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Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





Inertialess drives aren't unique to Necrons. Eldar Darkstar fighters use them too. What we have about Necron FTL isn't clear anyway - where does it say that it is faster than Warp Drives explicitly? (note that Necrons crossing the galaxy in the blink of an eye could now be attributed to Dolmens)

I don't know why you are jumping to such a hyperbolic stance of 'burning all their models' either. My distaste for that part of the background (which IMO Ward improved somewhat) doesn't extend to other people or their models (and loads of Necron models look pretty sweet IMO).

I actually like the concept of the race, but the execution of the background was flawed, though not overly so as it was to do with the C'Tan and Necron obsession with the Warp, the central aspect of the setting anyway.

What I take exception to is the claim that Ork and Eldar backgrounds are removed if you remove the Necrons. They are not; if Necrons were never invented the Eldar and Ork background would largely be similar to what it is today.

Anyway, we digress. Even if we take the C'Tan at face value, it is easier to overlook something like that as it is far removed from our real world expectations. The Lasgun and other similar projectile weapons are far closer to home, so jar more glaringly when made 'impossible'.

Physics has room because the setting is loosely based in reality, and Physics predicts a good number of ways we can expect things to behave.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/07/16 15:18:58


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Temple Prime

The Necrons have largely taken over the role as "Lovecraftian horrors" now that Chaos has become a more firmly Abrahamic sort of evil, dropping a lot of the formerly lovecraftian traits they used to have as they evolved.

The central aspect of 40k in any case, in my opinion, is the death of goodness and hope for anything better. Because even the very emotion of hope feeds a god whom by any reasonable standards, is unrelentingly evil.

Every corner you look, humanity and other reasonable species are doomed in the face of the unreasonable tide of destruction and enslavement.

The Tau are too small to change anything and are doomed the moment one of the big unreasonable factions devotes any serious effort to their destruction.

The Eldar are all going to die and are too bound by their own pride to change that and can be wiped away by a serious effort from the Necrons, Orks, Chaos, or Tyranids.

Humanity is crumbling and decaying as the Imperium enters it's time of ending, and is doomed due to the concerted push by the Orks, Chaos, Necrons, and Tyranids.

This will leave only the truly evil factions as the last vestige of what could be vaguely called goodness dies and only unrelenting horribleness is left to rule.

Physics wise, this isn't mass effect where there's only really a single cheat in physics, this is where the rules of our reality are at most a guideline to be vaguely listened to, and at least to be completely tossed out in favor of over the top awesome.

Yes a lasgun would need dozens or even hundreds of megajoules to do what it does and slapping the law of conservation in the face to get the easy recharge ability it has. But honestly, do you care?

And if you think this is terrible and the worst disregard of physics ever. Lemme tell ya 'bout Strike Legion.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/07/16 15:26:58


 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Think of a daemon incursion like a fart you don't quite trust... you could either toot a little puff of air, bellow a great effluvium, or utterly sh*t your pants and cry as it floods down your leg.



 
   
Made in gb
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I find the (old) C'Tan kind of fail in that regard as they cared too much for mortal concerns (maybe they are more like Hastur, but that's not Lovecraft directly). The old ones may be more of that role (ironically) as they could have been viewing the races with the same indifference as someone looking at bacteria on an agar plate.

If I had written it, I would probably have had the Old ones and C'Tan fight a giant cosmic battle, but eventually both were consumed by their own creations in some way. And that's not too far from how it is now.

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Temple Prime

 Daba wrote:
I find the (old) C'Tan kind of fail in that regard as they cared too much for mortal concerns (maybe they are more like Hastur, but that's not Lovecraft directly). The old ones may be more of that role (ironically) as they could have been viewing the races with the same indifference as someone looking at bacteria on an agar plate.

If I had written it, I would probably have had the Old ones and C'Tan fight a giant cosmic battle, but eventually both were consumed by their own creations in some way. And that's not too far from how it is now.

The Necrons did win the War in heaven, given that they and the C'tan slaughtered all the Old ones before they themselves turned on the C'tan with "universe shaking weapons". Out of all the Old One's creations, I'd say only the Eldar and Slann haven't gone way off the rails of their original purpose, and even then for the self proclaimed heirs to all that the Old Ones left behind the Eldar do a spectacularly bad job at it.

And the Slann...well they just sit there in the background minding their own business.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/07/16 15:34:39


 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Think of a daemon incursion like a fart you don't quite trust... you could either toot a little puff of air, bellow a great effluvium, or utterly sh*t your pants and cry as it floods down your leg.



 
   
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killeen TX

 Melissia wrote:
Stronger than the modern assault rifle. A single shot can kill a space marine, too, if he isn't wearing his helmet like a good little boy.



I agree with this: Fluff wise. However, in game play, it is sort of as powerfull as a marshmellow gun.

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trying to explain thigns in a sci-fi that's over the top kills the setting.

It is what it is and that's that.
/Thread.
   
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Seneca Nation of Indians

 Kain wrote:

Then allow me to change my answer.

This is the same setting where Evil Star Vampires can kill you with particles not allowed to interact with normal matter, make the equivalent of a messy room into an instant death trap, and play pinball with a black hole until an entire solar system is destroyed.


Who get retconned so hard that their teeth rattle every edition. Due to the changes a whole lot of stuff that happened before that point would no longer have happened. Necron starships in particular have been altered so much so frequently that you can pretty much write off anything they did in space pre 5th, because odds are their ships don't do that anymore. From the sound of things IA 12 was written as a hybrid of the 5e and BFG fluff.

Necrons are supposed to be 'sufficiently advanced aliens', which is a fairly common scifi trope. This is where you can play the 100 million years of alien super science card. With eldar you can blame the fact their technology is partially based on the warp.

The problem is that human tech is based on human understanding of the universe. Because they use revolvers still in the grim derpness of the far future. They use a knock off of a CZ-75. They use shotguns. They use the bolter which is based on a real weapon. The problem with the lasgun is that it's battery has to be based on the warp, because there's no in setting way to explain it. It's literally producing more energy than it can be taking in from these sources. That's why the 'recharges in sunlight' thing got dropped is that even Matt Ward thought that sounded too unbelievable and stupid.


It's not trying to explain it, it's thinking about it at all that kills the setting. Even the tiniest amount of thought or brain usage makes 40k crumple, but no one ever wants to talk about it. Like X-Men.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/07/16 16:31:06



Fate is in heaven, armor is on the chest, accomplishment is in the feet. - Nagao Kagetora
 
   
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 Kain wrote:

The Necrons did win the War in heaven, given that they and the C'tan slaughtered all the Old ones before they themselves turned on the C'tan with "universe shaking weapons". Out of all the Old One's creations, I'd say only the Eldar and Slann haven't gone way off the rails of their original purpose, and even then for the self proclaimed heirs to all that the Old Ones left behind the Eldar do a spectacularly bad job at it.

And the Slann...well they just sit there in the background minding their own business.


Surviving 60 million years, that is longer than anyone else; I wouldn't really call a failure, especially as the uncontested masters of the tail end of that.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/07/16 16:52:34


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Temple Prime

 BaronIveagh wrote:
 Kain wrote:

Then allow me to change my answer.

This is the same setting where Evil Star Vampires can kill you with particles not allowed to interact with normal matter, make the equivalent of a messy room into an instant death trap, and play pinball with a black hole until an entire solar system is destroyed.


Who get retconned so hard that their teeth rattle every edition. Due to the changes a whole lot of stuff that happened before that point would no longer have happened. Necron starships in particular have been altered so much so frequently that you can pretty much write off anything they did in space pre 5th, because odds are their ships don't do that anymore. From the sound of things IA 12 was written as a hybrid of the 5e and BFG fluff.

Necrons are supposed to be 'sufficiently advanced aliens', which is a fairly common scifi trope. This is where you can play the 100 million years of alien super science card. With eldar you can blame the fact their technology is partially based on the warp.

The problem is that human tech is based on human understanding of the universe. Because they use revolvers still in the grim derpness of the far future. They use a knock off of a CZ-75. They use shotguns. They use the bolter which is based on a real weapon. The problem with the lasgun is that it's battery has to be based on the warp, because there's no in setting way to explain it. It's literally producing more energy than it can be taking in from these sources. That's why the 'recharges in sunlight' thing got dropped is that even Matt Ward thought that sounded too unbelievable and stupid.


It's not trying to explain it, it's thinking about it at all that kills the setting. Even the tiniest amount of thought or brain usage makes 40k crumple, but no one ever wants to talk about it. Like X-Men.
\
Actually what I just mentioned was all 5e stuff. The void dragon who fought the emperor to a near standstill?

Yeah, just a shard now.

Ward says that full power C'tan could destroy entire solar systems by just thinking about it and that it took a weapon of "universal" scale to shard them, and mind you the celestial orrery, which could destroy the entire galaxy, is merely described as "galactic."

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Think of a daemon incursion like a fart you don't quite trust... you could either toot a little puff of air, bellow a great effluvium, or utterly sh*t your pants and cry as it floods down your leg.



 
   
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Where does it say universal scale? All it says is they "focussed the unimaginable energies of the living universe into weapons too mighty for even the C'tan to endure" which could mean anything. The only thing about the universe (as a whole) is that they focussed energy from it.

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Temple Prime

 Daba wrote:
Where does it say universal scale? All it says is they "focussed the unimaginable energies of the living universe into weapons too mighty for even the C'tan to endure" which could mean anything. The only thing about the universe (as a whole) is that they focussed energy from it.

Hrmm...ah that's what I get for trusting spacebattles.com

Still, the Necrontyr military tech is leagues above anyone else's which is probably how they won the war.

After all, a mere two million Necrons utterly wrecked a Sabbat crusade sized force in the battle for Orpheus.

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Think of a daemon incursion like a fart you don't quite trust... you could either toot a little puff of air, bellow a great effluvium, or utterly sh*t your pants and cry as it floods down your leg.



 
   
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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
If I recall correctly, the old 3rd Ed. Guard Codex said that the normal power setting was 17 "megathules" which of course is a random-word from the fluff.

If we make the (admittedly dubious) step of equating "megathules" to "megajoules" then that would place the mid-range setting on a Cadian lasrifle at about the same energy as the muzzle energy of a .50 BMG round.

Don't also forget that the lasguns can be dialed in power, as well as firing substantially more rounds with substantially less recoil from a substantially smaller platform with substantially better accuracy than a .50 BMG rifle.

They're actually quite scary weapons IMO.


EDIT: WAIT OH HOLY feth - the .50 BMG only outputs 17 KILOJOULES of energy. So either a lasgun is three orders of magnitude more powerful than a .50 BMG or "megathules" is a meaningless word.

Probably the latter. My bad. Sorry lads.

17 megajoules is more energy than a 120mm tank gun used in modern tanks. Best suggestion is that it is simply made up, is absolute powerwank, or the lasgun is a really inefficient weapon, which loses energy to diffusion at an astonishing rate. The latter would be pretty funny. At point blank, a lasgun can punch through a tank, at 40 feet it can punch through power armour, at 100 feet is can't even punch through flak armour.
   
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Temple Prime

Buttons wrote:
 Unit1126PLL wrote:
If I recall correctly, the old 3rd Ed. Guard Codex said that the normal power setting was 17 "megathules" which of course is a random-word from the fluff.

If we make the (admittedly dubious) step of equating "megathules" to "megajoules" then that would place the mid-range setting on a Cadian lasrifle at about the same energy as the muzzle energy of a .50 BMG round.

Don't also forget that the lasguns can be dialed in power, as well as firing substantially more rounds with substantially less recoil from a substantially smaller platform with substantially better accuracy than a .50 BMG rifle.

They're actually quite scary weapons IMO.


EDIT: WAIT OH HOLY feth - the .50 BMG only outputs 17 KILOJOULES of energy. So either a lasgun is three orders of magnitude more powerful than a .50 BMG or "megathules" is a meaningless word.

Probably the latter. My bad. Sorry lads.

17 megajoules is more energy than a 120mm tank gun used in modern tanks. Best suggestion is that it is simply made up, is absolute powerwank, or the lasgun is a really inefficient weapon, which loses energy to diffusion at an astonishing rate. The latter would be pretty funny. At point blank, a lasgun can punch through a tank, at 40 feet it can punch through power armour, at 100 feet is can't even punch through flak armour.


Lasers are an astonishingly inefficient kill mechanism.

You'd need hundreds of times more energy with a laser to do what a bullet can.

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Think of a daemon incursion like a fart you don't quite trust... you could either toot a little puff of air, bellow a great effluvium, or utterly sh*t your pants and cry as it floods down your leg.



 
   
Made in gb
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 Kain wrote:


Lasers are an astonishingly inefficient kill mechanism.

You'd need hundreds of times more energy with a laser to do what a bullet can.

Apparently, it's 'possible' with a pulse laser, which will actually effectively convert the electrical energy from the power source into the beam to the target.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sidearmenergy.php

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 Kain wrote:
Buttons wrote:
 Unit1126PLL wrote:
If I recall correctly, the old 3rd Ed. Guard Codex said that the normal power setting was 17 "megathules" which of course is a random-word from the fluff.

If we make the (admittedly dubious) step of equating "megathules" to "megajoules" then that would place the mid-range setting on a Cadian lasrifle at about the same energy as the muzzle energy of a .50 BMG round.

Don't also forget that the lasguns can be dialed in power, as well as firing substantially more rounds with substantially less recoil from a substantially smaller platform with substantially better accuracy than a .50 BMG rifle.

They're actually quite scary weapons IMO.


EDIT: WAIT OH HOLY feth - the .50 BMG only outputs 17 KILOJOULES of energy. So either a lasgun is three orders of magnitude more powerful than a .50 BMG or "megathules" is a meaningless word.

Probably the latter. My bad. Sorry lads.

17 megajoules is more energy than a 120mm tank gun used in modern tanks. Best suggestion is that it is simply made up, is absolute powerwank, or the lasgun is a really inefficient weapon, which loses energy to diffusion at an astonishing rate. The latter would be pretty funny. At point blank, a lasgun can punch through a tank, at 40 feet it can punch through power armour, at 100 feet is can't even punch through flak armour.


Lasers are an astonishingly inefficient kill mechanism.

You'd need hundreds of times more energy with a laser to do what a bullet can.


But lasers hit instantly, or near as damnit. I wonder what a whole life energy-per-hit assessment would come up with considering all the wasted energy dropped into bullets that never hit anything

Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!

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 Flinty wrote:


But lasers hit instantly, or near as damnit. I wonder what a whole life energy-per-hit assessment would come up with considering all the wasted energy dropped into bullets that never hit anything


A laser 'hits' instantly, but has to stay on target a lot longer to transfer energy to the target.

To make a comparison based on factory energy consumption: the power required to charge a lasgun power pack once could power the Springfield Arsenal for a little over 6 weeks of around the clock shifts.


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Seattle

... it should also be noted that a lasgun does not use "megajoules", which is a real-world unit of measurement, but "megathules", which is not.

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 Psienesis wrote:
... it should also be noted that a lasgun does not use "megajoules", which is a real-world unit of measurement, but "megathules", which is not.

It would need megajoule level energy output to replicate the feats it does. Does the term "calcing" mean nothing to you?

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Think of a daemon incursion like a fart you don't quite trust... you could either toot a little puff of air, bellow a great effluvium, or utterly sh*t your pants and cry as it floods down your leg.



 
   
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Further it would need even more power than that stored to fire 30 odd times on a single pack.


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Seattle

For all we know, a megathule is a thousand megajoules. We don't understand the basic science the Imperium has built its lasgun on. It may be that the AdMech discovered some new element/material/law of physics, in M7, that permits them to do this.

We, in M3, are too stupid to understand how the AdMech makes it work. It is enough that they did.

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 Kain wrote:
 Psienesis wrote:
... it should also be noted that a lasgun does not use "megajoules", which is a real-world unit of measurement, but "megathules", which is not.

It would need megajoule level energy output to replicate the feats it does. Does the term "calcing" mean nothing to you?

What is a feat?

Does it clash with the description in Codex: IG / Main Rulebook / 2nd edition Wargear book?

Because novel authors are unreliable and inconsistent with each other (and often themselves). They may be a good read, but I would be really wary of using it as a guide on how 40k or anything works.

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I wonder though would it be possible to make a more reasonable lasgun at this time? something that can punch a hole the size of a fist into flesh?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
 Scott-S6 wrote:
And yet another thread is hijacked for Unit to ask for the same advice, receive the same answers and make the same excuses.

Oh my god I'm becoming martel.
Send help!

 
   
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 Daba wrote:
 Kain wrote:
 Psienesis wrote:
... it should also be noted that a lasgun does not use "megajoules", which is a real-world unit of measurement, but "megathules", which is not.

It would need megajoule level energy output to replicate the feats it does. Does the term "calcing" mean nothing to you?

What is a feat?

Does it clash with the description in Codex: IG / Main Rulebook / 2nd edition Wargear book?

Because novel authors are unreliable and inconsistent with each other (and often themselves). They may be a good read, but I would be really wary of using it as a guide on how 40k or anything works.

A feat is something in a book that is then analyzed, studied, and then number crunched.

And everything in 40k is equally canon.

Of course, calcing out a multimelta's power after it fried a bunker gave it terajoule (little boy/fatman sized nuclear bomb) level yields.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/07/16 21:39:05


 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Think of a daemon incursion like a fart you don't quite trust... you could either toot a little puff of air, bellow a great effluvium, or utterly sh*t your pants and cry as it floods down your leg.



 
   
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 Desubot wrote:
I wonder though would it be possible to make a more reasonable lasgun at this time? something that can punch a hole the size of a fist into flesh?


Theoretically possible, although such a thing would be inefficient. We can achieve the same effect with a normal bullet. Why waste research time and effort figuring out how to do what really amounts to a different way of killing someone. Shot with a bullet or fried by a laser is equally dead. So the laser would have to offer an advantage over the bullet.

The lasgun relieves logistics by eliminating the need to transport billions of rounds of ammunition. Instead a few portable generators will do. Leaving room for more soldiers, tanks, or other larger more valuable ammunition. Like battlecannon shells.

This advantage doesn't exist with current, or projected, laser weaponry. Transporting bullets isn't a huge concern currently. So lasers are stuck where they are useful, shooting down missiles, marking targets for guided bombs, etc...




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 Kain wrote:
 Daba wrote:
 Kain wrote:
 Psienesis wrote:
... it should also be noted that a lasgun does not use "megajoules", which is a real-world unit of measurement, but "megathules", which is not.

It would need megajoule level energy output to replicate the feats it does. Does the term "calcing" mean nothing to you?

What is a feat?

Does it clash with the description in Codex: IG / Main Rulebook / 2nd edition Wargear book?

Because novel authors are unreliable and inconsistent with each other (and often themselves). They may be a good read, but I would be really wary of using it as a guide on how 40k or anything works.

A feat is something in a book that is then analyzed, studied, and then number crunched.

And everything in 40k is equally canon.

Of course, calcing out a multimelta's power after it fried a bunker gave it terajoule (little boy/fatman sized nuclear bomb) level yields.

Yes, it's equally canon, but it's an unreliable source.

So you have novels that are canon but also wrong, due to unreliable narrators or in-universe perspective.

That's the 40k we have.

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You can take anything you want as canon, I just go with lol biggatons to annoy fans of other franchises.

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Think of a daemon incursion like a fart you don't quite trust... you could either toot a little puff of air, bellow a great effluvium, or utterly sh*t your pants and cry as it floods down your leg.



 
   
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 Psienesis wrote:
For all we know, a megathule is a thousand megajoules. We don't understand the basic science the Imperium has built its lasgun on. It may be that the AdMech discovered some new element/material/law of physics, in M7, that permits them to do this.

We, in M3, are too stupid to understand how the AdMech makes it work. It is enough that they did.


This is the biggest pile of horsegak anyone on this thread has yet spewed, and is frankly insulting to anyone who ever passed high school science.

We know very well how lasers work. And the fluff makes it very clear the the lasgun is, in fact, a laser.

We also know, at this time, what the vaporization point of human flesh is. So, we know how it works, and what it has to do, This makes finding how much power it has to have easy, and one thing that 40k makes clear is that conservation of mass and energy are still in effect (unless the warp is involved).

Since we can all agree that one thing the lasgun is supposed to universally do, regardless of writer, is make a hole in a person, we're using that.

The problem with the idea that there is a new element/law/etc is they use it for absolutely nothing else. Lasgun powercells are creating energy out of thin air. Yet this technology is not use in, for example, tank engines, or aircraft, or cybernetics, or starships. Yet the small electrical current in a human body is able to charge one enough, in 24 hours, according to FFG, that it can power a 220 megajoule laser. We know that a lasgun is at least that, since that's about the bare minimum to burn through human flesh in the tiny timeframe that the laser is hitting them,.

So why use plasma drives, etc, when you have amateiral that lets you get nearly the equivalent of the output of a nuclear reactor out of a single human being? It's not because the Imperium places any value on human life, that's for certain.


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Same way that the stormraven flies probably.

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Think of a daemon incursion like a fart you don't quite trust... you could either toot a little puff of air, bellow a great effluvium, or utterly sh*t your pants and cry as it floods down your leg.



 
   
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 Kain wrote:
Same way that the stormraven flies probably.


I attribute that whole mess to GW's inability to make realistic minis in general.


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Seattle

 BaronIveagh wrote:
 Psienesis wrote:
For all we know, a megathule is a thousand megajoules. We don't understand the basic science the Imperium has built its lasgun on. It may be that the AdMech discovered some new element/material/law of physics, in M7, that permits them to do this.

We, in M3, are too stupid to understand how the AdMech makes it work. It is enough that they did.


This is the biggest pile of horsegak anyone on this thread has yet spewed, and is frankly insulting to anyone who ever passed high school science.

We know very well how lasers work. And the fluff makes it very clear the the lasgun is, in fact, a laser.

We also know, at this time, what the vaporization point of human flesh is. So, we know how it works, and what it has to do, This makes finding how much power it has to have easy, and one thing that 40k makes clear is that conservation of mass and energy are still in effect (unless the warp is involved).

Since we can all agree that one thing the lasgun is supposed to universally do, regardless of writer, is make a hole in a person, we're using that.

The problem with the idea that there is a new element/law/etc is they use it for absolutely nothing else. Lasgun powercells are creating energy out of thin air. Yet this technology is not use in, for example, tank engines, or aircraft, or cybernetics, or starships. Yet the small electrical current in a human body is able to charge one enough, in 24 hours, according to FFG, that it can power a 220 megajoule laser. We know that a lasgun is at least that, since that's about the bare minimum to burn through human flesh in the tiny timeframe that the laser is hitting them,.

So why use plasma drives, etc, when you have amateiral that lets you get nearly the equivalent of the output of a nuclear reactor out of a single human being? It's not because the Imperium places any value on human life, that's for certain.


Except it doesn't at all work the way that we think that it does. Lasguns are, one, not beam weapons. They are, at least in some patterns, pulse weapons. It fires a "bolt" of laser energy, not a beam. It should be noted that lasweapons are capable of burst and automatic fire (and not just the multi-barreled multilas) and also have kinetic recoil . Two, las shots are known to have kinetic force behind their heat force, as demonstrated in a number of sources that have targets knocked down, but not injured, by the las shot. Three, las weapons provide very little cauterization to the injuries caused by them. At the point of impact, certainly. Radiating out from that? Flash-cooked flesh, blood turned instantly to steam, great, gory chunks blown out of you by the rapidly-expanding gases that was the water in your flesh.

And you're right, the IoM is using some space-age material that somehow does all of this in a case roughly the size of a small book. This is why we are too stupid to understand how this happens, we don't know how they are creating the energy to do this. We're also not even sure if what *we* classify as a laser is what the AdMech classifies as a laser in this usage. For all we know, it's more like the blasters of Star Wars, which are technically plasma weapons.

It is best to be a pessimist. You are usually right and, when you're wrong, you're pleasantly surprised. 
   
 
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