1st person books detailing space marines, stories that the public would never know and therefore can't be propaganda.

Space marines can't logically be dismissed as propaganda.

Course they can. It's all made up stories and that is exactly what propaganda is.

Kilkrazy wrote:

ph34r wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:SMs do not make sense if you take the fluff at face value.

There are two different ways they do make sense.

1. Propaganda
Assume the fluff is just propaganda and actually SMs are a fairly common, slightly special force not like the SAS but more like Paras.

2. Super Special Forces
Assume SMs are the equivalent of the SAS. They only fight in small unit actions such as recon and sabotage missions. All the fluff pictures of them fighting hordes of Orks or Nids are just propaganda.

Neither of these make sense. You might as well just say "I will take anything I want in 40k and say it is propaganda, and replace it with whatever the hell I want". You can't ignore such a huge % of codexes, stories, and books. If SM as they are depicted are propaganda, then why do we have 1st person books detailing space marines, stories that the public would never know and therefore can't be propaganda.

Space marines can't logically be dismissed as propaganda.

Course they can. It's all made up stories and that is exactly what propaganda is.

No, it's not. The story "space wolf" or "eisenhorn" would NEVER be told to anyone that would be targeted by propaganda. They contain WAY too much sensitive/heretical/dangerous information. Yet they exist, and portray space marines as they are, because they are for the readers eyes only.

Since we are talking about ammo, where does the grenades and melta bombs go? Really because I also see zero pocket, pouches, little bags or equivalents on their amour.

Again, storage room in the arsehole

metallifan wrote:Again, storage room in the arsehole

So if they launch them from....oh my.

metallifan wrote:Again, storage room in the arsehole

Wow... Consider this sigged sir!

Excellent. We must do all we can to spread the word of the 'Video-Game Infinite Ammo Ass Compartment' (V-GIAAC). The world's militaries would pay GOLD for this sort of stuff!

Hmmm... well if we say that inside their gun is a clip.. and then they have that extra clip, that would be 2 clips.

And then another in that pouch of theirs.

And a few more inside the back pack. As the armor is linked to their mental processes perhaps the backpack launches out a clip on command and the space marine catches it and quickly loads it.

ph34r wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

ph34r wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:SMs do not make sense if you take the fluff at face value.

There are two different ways they do make sense.

1. Propaganda
Assume the fluff is just propaganda and actually SMs are a fairly common, slightly special force not like the SAS but more like Paras.

2. Super Special Forces
Assume SMs are the equivalent of the SAS. They only fight in small unit actions such as recon and sabotage missions. All the fluff pictures of them fighting hordes of Orks or Nids are just propaganda.

Neither of these make sense. You might as well just say "I will take anything I want in 40k and say it is propaganda, and replace it with whatever the hell I want". You can't ignore such a huge % of codexes, stories, and books. If SM as they are depicted are propaganda, then why do we have 1st person books detailing space marines, stories that the public would never know and therefore can't be propaganda.

Space marines can't logically be dismissed as propaganda.

Course they can. It's all made up stories and that is exactly what propaganda is.

No, it's not. The story "space wolf" or "eisenhorn" would NEVER be told to anyone that would be targeted by propaganda. They contain WAY too much sensitive/heretical/dangerous information. Yet they exist, and portray space marines as they are, because they are for the readers eyes only.

That is the cunning of it.

They write the story as it couldn't be a piece of propaganda, and distribute it under cover to give it an extra layer of versimilitude.

Ah, it all becomes clear. The people living in the real 40k universe know that there is no such thing as space marines. GW simply has woven an extremely elaborate ruse to convince us earth humans that space marines exist in the 40k universe when they do in fact not exist.

BUT if you are still serious, then it is amazing how the thoughts of the characters are made known to the citizens of the Imperium as well. I doubt they write in a diary. Maybe the inquisitors that have seen space marines are made up too. Maybe the inquisition is made up. Maybe black ships come and take people away and just dump them into suns. Maybe there is no emperor. Maybe we are all in the matrix.

Hmm... perhaps they have extra large arse comparments?? A agree with the posts above this one about this?

ph34r wrote:Ah, it all becomes clear. The people living in the real 40k universe know that there is no such thing as space marines. GW simply has woven an extremely elaborate ruse to convince us earth humans that space marines exist in the 40k universe when they do in fact not exist.

BUT if you are still serious, then it is amazing how the thoughts of the characters are made known to the citizens of the Imperium as well. I doubt they write in a diary. Maybe the inquisitors that have seen space marines are made up too. Maybe the inquisition is made up. Maybe black ships come and take people away and just dump them into suns. Maybe there is no emperor. Maybe we are all in the matrix.

If it is true that there are under 1 million space marines the vast majority of the population have probably never seen one except in movies, or maybe distantly at a parade on a rare state occasion.

It is actors' job to be in movies and convince the audience about the thoughts they are supposedly thinking.

It is authors' job to write novels and convince the reader about the situations and thoughts of the characters in them.

If there are lots of space marines so lots of ordinary people have met them and spoken to them in person, it rather disproves that they are incredibly rare super soldiers.

Given their frequent appearances on the battlefield, and not particularly spectacular performance, it seems unlikely they are really as rare and special as Imperial fluff would like us to believe.

you know, I always considered the rate of fire in 40k to be more a measure of effective fire. i.e. I don't think autocannons are only firing two rounds per turn (perhaps faster, more erratic or fewer, more careful shots), just as pistols aren't firing a single round on the charge.

consider that the bolter's rapid fire is based on it's explosive power, that the bolt is it's own propellant, that one wound at 24 inches comes from the loss of explosive force compared to two wounds at 12 inches from the retained fuel. considering a bolter is basically a semi-automatic grenade launcher anyway, I doubt that many would be able to justify firing it in automatic. how much ammunition they carry is also arbitrary, as we don't have a firm understanding of what bolts are made of (they could be highly compressed atmospheric elements with some sort of catalyst making them near weightless to carry), and we don't know exactly how strong power armor can make you (oh yeah, 25% stronger at 3:4 for guardsmen.... which is about half the strength of a hive tyrant?).

I actually very much favor the premise of the marine's armor being able to somehow produce it's own ammunition, even if it takes a period of time to replenish as it gives some credence to the longer battles they supposedly participate in. Doubly so as I don't think khorne's legions are very concerned with maintaining supply lines.

I -HIGHLY- doubt that the armour produces it's own ammo. The backpack is a power unit, so chances of storage there are pretty nil being that it's full of cooling vents and mechanical doodads. I'm going to have to say that it's either an ammo storage in the Drop Pod, and they can replenish from those during/after the initial combat until the T-Hawks come down and set up an ammo depot.

That or the "Infinite ammo because I said so" theory.

Anyway, game mechanics can't really be used to discern 'real time' situations. Of course autocannons aren't firing 2 rounds per turn. Because nothing happens in 'turns'. In reality, the cannon would keep firing. But you're not going to sit there and constantly roll dice while your opponent tries to keep up with saves. Unless you wanted to be a jerk

Kilkrazy wrote:

ph34r wrote:Ah, it all becomes clear. The people living in the real 40k universe know that there is no such thing as space marines. GW simply has woven an extremely elaborate ruse to convince us earth humans that space marines exist in the 40k universe when they do in fact not exist.

BUT if you are still serious, then it is amazing how the thoughts of the characters are made known to the citizens of the Imperium as well. I doubt they write in a diary. Maybe the inquisitors that have seen space marines are made up too. Maybe the inquisition is made up. Maybe black ships come and take people away and just dump them into suns. Maybe there is no emperor. Maybe we are all in the matrix.

If it is true that there are under 1 million space marines the vast majority of the population have probably never seen one except in movies, or maybe distantly at a parade on a rare state occasion.

It is actors' job to be in movies and convince the audience about the thoughts they are supposedly thinking.

It is authors' job to write novels and convince the reader about the situations and thoughts of the characters in them.

If there are lots of space marines so lots of ordinary people have met them and spoken to them in person, it rather disproves that they are incredibly rare super soldiers.

Given their frequent appearances on the battlefield, and not particularly spectacular performance, it seems unlikely they are really as rare and special as Imperial fluff would like us to believe.

I have never seen it implied that space marines are promoted to the general population of 40k. Rather everyone always seems amazed when they see one.

Are you really saying that 40k books about space marines are written, in 40k, by the government, to leak to the general population to convince them that space marines are awesome? That the books that black library writes are actually clever lies, not intended to be taken seriously? And the same for every single mention of space marines ever. That just makes no sense at all.

There are not "lots" of space marines so that ordinary people meet them all the time.

They do not perform super special awesome on the tabletop. They do in the fluff. A chapter of 1000 marines destroyed a necron world engine, and other such ridiculous stories. With the amount of assumptions of extended complex lies by GW you make, you could say that anything at all in 40k does not exist. And that is just silly. The same reasoning could be used to *anything* *anything*.

If it is true that there are under 1 million space marines the vast majority of the population have probably never seen one except in movies, or maybe distantly at a parade on a rare state occasion.

It is actors' job to be in movies and convince the audience about the thoughts they are supposedly thinking.

It is authors' job to write novels and convince the reader about the situations and thoughts of the characters in them.

If there are lots of space marines so lots of ordinary people have met them and spoken to them in person, it rather disproves that they are incredibly rare super soldiers.

Given their frequent appearances on the battlefield, and not particularly spectacular performance, it seems unlikely they are really as rare and special as Imperial fluff would like us to believe.

Conspiracy thinking by all means but you happen to take it to tin-foil levels.
Add soem logic to the conspiracies and it will all make more sense.

I can easily take your level of counter conspiracy thinking and use it to claim that the wold is FLAT!
We see lies on television and all the school books are pure propaganda and so few people have actually been there that that is no proof, besides they are all actors so the government, I mean the inquisition (illuminati) just tell them and the CGI guys what to say and show so we, the masses keep thinking the world is round, space travel is possible and in general get a feeling of hope for the future so that further taxation doesnt make us violent.

The world is flat and it is for our own best in keeping us doctile and there is nothing you can say to make me change my mind since I´ll just reply that you only see "actors" on televosion and there is no proof since the people that truly understand celestian physics and math are to few and to well paid to lie.

See, its not as fun anymore when it goes to tin-foil heaven levels

I -HIGHLY- doubt that the armour produces it's own ammo. The backpack is a power unit, so chances of storage there are pretty nil being that it's full of cooling vents and mechanical doodads. I'm going to have to say that it's either an ammo storage in the Drop Pod, and they can replenish from those during/after the initial combat until the T-Hawks come down and set up an ammo depot.

Claiming that is as lame as using "magic" to justify something that is not supported by ANY fluff what so ever or even worse, using "magic" to completely disregard the laws of physics like bullets weight nothing and take no space, tehy are simply made out of freaking bosons that turn into fermions in the magical weapons magazine.

No wonder there still exist people today that seriously think the world is flat (which it by the way IS, all you see on tv are lies *mwahaha*)

Pyriel- wrote:Claiming that is as lame as using "magic" to justify something that is not supported by ANY fluff what so ever or even worse, using "magic" to completely disregard the laws of physics like bullets weight nothing and take no space, tehy are simply made out of freaking bosons that turn into fermions in the magical weapons magazine.

No wonder there still exist people today that seriously think the world is flat (which it by the way IS, all you see on tv are lies *mwahaha*)

Well, if it's so lame then by all means, show us the fluff that states where they would store additional ammo during an invasion. Seeing how you act like you have the true answer.

I'd like to know how having a compartment in each pod for a few extra mags, in addition to those the Marine is carrying on him when he makes planetfall (Because going into battle without them would make you dumber than the Sergeant from the first DoW intro), is "Lame". I never claimed that it was Fluff, so there's no need to get all butthurt just because you don't think it's plausible. Personally, I think Marines would be stupid not to have some sort of ammo compartment for a handful of extra mags. If you disagree, fine. It's not breaking physics, and it's not like I'm saying that Drop Pods just have bottomless ammo storage. But thanks for looking like a dill-hole on a speculative topic.

Besides, I never said they wouldn't still run out, only that they would be smart to have storage for a couple refills once they've expended their carry-on.