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These are the top ten things I think the military would want most from 40k, but which one of these would you think they want most?

Mass produced Riptides would wipe the floor with everything else on this list.
Seeing as it only requires a single pilot you could field hundreds of them in one place,that'd be devastating even in 40k

Stealth Suits. Armour is always outstripped by weaponry in terms of technology in short order, so stealth is the only reliable way to avoid getting killed. The only other potential thing off that list that a modern military could want is pulse rifles, and even that is assuming fluff equivalency rather than TT scaled up, because if you go by tabletop values, a pulse rifle has a shorter accurate range than an M1 Garand.

Good point! I still cant decide between stealths and riptides

Where are lazguns?!

 koooaei wrote:
Where are lazguns?!

I'll add them on

From a no-fun real answer point of view, Power Armor. Something that enhances physical ability, sensory ability and immeasurably decreases risk to the actual person, the choice is obvious. And Mass Production makes it sound like everyone gets it. Terminator is a close second, but Power Armor is cheaper, easier to produce, and we all know how world militaries are. A penny saved is worth spending on more studies on how to save more pennies.

What no million's and billion's of guardsmen or wave serpent's
I went the sky ray. Because of it's anti grav capabilities.
Everything else is already a possibility, except for the interfacing of armour.

Autoguns. It'd be totally awesome if we could produce them in real life.

Voted stealth suits because they give similar protection to power armor along with more strength enhancement, jetpacks, and of course the stealth field.

Cheap, reliable surface to orbit transport would trump anything on the list.

Vortex grenades.

Necrons!

Agreed. Superduper battlesuits are all well and good in theory, but in practical terms a walker is not discernably better than a tank of the same mass - it's harder to armour, it has all sorts of problems with being knocked over by weapon impacts, it's a maintenance hog, etc, etc.

Huge units also struggle against what Steve Jackson calls the 'Ogre Limit' - from the game 'Ogre' - essentially, any tactical combat unit reaches its useful limit of size when it becomes powerful enough to become a strategic target; in these terms - if a battlesuit is big and powerful enough to justify calling in heavy artillery fire or airstrikes.

Riptides would be even worse - running a high-energy nova reactor they'd show up on thermal imaging like a small furnace, and whilst mobile they're not that mobile. More importantly, we have no idea of their combat endurance - but given that they're bleeding-edge tech even for the tau, I'm going to say pretty poor.

Pulse rifles are the same. Yes, they hit like a freight train. But here's the thing; we don't need firepower like that. We're shooting small arms at other humans, not Orks, or Necrons. Yes, it gives a limited anti-armour capability, but man-portable anti-armour weapons do it better, not trying to shoot up soft-skin vehicles with antipersonnel weapons. Secondly, pulse rifles are HUGE. seriously; look at the size of the things fire warriors are carrying. They're unwieldy, and the magazines are worse, given that - according to Fire Warrior and the various RPGs - they don't hold any more ammo than a standard assault rifle magazine today. Plus, transporting charged plasma is going to be even more hazardous than transporting live ballistic ammo.

See much the same for the plasma cannon. Tell any general (except maybe a DPRK one) that one shot in six is going to maim the wielder and watch yourself get ejected from the building without the door being opened for you first....

The Leman Russ is a badly designed tank. It just is. Look at the development of WWI Mk1 tanks through to current versions and it represents early WWII types - a massively high silouhette, far too cramped, and laden with point defence weapons instead of being tactically paired with supporting infantry who do the job better. Plus it apparently carries little over half a dozen shells for its main armament - not enough to maintain combat without a crippling logistics train.

The Skyray - not bad. Hovercraft tanks are a bit impractical in real terms (how well armoured can you make an engine intake, after all) but a laser-designated missile tank which can do double duty as AA and AT is a nice, tactically flexible unit.

Power and Terminator armour.... it depends. Terminator armor is incredibly tough but tactically limited, especially without teleporter tech to back it up - you can't kneel and you can't move rapidly. Yes, you're more or less immune to anything short of antitank weapons, but you're a sufficiently important target to justify employing antitank weapons against. Standard power armour is better, and is something that - depending on cost, endurance and protection - genuinely interests modern armies.

The Chimera pretty much is a modern IFV. We build them now.

Storm Bolters - it's big. heavy, and eats ammo like its going out of fashion. Plus, the ammo is stupidly expensive and it's going to kick like a mule if you use the canonical calibre of .75 calibre for 'normal' bolters. A '50 cal is more than sufficient for most realistic situations.

Stealth Battlesuits - possibly. Depends how good they are in practice; see the comments about powered armour. Active camo is great for a recon unit, as is a jet pack, but not if I can't send you out for days at a time.

And yes, the single thing armies would most like is the lasgun. The logistics train behind a modern infantry battalion is huge. Assault rifles with the same punch, but with 60 round magazines you can recharge from a diesel generator in theatre makes a huge - really huge - difference to logistics, and it's essentially logistics and recon, two things not reflected in 40k, that win wars (as opposed to battles).

I voted Lasguns, they're not the best weapon no but they'd more then suffice for modern times, and they're INCREDIABLY useful from a logistics POV.

Lasguns. Cheap, easy to mass produce, and still powerful enough to punch through light armor if the charge setting is high enough. Also, tons of ammunition that is rechargeable, has next to no recoil, and is instantaneous.

It's the AK-47 of the 41st Millennium and makes our AK-47s look like junk.

A rifle with functionally unlimited ammunition that's virtually silent, has no recoil, doesn't have bullet drop/wind issues, has no moving parts for hostile environments to muck up, and is lighter than an M16 to boot? Lasguns, hands down. Riptides and power armour may sound cool but there are a lot of points of failure involved.

(As to things not on your list a Vulture makes an AH-64 look like an arthritic chicken, if the numbers in Imperial Armour are accurate)

Terminator Armour or Riptides. Riptides have the issues that have already been described, but Terminator Armour withstands silly levels of punishment while not being the size of a small house.

SharkoutofWata wrote:From a no-fun real answer point of view, Power Armor. Something that enhances physical ability, sensory ability and immeasurably decreases risk to the actual person, the choice is obvious. And Mass Production makes it sound like everyone gets it. Terminator is a close second, but Power Armor is cheaper, easier to produce, and we all know how world militaries are. A penny saved is worth spending on more studies on how to save more pennies.

Stealth Suit does everything Power Armour does, plus fly and turn invisible. Just pointing that out.

Riptides.

Why make lasguns? I'm suprised that the lasgun got so many upvotes. Sure there is no ballistic drop but the beam will be scattered by dust or fog or precipitation. Not that the US Army ever fights in the desert or jungles.... Plus, the lethality of the SCAR-17 is pretty excellent, as well as our heavier weapons. And frankly, infantry small arms aren't that important in determining the outcome of wars, since the rifleman really only exist to protect the machine gunners.

Even the Tau can't mass produce riptides in the fluff, so us being able to do it would be amazing. Think not just about the military application but just being able to mass produce the components. Nova Reactor? There goes your climate change problem. Hyperdense lightweight alloys for armor? Those have a million uses. Freaking JET PACKS!!!! Obviously a lot of utility there, with whatever propulsion is powerful enough to move something that big with that much agility. Just for the components, a riptide would change everything, instantly.

Militarily it's got to be riptides as well. If you could mass produce them, imagine trying to defend against 5-10,000 riptides. Maybe a 120mm smoothbore would have a chance at punching riptide armor, but can you imagine trying to actually hit one? It's not easy for a tank to hit another tank, much less something as maneuverable as a riptide. It would be a nightmare in urban combat too, with it's speed and ability to maneuver around ruins and hide behind buildings then zoom up to the roof and drop accelerated plasma blasts on stuff.

Everything you say about the Riptide, except the Nova Reactor, is true on a much more practical scale of the Stealth Suit though.

If the military could mass produce riptides, they would have a greater industrial capacity than the entire star spanning tau empire.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Everything you say about the Riptide, except the Nova Reactor, is true on a much more practical scale of the Stealth Suit though.

True, but if we can mass produce both, the Riptide is qualitatively better. And I feel like a 2+ armor save is a more difficult tech than active camo. We aren't that far from active camo now but a 2+ armor save, based on Terminator armor fluff, is a miracle of materials engineering. Plus the force field or shield generator or whatever it is that gives the invulnerable save. That's a major tech leap that the riptide has which I don't believe the stealth suit does. If I'm the DoD I'd rather put everyone in a 200 point battle suit than a 20 point battlesuit, if I can mass produce either.

I knew everyone would fall for it: Where would they put the riptides?

Power armor and Terminator armor are what is closest to reality at the moment.

We could make bolters too, but they're massive overkill against human targets so they're unlikely to appear until power armor does.

I voted lasguns, for the same reasons as previous posters: high reliability, no recoil, caseless ammunition that can be recharged by a campfire, ease of use, etc.

However I'm not seeing the functionality of a riptide. Imagine it in the current theatre of war. What is a riptide going to do in battling insurgents inside cities and tight urban environments? I feel like it would bring new meaning to 'collateral damage'.

 clamclaw wrote:
I voted lasguns, for the same reasons as previous posters: high reliability, no recoil, caseless ammunition that can be recharged by a campfire, ease of use, etc.

However I'm not seeing the functionality of a riptide. Imagine it in the current theatre of war. What is a riptide going to do in battling insurgents inside cities and tight urban environments? I feel like it would bring new meaning to 'collateral damage'.

Which is why I added stealth suits into the poll. Can sneak into enemy territory and use burst cannons to take out infantry and fusion blasters to take out heavy weapons.
I'm going to add a few more in and see what people vote then (Carapace armour, Vindicator and Imperial Knight)

This is all 40k tech, so autoguns
Reason being if the the imperium pretty much fails to mass produce everything else what changes does our current world governments/military have?

Stealthsuits. They are more than just active camo, it bends light around the user making them a general blur, rather than an see-though person. That is augmented with sensor nullifying technology, making them invisible to nature and technology. They are heavily armoured, but not excessively bulky (especially the old XV15s). They have strength and movement enhancing qualities, as well as an array of sensor and communication technologies if needed. Within the tau, most teams operate mostly independently from the rest of the army, leading me to believe that they have a considerable battery/generator length. The jetpack allows for quick movement and re-positioning, as well as transport to areas they otherwise could not access. They are not too much bigger than an un-armoured human, allowing them to operate in places where other options (crisis, riptide) can't go. Assuming they keep their weaponry, the burst cannon has considerable firepower, to the point where it can take out light vehicles by it'self, and a lot of ammunition. Think about this the pulse rifle's energy pack fig a. can supply 50 shots. Now look at the burst cannon's energy source fig b.. That thing probably has at least 300 shots, and you could carry more on extended missions.



Fig a.


Fib b.

Lasguns would be fairly useless. We already have AK rifles, which have all the killing power we need and are absurdly reliable and easy and cheap to make.
What would a lasgun add to that? Sure, it is a better weapon, but how important are infantry weapons on a strategic scale?
They would be much better of with something against which contemporary armies and weapons have no answer, like power armour, Terminator armour, stealth suits or Riptides.

Lasguns would make sense from a military point of view. They are light, accurate, reliable and don;t require huge amounts of munitions unlike conventional weapons.

That said, I doubt we would see them until they are deemed to be truly needed. Equipping entire military forces with them would destroy the munitions economy, and non of the big military spending countries would want that, what with their governments being propped up by said economy.

The biggest game changer would be the stealth suits imo, though for the technology rather than the suits themselves.

If invisibility could be given to fortified positions, tanks, aircraft or naval vessels then it would be a huge game changer.

Lasguns would be a game changer, just like the Ak-47, just not in a way that the great powers wants.

Lasguns are cheap, reliable, and use easily renewable ammunition. This allows troopers to use ammo freely on campaign, and makes training far lower cost. Imagine the change to assymetric warfare or civil wars if you had essentially rechargable small arms.