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 Grey Templar wrote:
If a marine has lost his bolter, bolt pistol, and his combat knife and his fists aren't sufficient then a hot-shot lasgun isn't going to save him.

So a weapon with more armour-piercing capabilities than a Bolter isn't going to be able to save him? I doubt that very much.

 Kojiro wrote:

This is always one of my biggest annoyances. Space Marines have a nigh infinite power source and yet their armour contains no integrated- not even as back up- energy weapons. Bolter ammunition is after all a) large b) expensive c) overkill on some targets.

It's even worse when you factor in the Dark Heresy RPG's (specifically the Lathe Worlds integrated weapons).

 dusara217 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
If a marine has lost his bolter, bolt pistol, and his combat knife and his fists aren't sufficient then a hot-shot lasgun isn't going to save him.

So a weapon with more armour-piercing capabilities than a Bolter isn't going to be able to save him? I doubt that very much.

Hotshots are better on the table than the fluff. Remember fluff marines and their gear is way more powerful.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:
It's even worse when you factor in the Dark Heresy RPG's (specifically the Lathe Worlds integrated weapons).

I'm not familiar with DH much but I can imagine.

That said I do recall back in the RT days marines had some integrated weapons, most famously on the cover of Rogue Trader. Never knew what they were or what happened to them.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
If a marine has lost his bolter, bolt pistol, and his combat knife and his fists aren't sufficient then a hot-shot lasgun isn't going to save him.

So a weapon with more armour-piercing capabilities than a Bolter isn't going to be able to save him? I doubt that very much.

Hotshots are better on the table than the fluff. Remember fluff marines and their gear is way more powerful.

This be true. However, table is still meant to be a rough translation of the fluff. The Armour-piercing value of a Hot-Shot Lasgun will be significantly greater than that of the Marine's gauntlets; therefore it is more likely to save his life (not to mention the fact that it is a ranged weapon).

I always thought that the Hotshots were representative of an actual laser, which should pierce through SM armor.
In contrast to the average guardsmans warming flashlight, which is excellent for cooking your food.

Real lasers would actually be terrible at cutting through ceramic compounds. Too much heat just gets dispersed by the material when it needs to be focused to cut through it. The Hotshot is more powerful and can achieve cutting before the armor dissipates the heat, but its still not very good at it.

 Mantorok wrote:
I always thought that the Hotshots were representative of an actual laser, which should pierce through SM armor.
In contrast to the average guardsmans warming flashlight, which is excellent for cooking your food.

I was under the impression that the lasgun was actually a fairly potent weapon by infantry standards, it just appears weak in a universe populated with genetically enhanced warrior-monks, Egyptian Space Zombies whose weapons rip apart the target at a molecular level, galaxy-eating swarms of bugs, and drug-addicted space elves.

 asorel wrote:

 Mantorok wrote:
I always thought that the Hotshots were representative of an actual laser, which should pierce through SM armor.
In contrast to the average guardsmans warming flashlight, which is excellent for cooking your food.

I was under the impression that the lasgun was actually a fairly potent weapon by infantry standards, it just appears weak in a universe populated with genetically enhanced warrior-monks, Egyptian Space Zombies whose weapons rip apart the target at a molecular level, galaxy-eating swarms of bugs, and drug-addicted space elves.

This is true. Most of the time, guardsmen are fighting rebellious humans or fairly innocuous opponents like ork warbands, fights where the Lasgun is more than sufficient. The battles we fight aren't exactly typical of their opponents.

Plus realistically before the enemy got close enough to where our tables represent the fighting they would have been heavily pounded by air and artillery.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Real lasers would actually be terrible at cutting through ceramic compounds. Too much heat just gets dispersed by the material when it needs to be focused to cut through it. The Hotshot is more powerful and can achieve cutting before the armor dissipates the heat, but its still not very good at it.

Better than bolters or fists, however.

Although bolters seem to have the ability to both detonate harmlessly off PA or easily penetrate through it annihilating whoever happens to be inside.

Thats due to the curved armor. Its designed to deflect rather than absorb impact. Of course kinetic impact actually the advantage of being able to transmit energy through the armor and into the target, unlike a laser which can only rely on heating up the point of impact.

Lasers would actually be pretty terrible infantry weapons.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Thats due to the curved armor. Its designed to deflect rather than absorb impact. Of course kinetic impact actually the advantage of being able to transmit energy through the armor and into the target, unlike a laser which can only rely on heating up the point of impact.

Lasers would actually be pretty terrible infantry weapons.

Considering the fact that we can already cut through dense materials with lasers today, what would be there to stop us from gutting tanks and people with long-ranged cutting lasers?

 dusara217 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Thats due to the curved armor. Its designed to deflect rather than absorb impact. Of course kinetic impact actually the advantage of being able to transmit energy through the armor and into the target, unlike a laser which can only rely on heating up the point of impact.

Lasers would actually be pretty terrible infantry weapons.

Considering the fact that we can already cut through dense materials with lasers today, what would be there to stop us from gutting tanks and people with long-ranged cutting lasers?

Lasers are very ineffective at long range, because the beam's energy tends to be spent ionizing the atmosphere between the emitter and the target. Current-era cutting lasers are positioned only a handful of centimeters away from the target, and are used in a vacuum when possible.

Yes, at point blank range over several seconds.

In atmosphere, lasers fairly quickly lose their power. Meaning your ranged laser needs to be obscenely more powerful to have the same cutting force. Then even more powerful again because you also don't have much time. You need to be powerful enough to cut through any body armor AND cause deadly injury in less than half a second. Otherwise the worst you'll manage to do to a soldier is give him a nasty but relatively harmless burn. He's not going to stand still for the couple seconds a cutting laser would need to do its job. Against vehicles the energy requirements would be even worse.

A laser capable of doing all this would be very very large and have a huge power supply. It would be too big to be an infantry weapon, it would need to be mounted on a vehicle.

Really the only practical uses of an offensive laser is to shoot down missiles(which are following a predictable trajectory and because even the slightest damage can cause them to veer off course or be rendered inert) or to blind troops and sensors. By the time we develop technology which would enable practical laser guns we will be able to make plasma projection or rail guns that will be much more powerful.

But that's the problem with 40k, nothing follows reality.

Not nothing. There is some surprising realism which actually runs counter to other sci-fi(who are usually bigger offenders)

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yes, at point blank range over several seconds.

In atmosphere, lasers fairly quickly lose their power. Meaning your ranged laser needs to be obscenely more powerful to have the same cutting force. Then even more powerful again because you also don't have much time. You need to be powerful enough to cut through any body armor AND cause deadly injury in less than half a second. Otherwise the worst you'll manage to do to a soldier is give him a nasty but relatively harmless burn. He's not going to stand still for the couple seconds a cutting laser would need to do its job. Against vehicles the energy requirements would be even worse.

A laser capable of doing all this would be very very large and have a huge power supply. It would be too big to be an infantry weapon, it would need to be mounted on a vehicle.

Really the only practical uses of an offensive laser is to shoot down missiles(which are following a predictable trajectory and because even the slightest damage can cause them to veer off course or be rendered inert) or to blind troops and sensors. By the time we develop technology which would enable practical laser guns we will be able to make plasma projection or rail guns that will be much more powerful.

So what you're saying is that in 23 thousand years (give or take), we would be incapable of creating a laser capable of being effective and efficient? Considering how far we've come with them in just the last couple of decades, this seems highly fallacious. Thirty years ago, something akin to a Smart Phone was the province of Science Fiction. A hundred and thirty years ago, human flight was something only a lunatic would think possible (fun fact, helicopters were invented before airplanes, though they were originally unmanned and weren't practical until the 1930s - though, if you believe the Indians, airplanes were invented 7k years ago). The only thing really constraining lasers from being viable weapons today is the fact that we don't yet have the technology to weaponize them, but, for all we know, in a hundred years lasers could be a niche weapon widely used throughout the world for their anti-air capability, like the US Navy seems to be using them for now (ie drone hunting from Warships)

You obviously didn't read to the end. I said that by the time we could make a practical man portable anti-infantry laser analogous to assault rifles and the like we will have much better types of weapons. The issue here is you are spending a lot of effort to recreate, not improve, something that modern firearms do just fine. We will just be firing plasma bolts at each other instead of lasers by the time we can do this.

Lasers basically have a pretty hard limit to what they can do to a human, a limit which is easily surpassed by much simpler weapons. By the time we figure out how to pass that limit, which means only doing comparable things to modern bullets, we will have far better things. Lasers basically have such a huge hurdle to overcome to even do the same things a bullet does that any effort to improve them to become a man portable weapon is wasted effort that would be more productive doing other things.

I think the most we will see lasers become is, very very effective, anti-missile and aircraft. They won't be viable anti-personnel weapons till we also have tech making them obsolete as such.

 dusara217 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yes, at point blank range over several seconds.

In atmosphere, lasers fairly quickly lose their power. Meaning your ranged laser needs to be obscenely more powerful to have the same cutting force. Then even more powerful again because you also don't have much time. You need to be powerful enough to cut through any body armor AND cause deadly injury in less than half a second. Otherwise the worst you'll manage to do to a soldier is give him a nasty but relatively harmless burn. He's not going to stand still for the couple seconds a cutting laser would need to do its job. Against vehicles the energy requirements would be even worse.

A laser capable of doing all this would be very very large and have a huge power supply. It would be too big to be an infantry weapon, it would need to be mounted on a vehicle.

Really the only practical uses of an offensive laser is to shoot down missiles(which are following a predictable trajectory and because even the slightest damage can cause them to veer off course or be rendered inert) or to blind troops and sensors. By the time we develop technology which would enable practical laser guns we will be able to make plasma projection or rail guns that will be much more powerful.

So what you're saying is that in 23 thousand years (give or take), we would be incapable of creating a laser capable of being effective and efficient? Considering how far we've come with them in just the last couple of decades, this seems highly fallacious. Thirty years ago, something akin to a Smart Phone was the province of Science Fiction. A hundred and thirty years ago, human flight was something only a lunatic would think possible (fun fact, helicopters were invented before airplanes, though they were originally unmanned and weren't practical until the 1930s - though, if you believe the Indians, airplanes were invented 7k years ago). The only thing really constraining lasers from being viable weapons today is the fact that we don't yet have the technology to weaponize them, but, for all we know, in a hundred years lasers could be a niche weapon widely used throughout the world for their anti-air capability, like the US Navy seems to be using them for now (ie drone hunting from Warships)

No matter what our technology level is, we can't get around the flaws fundamental to laser design. No level of technology changes the fact that lasers are horribly inefficient outside of vacuum (and still not great even then), or that a heat-based weapon isn't going to be effective against a non-trivial number of targets.

 Grey Templar wrote:
You obviously didn't read to the end. I said that by the time we could make a practical man portable anti-infantry laser analogous to assault rifles and the like we will have much better types of weapons. The issue here is you are spending a lot of effort to recreate, not improve, something that modern firearms do just fine. We will just be firing plasma bolts at each other instead of lasers by the time we can do this.

Lasers basically have a pretty hard limit to what they can do to a human, a limit which is easily surpassed by much simpler weapons. By the time we figure out how to pass that limit, which means only doing comparable things to modern bullets, we will have far better things. Lasers basically have such a huge hurdle to overcome to even do the same things a bullet does that any effort to improve them to become a man portable weapon is wasted effort that would be more productive doing other things.

I think the most we will see lasers become is, very very effective, anti-missile and aircraft. They won't be viable anti-personnel weapons till we also have tech making them obsolete as such.

Here let me quote myself (which will conveniently counter asorel as well)

in a hundred years lasers could be a niche weapon widely used throughout the world for their anti-air capability, like the US Navy seems to be using them for now (ie drone hunting from Warships)

At no point did I say that we were going to make Star Wars a reality. Simply that we haven't sufficiently advanced laser technology to really know whether or not they will make effective weapons.

No, we do know they aren't going to be effective anti-personnel weapons. We know how lasers work. They have fundamental basic principals working against them in this type of role.

Heck, Star Wars blasters aren't actually lasers. They're plasma weapons.

There are two main issues. Power supply and then the laser degrading over distances and needing time to deliver its energy. The first can theoretically be overcome, but if we do that there are better uses(like powering hand held railguns) then simply recreating the same damage effectiveness as a modern assault rifle by overcoming the second barrier.

This is basically over-engineering a solution to something that isn't a problem. There are no benefits to making lasers practical handheld anti-personnel weapons because the huge effort it would take to get them to be the same as modern firearms is not worth it.

 dusara217 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
You obviously didn't read to the end. I said that by the time we could make a practical man portable anti-infantry laser analogous to assault rifles and the like we will have much better types of weapons. The issue here is you are spending a lot of effort to recreate, not improve, something that modern firearms do just fine. We will just be firing plasma bolts at each other instead of lasers by the time we can do this.

Lasers basically have a pretty hard limit to what they can do to a human, a limit which is easily surpassed by much simpler weapons. By the time we figure out how to pass that limit, which means only doing comparable things to modern bullets, we will have far better things. Lasers basically have such a huge hurdle to overcome to even do the same things a bullet does that any effort to improve them to become a man portable weapon is wasted effort that would be more productive doing other things.

I think the most we will see lasers become is, very very effective, anti-missile and aircraft. They won't be viable anti-personnel weapons till we also have tech making them obsolete as such.

Here let me quote myself (which will conveniently counter asorel as well)

in a hundred years lasers could be a niche weapon widely used throughout the world for their anti-air capability, like the US Navy seems to be using them for now (ie drone hunting from Warships)

At no point did I say that we were going to make Star Wars a reality
. Simply that we haven't sufficiently advanced laser technology to really know whether or not they will make effective weapons.

You will note that I never claimed lasers have no use at all; I was contradicting your implication that enough advancement would remove a large number of the practicalities of laser weapons.

With regards to using lasers as antiaircraft weaponry, I would imagine that electronic warfare would be rather more potent in a hundred year's time, especially when considering what advantages lasers do have are negated by ceramic armour in strategic locations.

 Grey Templar wrote:
No, we do know they aren't going to be effective anti-personnel weapons. We know how lasers work. They have fundamental basic principals working against them in this type of role.

Heck, Star Wars blasters aren't actually lasers. They're plasma weapons.

There are two main issues. Power supply and then the laser degrading over distances and needing time to deliver its energy. The first can theoretically be overcome, but if we do that there are better uses(like powering hand held railguns) then simply recreating the same damage effectiveness as a modern assault rifle by overcoming the second barrier.

This is basically over-engineering a solution to something that isn't a problem. There are no benefits to making lasers practical handheld anti-personnel weapons because the huge effort it would take to get them to be the same as modern firearms is not worth it.

*sigh* Here let me quote myself again

At no point did I say that we were going to make Star Wars a reality

@asorel: Valid counterargument. Which is, again, why I stated that lasers could be

a niche weapon widely used throughout the world

for whatever use they find themselves most suited to. Key word there being "niche".