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As the question stated, What is the real different between a Melta weapon and a Plasma weapon and which is more powerful? I mean, they are both plasma base that use fusion as energy source??
cheers

Meltaguns agitate the particles of air in front of the weapon in a beam to very high temperatures. Think of it as a radiator on steroids. Plasma Guns fire contained blobs of superheated gases such as hydrogen which then vaporize targets on contact.

A meltagun is like a super-powered microwave. A plasmagun is a magnetic containment field for a ball of.. well, plasma.

And as to which is more powerful that would be the meltagun. This is represented in the Tabletop with the Melta having superior AP and superior strength. Plasma however is much more versatile.

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:
Plasma however is much more versatile.

You can kill your enemy or yourself!

Interesting! thanks!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
but why still field plasma weaponry by the Imperium??

keithktam wrote:
Interesting! thanks!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
but why still field plasma weaponry by the Imperium??

Because meltaguns have the range of crossbow.

Crossbows have a pretty long range.

 LethalShade wrote:
Crossbows have a pretty long range.

No they don't. Crossbows have an effective kill range under sixty yards. The effective range of a rifle or even a Carbine is measured in excess of hundreds of yards.

The plamsa gun can fire more often and still does the job 95% of the time.

also the rules make it blow up FAR more often than in the fluff and even in tt a single plasma gun will hardly ever actually explode

The Melta gun is more powerful, but shorter ranged, they agitate the air molecules by super heating them in a beam. It dissipates after a couple of metres. Resulting in a very powerful, alebit short ranged weapon.

If I remember right the Plasma gun uses a magnetic containment field to hurl a ball of plasma at the target. Longer ranged, but not quite as destructive as the Melta. Also occasionally prone to overheat.

Melta weapons are also relatively rare, compared to plasma weapons (which are also rare).

Since melta using highly pressurized gas too, i am wondering if it can blow up just as easy, that is if you are ignoring the rules but dig into the lore

There's no "Overheat" rules for melta weapons but if your melta-tank were to, say, take a long-las hit? Yeah. Kaboom.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 LethalShade wrote:
Crossbows have a pretty long range.

No they don't. Crossbows have an effective kill range under sixty yards. The effective range of a rifle or even a Carbine is measured in excess of hundreds of yards.

Sixty yards IS a pretty long range for a tank melting weapon.

(What is the range of a plasma weapon, by the way ? )

What source are we using? Game rules are a terrible source (apart from anything else, are we using 40k? Epic? the RPGs? The tabletop wargames have never specified a ground scale or time scale, so trying to extrapolate from there is a fool's errand).


Some starship weapons are plasma weapons, so they must have a pretty decent range. In planetary warfare, the big guns mounted on Titans appear to be able to shoot across a city; hundreds, perhaps thousands of metres.

I always pictured meltaguns as having literal fusion reactors inside them, and when the trigger is pulled it simply opens the vent, allowing the sun-like temperatures to escape.

in short, melta>plasma

plasma is several thousand degrees C (~10k degrees F)
melta is about 15 million degrees C.

 Psienesis wrote:
Melta weapons are also relatively rare, compared to plasma weapons (which are also rare).

What's the source for that? I've never read anything about meltaguns being rare, even if they seem to work out that way on the tabletop (with only drop-pod units and Sisters seeming to use them).

The Deathwatch RPG gives the maximum effective range of the common astartes plasma gun pattern (Ragefire) as being ~400m, although hitting anything smaller than a tank beyond ~300m is more luck than judgement.

An equivalent astartes meltagun (Vulkan-pattern) has a top end range of 90-120m depending how good you are, and a 'kill zone' where the melta trait applies of 15m.

The rarity and requisition cost of both weapons is the same.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
What source are we using? Game rules are a terrible source (apart from anything else, are we using 40k? Epic? the RPGs? The tabletop wargames have never specified a ground scale or time scale, so trying to extrapolate from there is a fool's errand).

Necromunda's predecessor Confrontation had a set scale of 2 metres per inch and gave the Meltagun a maximum range of 25" vs 240" for the Plasmagun.

Inquisitor gave ranges in yards. It didn't give maximum weapon ranges but did give Melta's a special rule which would cause a Meltagun's damage to drop to nil at 60 yards.

In my Dark Heresy (first edition) rulebook there is a difference in range too:
melta has a range of 20 m, and a plasma rifle a range of 90m.
The plasma rifle is "very rare' when the melta is only "rare".
But the main difference , to my mind, is that the plasma rifle is a "forgotten" technology, barely understood and with only a few people still making new ones.
I never ever heard the same thing about the melta tech.

Melta is a specialist gun, like an anti-material rifle.
It looks like a rifle, but it is not: it can't be the main weapon of your army.
The plasma rifle is a "main" rifle, or should be, if it were not forgotten.

Oh, and the plasma rifle can shoot two time in one round (which is about 5 sec in DH) when the melta can only shoot once.
So it has a better rate of fire, too.

 godardc wrote:
In my Dark Heresy (first edition) rulebook there is a difference in range too:
melta has a range of 20 m, and a plasma rifle a range of 90m.
The plasma rifle is "very rare' when the melta is only "rare".
But the main difference , to my mind, is that the plasma rifle is a "forgotten" technology, barely understood and with only a few people still making new ones.
I never ever heard the same thing about the melta tech.

Melta is a specialist gun, like an anti-material rifle.
It looks like a rifle, but it is not: it can't be the main weapon of your army.
The plasma rifle is a "main" rifle, or should be, if it were not forgotten.

Oh, and the plasma rifle can shoot two time in one round (which is about 5 sec in DH) when the melta can only shoot once.
So it has a better rate of fire, too.

Plasma is far from being a forgotten technology. Otherwise plasma rifles in 40k wouldn't be superior to those in the Great Crusade.

Plasma is far from being a forgotten technology. Otherwise plasma rifles in 40k wouldn't be superior to those in the Great Crusade.

I didn't have read anything about the Great Crusade / The Horus Heresy 's weapons.
It's always nice to learn something new about 40k !

But I think you understood what I mean (unreliable, very few production, etc...)

McNinja wrote:I always pictured meltaguns as having literal fusion reactors inside them, and when the trigger is pulled it simply opens the vent, allowing the sun-like temperatures to escape.

in short, melta>plasma

plasma is several thousand degrees C (~10k degrees F)
melta is about 15 million degrees C.

Actually, magnetic fusion Plasma (ie, the kind of Plasma used in 40k) is usually upwards of 1,000,000,000 degrees Kelvin (for the Terrestrial Plasmas, at least). In one experiment, Tungsten was super-heated (ionizing it, as well), then compressed magnetically in order to reach several billion degrees Kelvin. Assuming that we aren't somehow going to start getting colder Plasmas in the next 38k+ years, I'm assuming that Plasma is at least as hot; if not hotter.

godardc wrote:In my Dark Heresy (first edition) rulebook there is a difference in range too:
melta has a range of 20 m, and a plasma rifle a range of 90m.
The plasma rifle is "very rare' when the melta is only "rare".
But the main difference , to my mind, is that the plasma rifle is a "forgotten" technology, barely understood and with only a few people still making new ones.
I never ever heard the same thing about the melta tech.

Melta is a specialist gun, like an anti-material rifle.
It looks like a rifle, but it is not: it can't be the main weapon of your army.
The plasma rifle is a "main" rifle, or should be, if it were not forgotten.

Oh, and the plasma rifle can shoot two time in one round (which is about 5 sec in DH) when the melta can only shoot once.
So it has a better rate of fire, too.

Actually, AdMech understanding of Plasma has been steadily rising for the last 10k years. It's one of the few advanced technologies that the AdMech has an excellent understanding of and is no danger whatsoever of ever running out of (other techs, such as Rhino APCs, are slowly becoming less and less understood as the STCs become less common).

 Wyzilla wrote:
Otherwise plasma rifles in 40k wouldn't be superior to those in the Great Crusade.

Er.. they aren't?

The Plasma *Rifle* is a Tau weapon.

Plasma *Guns* used by the Imperium are the same now as they were then. The Plasma Weaponry section of the Crusade army list actually says: "such technology was far better understood during the dawning age of the Imperium"

Imperial Plasma weaponry was stated to be more advanced* in 2nd edition, but that ceased to apply when 3rd edition came about and GW retconned the more advanced weaponry out of existence and made the 2nd edition 'Mk1 Plasma' the standard still used by the Imperium.

* in the sense that it didn't explode, at the cost of cutting the rate of fire by half.

 dusara217 wrote:

Actually, AdMech understanding of Plasma has been steadily rising for the last 10k years. It's one of the few advanced technologies that the AdMech has an excellent understanding of and is no danger whatsoever of ever running out of (other techs, such as Rhino APCs, are slowly becoming less and less understood as the STCs become less common).

The loss of the ability to produce Stormblades because Ryza, the plasma gun specialist forge, got Orked says otherwise.

The FFG ranges for most of their weapons follow RPG statistics (that is "how can we make this work on a map scaled for a gaming table?") rather than anything approaching realistic ballistic patterns.

They also get weird in that non-weapon tools, like plasma cutters, are more-easily acquired than the superior melta versions. If plasma is so very rare, why is it more common in a cutting torch than a melta-cutter?

There's a lot of stuff in the FFG games (1st ed DH at any rate) that don't make a lot of sense.

Well, the maximum range for most weapons is 4x the stated range (IIRC) so a 250m range is 1k.

GAdvance wrote:
The plamsa gun can fire more often and still does the job 95% of the time.

also the rules make it blow up FAR more often than in the fluff and even in tt a single plasma gun will hardly ever actually explode

Originally, ONLY the chaos plasma weapons had the gets hot! rule - but then editions changed and they applied the trait to the imperials as well in the essence of "fairness" (and further blanding down the game). But wait, VEHICLE mounted plasma didn't ... So then they added vehicle plasma weapons into the list that explodes.

Tau and Eldar plasma weapons don't explode. They just use safer plasma and have reliable safety protocols for them.

I fully expect 8th ed to have the "If you include a single plasma weapon in your army, the ENTIRE ARMY explodes on a roll of 1" rule.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Well, the maximum range for most weapons is 4x the stated range (IIRC) so a 250m range is 1k.

Twice the listed range (pg 127, Dark Heresy). So the lasgun, with a listed range of 100m, has a maximum range of 200m. The M-16 I carried in the Army has better range than that!

Edit: The 4x range is the "extreme" range, which means that you're throwing ammo downrange and hoping to get lucky and hit, rather than having any sort of accuracy to the attack.