What equipment should a Space Marine carry into battle?

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**BrotherOfBone**

Wyzilla wrote:
BrotherOfBone wrote:
Kojiro wrote:
What marines should have is a small, back up energy weapon. Bolters are fine weapons but the idea a highly mobile strike force can always be resupplied from orbit is just silly. Loss of orbital superiority, reasonable AA or simply not being under an open sky can easily make resupply difficult. You think the orbital defense control centers *aren't* buried under a mile of concrete? That the power generation station isn't under considerable armour? If you can't put firepower in there you defiitely can't put a drop pod.

Sure, orbital resupply will have its uses but marines are the tip of the spear, the first on scene. The potential for unkown enemy assets to cut them off is ever present and with that in mind they should be equippped as such. As much ammunition as does not impair their combat ability. Further to this though I submit that the core components of a lasgun- sans firing and power source- could easily be incorporated into a marines armour. Mounted on say the wrist or side of the helmet. fired by thought. This would, from his armours atomic stack power supply, give him virtually unlimited ammunition. It would also provide another weapon that could be used up close and a viable alternative to killing lesser swarm type enemies when bolts are starting to look scarce. There's also no reason these couldn't be hot shot quality weapons- we are talkng about marines here.

Point being if you're going into combat with a nigh unlimited energy source it only makes sense to carry an energy weapon as a last resort.

A backup energy weapon? Marines have been known to run out of power, for example in the 5th Edition Demons codex there's a short story about a Marine who is running from the named Hound of Khorne (I forget the name of the lil' guy) and runs out of power, so having a backup energy weapon which drains your available energy which you require to operate your life-sustaining armour is not a good idea, especially a Hot-shot, which uses up massive energy reserves.

That's probably an outlier given that Space Marines are powered by nuclear fusion.

How much fusion material do they have, though? And, have you seen the power packs Stormtroopers have to carry to fire more than a few bursts of a Hot-shot?

**Wyzilla**

BrotherOfBone wrote:
Wyzilla wrote:
BrotherOfBone wrote:
Kojiro wrote:
What marines should have is a small, back up energy weapon. Bolters are fine weapons but the idea a highly mobile strike force can always be resupplied from orbit is just silly. Loss of orbital superiority, reasonable AA or simply not being under an open sky can easily make resupply difficult. You think the orbital defense control centers *aren't* buried under a mile of concrete? That the power generation station isn't under considerable armour? If you can't put firepower in there you defiitely can't put a drop pod.

Sure, orbital resupply will have its uses but marines are the tip of the spear, the first on scene. The potential for unkown enemy assets to cut them off is ever present and with that in mind they should be equippped as such. As much ammunition as does not impair their combat ability. Further to this though I submit that the core components of a lasgun- sans firing and power source- could easily be incorporated into a marines armour. Mounted on say the wrist or side of the helmet. fired by thought. This would, from his armours atomic stack power supply, give him virtually unlimited ammunition. It would also provide another weapon that could be used up close and a viable alternative to killing lesser swarm type enemies when bolts are starting to look scarce. There's also no reason these couldn't be hot shot quality weapons- we are talkng about marines here.

Point being if you're going into combat with a nigh unlimited energy source it only makes sense to carry an energy weapon as a last resort.

A backup energy weapon? Marines have been known to run out of power, for example in the 5th Edition Demons codex there's a short story about a Marine who is running from the named Hound of Khorne (I forget the name of the lil' guy) and runs out of power, so having a backup energy weapon which drains your available energy which you require to operate your life-sustaining armour is not a good idea, especially a Hot-shot, which uses up massive energy reserves.

That's probably an outlier given that Space Marines are powered by nuclear fusion.

How much fusion material do they have, though? And, have you seen the power packs Stormtroopers have to carry to fire more than a few bursts of a Hot-shot?

I don't think you understand just how much energy fusion power generates. A stable miniature star would roughly generate around enough energy to power the continental united states IIRC, and the only fuel you'd need is hydrogen, which is literally everywhere. The only thing more numerous than hydrogen is theoretical dark matter. A fusion reactor is as close as you can get to free, unlimited energy. All you'd have to do is provide occasional maintenance.