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Yes bolter unlike some needs a ammunition supply to keep fighting, its complex, ammo is harder to make but as a weapon it as in storm of iron can blow a normal humans body to bloddy chunks.

Very good at what it does, brutal powerful weapon for killing stuff when it absolutely needs to die.

 dementedwombat wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
I'd agree with Miko, but I'd put the astartes bolter over the pulse rifle for damage and reliability, as when wielded by space marines, it doesn't tend to suffer any terrible malfunctions, and can be loaded with specialist ammo that almost make it as lethal as a gaus flayer. Might simply be due to Astartes and Sisters pleasing their bolters better with more care to the machine spirit. Or they're just better equipped.

(Would we really be survived if the Astartes and Sisters got the best performing bolters that are both relics and the best functioning ones off the assembly lines, and Guardsmen only get the ones that fail their standards?)

I will disagree heavily with the reliability. For this I cite the necromunda rulebook. In its armory section bolt weapons are explicitly called out as being a massive PITA to maintain and as such only the richest gangs can afford them because they're so temperamental. They are then given (I believe) the best chance to jam out of any weapon that isn't something like a plasma gun. Certainly very bad anyway.

I would argue that underhive gangs much more adequately represent the conditions most 40k forces would fight under than regular space marines. The average space marine has both the devotion and time to ritually service his weapons regularly. The average ganger will probably give it a spit and polish if the boss is going to be around (or he wants to impress the ladies with his gleaming new bolt gun). Reliability isn't just about combat performance, it's about how much time and effort has to be spent on the weapon to keep it in fighting condition.

That said, I will admit that I don't think GW has ever given an official Necromunda statline for pulse weapons, so I don't know how they rate their reliability in comparison.

But we aren't judging Guardsmen bolters, we're judging the specially maintained ones utilized by the Astartes that gain special love from Techpriests. Which don't jam at all. And as for killing power, no, Bolters vastly outperform Pulse Rifles, and I'll have to check a friend to see if they have the quote, but I remember Power Armor tanking Pulse Rifle shots with little difficulty. They're certainly better than lasguns or shootas, but certainly below bolters and Dark Eldar rifles (IIRC are those dark matter rifles).
Except in Space Hulk >.<

It should also be noted that the the gold bit on the end of pulse rifles and carbines is a gyro-stabilizer which automatically adjusts to allow easier aiming and compensates for any jittering or twitching by the user.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
It should also be noted that the the gold bit on the end of pulse rifles and carbines is a gyro-stabilizer which automatically adjusts to allow easier aiming and compensates for any jittering or twitching by the user.

Which again, is a nonfactor for Astartes. The negatives of a bolter don't threaten Astartes in any way and are far more lethal than pulse rifles, and they rarely experience any mechanical jamming due to the practical fetish they have for maintaining their gear. Pulse Rifles may be a superior weapon for guardsmen and tau, but it won't do much at all for an Astartes. You're better of just taking the Tau railgun and making it fully automatic with a large magazine/belt fed with a power source.

That's kind of what I'm saying. Reliability isn't just measured by how little a weapon jams. Another factor is how much work needs to be done to that weapon to keep it from jamming.

If you're slaving over a bolter for hours of rigorous and technical maintenance to make it have a 100% fire rate, I would argue that it is a significantly less reliable weapon than (say) an autogun that can constantly have a 90%+ fire rate with 15 minutes basic brush down after each fight.

The bolter is an amazing elite weapon because it has special ammo and quite good killing power. It's a horrible basic weapon because it is complicated to make and even worse to keep shooting.

Also I would like a quote on bolt weapons "vastly" outperforming pulse weapons. I will admit that in the game stats bolters are underpowered for what they should theoretically be doing, but the pulse weapon is a mass produced, fully automatic, plasma gun. You're literally flinging bits of stars at the enemy.

Bolters are not stronger than pulse weapons.

 dementedwombat wrote:
That's kind of what I'm saying. Reliability isn't just measured by how little a weapon jams. Another factor is how much work needs to be done to that weapon to keep it from jamming.

If you're slaving over a bolter for hours of rigorous and technical maintenance to make it have a 100% fire rate, I would argue that it is a significantly less reliable weapon than (say) an autogun that can constantly have a 90%+ fire rate with 15 minutes basic brush down after each fight.

The bolter is an amazing elite weapon because it has special ammo and quite good killing power. It's a horrible basic weapon because it is complicated to make and even worse to keep shooting.

Also I would like a quote on bolt weapons "vastly" outperforming pulse weapons. I will admit that in the game stats bolters are underpowered for what they should theoretically be doing, but the pulse weapon is a mass produced, fully automatic, plasma gun. You're literally flinging bits of stars at the enemy.

They punch through power armor consistently and blow open torsos, even having the ability to completely blow up a person's body. Specialist ammunition like hellfire round will reduce you to a pair of legs and a pelvis, and IIRC there was even a corkscrew anti-infantry round that blew shrapnel around everywhere or something like it. Bolter's aren't just a gun like a pulse rifle, they're a warhead devliery system that can be loaded with a massive variety of specialist ammo depending on the job you need done, ranging from boarding ships to hunting down the bigger Tyanird "species". Autocannons are good, but incredibly unwiedly, so much they just flat out ditched them for Termiantors and use Assault Cannons instead.

And autoguns are useless in W40K. They don't do anything against power armor, hell even against Orks they're useless, it simply takes far to many bullets to get the job done. Bolters remain the perfect weapon to arm Astartes with, and outperform pulse rifles, lasguns, and Ork shootas. They're only outdone by Gauss Flayers. The only mistake made was the ditching Volkite guns, which in turn were superior to bolters from what I've heard.

“'I'll never forget the noise,' he said. 'It was like a thunderstorm had suddenly sprung into existence, and our first five ranks were completely cut down, dead to a man without even the time to scream. The enemy's bolts tore limbs from bodies or simply burst men apart like wet sacks. I turned to shout something, I forget what exactly, when I felt a searing pain in the back of my head and I fell over the remains of a man who'd had his entire left side blown off. It looked like he'd exploded from the inside out.” / Tales of Heresy, p.353 - The Last Church

“He swung his bolter up. His weapon had a gash in the metal of the foregrip, the legacy of a greenskin’s axe during Ullanor, a cosmetic mark Loken had told the armourers not to finish out. He began to fire, not on burst, but on single shot, feeling the weapon buck and kick against his palms. Bolter rounds were explosive penetrators. The men he hit popped like blisters, or shredded like bursting fruit. Pink mist fumed off every ruptured figure as it fell.” / Horus Rising, p.25 - **

“Barsabbas reacted as he was drilled, pressuring them witha wide spread of automatic fire. The sudden volley of crackling bolt shells cut out in a semicircle. Rounds so heavy that even their passing shockwave haemorrhaged the brains nd organs of any target in a one-metre radius.” / Blood Gorgons, p.245 - **

“Two more interex soldiers came into view, another sagittar and a gleve. Loken, still running, shot them both before they could react. The force of his bolts, both torso-shots, threw the soldiers back against the wall, where they slithered to the ground. Abaddon had been wrong. The armour of the interex warriors was masterful, not weak. His rounds hadn’t penetrated the chest plates of either of the men, but the sheer, concussive force of the impacts had taken them out of the fight, probably pulping their innards.” / Horus Rising, p.628 - **

“”Brother Vardus opened fire a second later, raking the rear Testudo with an extended burst of heavy bolter fire. The mass-reactive rounds exploded against the APC’s armoured hide and gouged craters in its solid tyres. Here and there the rounds found a seam in the armour plates and penetrated into the APC, wreaking bloody havoc on the men crammed within. The Testudo lurched to a stop, smoke pouring from the holes punched in its side.”
Pg.165 FA

Just gonna point out two things:

1) There is no fluff, at all, that states a Bolter of any sort is more powerful than a Pulse rifle. Certain rounds give them better armour penetration ability, or allow them to compete at the same range, but a standard Bolter is in no way more powerful than a Pulse Rifle.

2) You're assuming every Bolter uses specialised ammunition. This is not the case, and should not be treated as such. For every bolter using specialised ammunition (issued only, AFAIK, to Sternguard Veterans), there will be at least nine more that do not.

By fluff

1. Shuriken Catapult
Last. Everything else.

Shuriken Catapult actually has a great range, like that of a bolter, fires at over 1000 RPM and each shuriken can penetrate several inches of armour. Not only that, but in the hands of the Eldar it's energy efficient and reliable. Basically, being on the receiving end would be akin to becoming red/green/grey mist.

Well, if nothing else cones out of this conversation, I now know the origin of the term "bolter porn". I figure that any conversation you learn something in can't be too bad, but somehow I feel like I have came out the poorer in knowing it.

On the reliability front, even lasguns pale in comparison to gauss flayers - they work fine after millions of years in storage.

With the possible exception of range and accuracy (simply because I've never seen any description of how accurate flayers are), they seem to win in every possible respect. According to the rules pulse rifles might possibly be a bit better, but the background material makes gauss weapons seem much more powerful - pulse rifles at least leave an identifiable corpse.

Eh, what Wyzilla said.

I sure don't see Pulse Rifles knocking humans in PA around.

If Pulse Rifles were so efficient against PA, why did Tau even bother to develop the double Plasma Rifle build (In the fluff, actually) to combat Marines?

Pulse rifles are great, but not that good. They are superior to bolters, but even pulse rifles are not that effective against power armour. Nothing short of a plasma gun is going to be reliably effective against power armour.

Hellguns will do it...

>.>
<.<

*poofs away*

But that's not a basic weapon, now is it?

For the Assault Brigade list, it is

Well we still have better weapons for killing you guys .

 Perfect Organism wrote:
On the reliability front, even lasguns pale in comparison to gauss flayers - they work fine after millions of years in storage.

With the possible exception of range and accuracy (simply because I've never seen any description of how accurate flayers are), they seem to win in every possible respect. According to the rules pulse rifles might possibly be a bit better, but the background material makes gauss weapons seem much more powerful - pulse rifles at least leave an identifiable corpse.

I dunno... the superior range of the pulse rifle on an open field counts for a lot. Being able to blow up tanks is great, but situational, since you have to be close enough to the tank to hit it. In urban warfare, where you can easily get around to the backside, the pulse rifle outperforms the flayer against anything but a Land Raider. The flayer punches through armor because of a trick of physics- its raw power, however, ranks behind the pulse rifle. No standard infantry weapon packs the punch of a pulse rifle.

... especially a shuriken catapult. The shuriken catapult is inaccurate and short-ranged because of the lack of rifling or any sort of gyro-stabilizer, like the pulse rifle has.

My ranking is based primarily on performance against infantry- after all, heavy weapons are needed to engage tanks in most situations, and in close-quarters situations, rear armor is easy to damage.

1. Pulse Rifle
2. Splinter Rifle
3. Gauss Flayer
4. Bolter
5. Shuriken catapult
6. Shoota
7. Fleshborer
8. Flashlight

placed the catapult in front of the shoota based solely on how much more useful it is coming out of a transport. The catapult ranks above the bolter when used by mechanized infantry and is last place on an open battlefield. Even a lasgun is better when you can see the enemy outside of firing range.

 EmpNortonII wrote:

 Perfect Organism wrote:
On the reliability front, even lasguns pale in comparison to gauss flayers - they work fine after millions of years in storage.

With the possible exception of range and accuracy (simply because I've never seen any description of how accurate flayers are), they seem to win in every possible respect. According to the rules pulse rifles might possibly be a bit better, but the background material makes gauss weapons seem much more powerful - pulse rifles at least leave an identifiable corpse.

I dunno... the superior range of the pulse rifle on an open field counts for a lot. Being able to blow up tanks is great, but situational, since you have to be close enough to the tank to hit it. In urban warfare, where you can easily get around to the backside, the pulse rifle outperforms the flayer against anything but a Land Raider. The flayer punches through armor because of a trick of physics- its raw power, however, ranks behind the pulse rifle. No standard infantry weapon packs the punch of a pulse rifle.

... especially a shuriken catapult. The shuriken catapult is inaccurate and short-ranged because of the lack of rifling or any sort of gyro-stabilizer, like the pulse rifle has.

My ranking is based primarily on performance against infantry- after all, heavy weapons are needed to engage tanks in most situations, and in close-quarters situations, rear armor is easy to damage.

1. Pulse Rifle
2. Splinter Rifle
3. Gauss Flayer
4. Bolter
5. Shuriken catapult
6. Shoota
7. Fleshborer
8. Flashlight

placed the catapult in front of the shoota based solely on how much more useful it is coming out of a transport. The catapult ranks above the bolter when used by mechanized infantry and is last place on an open battlefield. Even a lasgun is better when you can see the enemy outside of firing range.

How long is the range of the pulse rifle? Bolters fire with near laser accuracy well over two klicks. Lemme go dig up the quote for the Iron Warrior snapshot wizard.

And autoguns are useless in W40K. They don't do anything against power armor, hell even against Orks they're useless, it simply takes far to many bullets to get the job done.

Autoguns are the weapon of choice for the last chancers against orks. They not only kill greenskins dead just as fast as flash lights, but can do so while being silenced. A silenced autogun is just as effective, even more so in the right hands. As for power armor though, yea no I would rather try my luck with pretty much anything else than use an autogun against a space marine.

According to most fluff I've read there are two types of bolters, astartes bolters and normal bolters. A normal bolter is powerful enough, but not very reliable and the ammunition costs are nightmarish. An astartes bolter, while still expensive to run, is much more reliable and hits a lot harder, plus has the advantage of custom rounds, which are probably a lot more widespread among marines in fluff than they are in TT. Compare the astartes bolter Deathwatch to the normal bolter in Dark Heresy and you'll see what I mean.

Most of you guys are rating on the individual or tactic level, which is fine, but from a strategic point of view its hard to beat the lasgun.

 EmilCrane wrote:
According to most fluff I've read there are two types of bolters, astartes bolters and normal bolters. A normal bolter is powerful enough, but not very reliable and the ammunition costs are nightmarish. An astartes bolter, while still expensive to run, is much more reliable and hits a lot harder, plus has the advantage of custom rounds, which are probably a lot more widespread among marines in fluff than they are in TT. Compare the astartes bolter Deathwatch to the normal bolter in Dark Heresy and you'll see what I mean.

Most of you guys are rating on the individual or tactic level, which is fine, but from a strategic point of view its hard to beat the lasgun.

The man has a point, can you make a fire? Good then you can recharge your lasgun.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

And autoguns are useless in W40K. They don't do anything against power armor, hell even against Orks they're useless, it simply takes far to many bullets to get the job done.

Autoguns are the weapon of choice for the last chancers against orks. They not only kill greenskins dead just as fast as flash lights, but can do so while being silenced. A silenced autogun is just as effective, even more so in the right hands. As for power armor though, yea no I would rather try my luck with pretty much anything else than use an autogun against a space marine.

To my knowledge, autoguns are minimally effective Orks, who pretty much have ballistic vests for skin. Also, moving to autoguns is actually inferior for fighting orks, as autoguns put you at logistical risk from your ammunition running dry, while lasguns simply need a power source to recharge. Plus they're literally lasers, and about as accurate as you can get, making them a superior weapon to arm all of your troops with. That and they do indeed blow off the limbs of human sized targets, so they're not terribly outgunned by autguns (IIRC, don't they range anywhere from 5.56 to .50?)

 Wyzilla wrote:

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

And autoguns are useless in W40K. They don't do anything against power armor, hell even against Orks they're useless, it simply takes far to many bullets to get the job done.

Autoguns are the weapon of choice for the last chancers against orks. They not only kill greenskins dead just as fast as flash lights, but can do so while being silenced. A silenced autogun is just as effective, even more so in the right hands. As for power armor though, yea no I would rather try my luck with pretty much anything else than use an autogun against a space marine.

To my knowledge, autoguns are minimally effective Orks, who pretty much have ballistic vests for skin. Also, moving to autoguns is actually inferior for fighting orks, as autoguns put you at logistical risk from your ammunition running dry, while lasguns simply need a power source to recharge. Plus they're literally lasers, and about as accurate as you can get, making them a superior weapon to arm all of your troops with. That and they do indeed blow off the limbs of human sized targets, so they're not terribly outgunned by autguns (IIRC, don't they range anywhere from 5.56 to .50?)

I don't know, the 3rd ed Guard book made them out to be pretty damn effective against Orks. Of course every novel/codex in the world seems to disagree as to how powerful each weapon is vs different races. From what I read a well placed 7.62 round to the head kills an ork instantly.

1. Gauss Flayer: One of the best weapons out there. It can offer so much flexibility for an infantry small arm.
2. Pule Rifle: Strong, long ranged and accurate. The only thing holding it back are it's users.
3. Lasguns. May not be the strongest or the most penetrating but it can kill most of the things you'll encounter stone dead. You don't need that many clips to feed it, it's piss easy to maintain and spare parts are plentiful.
4. Shuriken Catapault: Pretty good weapon overall. It'll murder whatever you point at it and it can slice through armor a bit better than a bolter.
5. The Boltgun. I rank it lower than the Shurken Catapault since it's a lot more finicky to maintain. Still a solid weapon. Ask for it by name.
6. Fleshborer: It's a gun that shoots killer bugs. What's not to love? It's very reliable, I would assume, but I rank it lower than a Bolter because of it's user. If more elite infantry could use it then I would rank it higher.
7. Shoota: It's strong but these things are loud, inaccurate and unreliable. It does what it does well for a bundle of scrap metal.

Lasguns shoot a laser through a target, make a hole and cauterize it instantly. Autoguns with 7.62 and something like hollow points would blow huge chunks out of an unarmored target like an ork or a loxatl.

Gaunts ghosts used .45 sub machine guns for loxatl killing, who I think are also T4 like an ork.

 dementedwombat wrote:
Just want to mention I agree with Miko on this one. Very good rating system.

Also just to throw in, in a ciaphas cain book involving the Tau some guardsmen killed by Tau pulse weapons had their cause of death written off as a plasma gun of some kind. So at least on unarmored guardsmen a pulse rifle has similar damage characteristics to a plasma rifle.

It is explicity stated that it is, in fact, a plasma rifle. It is a 'cooler' more stable plasma that uses a pseudo railgun technology to accelerate the plasma down the barrel.

Quick note, I don't want to get into a science discussion here, but any laser powerful enough to be used in a military context won't really do the whole "scalpel cutting" kind of role. It will just transfer so much energy to the target in a short pulse that it vaporizes the area of impact and burns quite a large area around it (think if it as a "mini melta").

The specifics aren't important, but basically think a small(ish, relative to a ballistic weapon) impact hole and flash burns surrounding that. you're right on the cauterize part though. Although theoretically if you let someone live a las wound might be more crippling than a ballistic wound because all the flesh is instantly scared over and burns are horrible to heal...but hopefully the target won't live that long.

 EmilCrane wrote:
Lasguns shoot a laser through a target, blow and arm off without too much troubles and are able to be recharged very easily

Fix'd that for you

The problem with ranking the boltgun is wether or not it penetrates the target. If it does then the target is probably dead. Boltguns, while still effective, are designed to kill someone after they penetrate the armour. (Though this could change depending on wether or not you believe that the bolts need to penetrate the armour to explode)