Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

Because that is how kinetic barriers function. They use the kinetic energy of the projectile against it, in effect, which is why slow things go through the shield... less kinetic energy.

That's exactly what he meant by dune-style handwavium. Kinetic barriers aren't even theoretical - they are a story/setting mechanism to justify the relevance of melee weapons or certain kinds of energy weapons.

 Psienesis wrote:
You can bind pure oxygen to another element in a solid state that then combusts when exposed to an electric charge, which provides sufficient oxygen for the initial charge (you don't need much).

Exactly. Even non-modern explosives/propellants like black powder and dynamite contain their own oxygen.

An electric charge is will not trigger many explosives/propellants - most require significantly more than that.

The Hellfire electric firing assembly (available in gunstores everywhere now) begs to differ.

An electrically fired primer is not the same as igniting the propellant via electricity.

The primer is an explosive, is it not?

 Psienesis wrote:
The primer is an explosive, is it not?

It is a very specialised form of explosive.

I said that an electrical charge would not trigger many explosives/propellants and that most require significantly more than that to trigger them - not that it wouldn't trigger any.

I think there would be some advantages to close combat weapons in the grim dark future. Consider Tyranids and Orks that would close on you with close combat being their objective, this would necessitate some means of defense or counter assault. As humans fighting humans we don't need close combat weapons because our ranged weapons are so capable of stopping another person. The moment your primary arm fails to reliably drop an enemy, it means you need a new primary arm or failing that some sort of close combat capability.

Consider a bolter, it is much like some our modern special weapons that launch a small warhead with an explosive. Those weapons are both unwieldy to a normal human. So what do you do when you need something more, but that something more doesn't exist in the technological realm of ranged weapons.

 Psienesis wrote:
The primer is an explosive, is it not?

Yes, but its not the kind of explosive you'd want as your propellant.

Propellant needs to have a lot of power, but you also want it to be stable for safety purposes. This means you need the primer, which is a specialized kind of explosive that can ignite the otherwise stable explosive.

Thats why things like C4 and other high explosives are often fairly stable. You can put C4 in a fire and it won't explode, it just burns kinda like wax.

Stargate also had shields who reflective ability was tied to the velocity of the object hitting them. Real world physics this is probably nonsense but so is most of 40k compared to the real world. Assuming that such devices existed and there do seem to be evidence of such in 40k, then hitting each other makes sense.

Doesn't one of the White Scars vs Tau novels, have the Tau using a big energy shield projector that "sciencemagically" one way prevents them from using everything but a plasma cannon and bum rushing it with chainsaws?

Disregard the by product of weird glitchy Internet.

As someone who owns many firearms as well as swords, and who does competitive HEMA longsword fencing twice a week (with a broken finger and a currently-recovering dislocated patella to prove it), really it's no contest, the gun wins. There's a reason melee weapons aren't issued to troops beyond a knife, which is a utility tool more than an actual combat weapon.

In real life, if two combatants are within a couple paces of each other, one has a blade drawn, versus a gun that's not drawn, sure, the blade may have the advantage, but aside from that, the gun is by far the superior option.

With regards to 40k, we're generally not talking about nor playing games portraying close quarters combat where such situations may arise. Even in the one game that does do that, Space Hulk, the side that gets to shoot stuff gets to kill a whole lot more of their non-shooting opponents.


40k plays by "rule of cool", being more Fantasy with a scifi skin than an actual Scifi universe. Melee weapons in a universe with starships, drop pods, masses of armored vehicles, automatic weapons everywhere, etc, are in fact stupid if any sort of reality is applied.

With regards to the ammo issue, yes, the statistics of every kill requiring tens of thousands of rounds are true, but one must understand that the vast majority of those rounds are fired in suppression fire and crew served automatic weapons fire hosing down entire areas. One will notice that, despite the fact that yes, firearms can run out of ammunition, nobody on modern battlefields is running around trying to stab anyone to death. The few instances you can find are stand out precisely because of their rarity. Soldiers go into battle with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and crew served weapons often with thousands of rounds.

LIkewise, the idea of "cumulative damage" with melee weapons, hitting the same spot over and over, not gonna happen unless you've got an already helpless or otherwise defenseless target (e.g. surprise kidney shiving some dude prison style from behind). You're far more likely to have a burst of automatic fire hit roughly the same spot than say, multiple sword or multiple knife strikes.

Additionally, with regards to body penetration, bullets are going to do better every time than a blade will. Even a relatively piddly round, like say .380, will go straight through a sternum and retain enough energy to cause fatal damage to an organ like the heart, and still potentially exit the other side of the body. Doing that with a sword is possible, but the other guy has a whole lot more say in it and swinging blades edge-on are usually not going to penetrate extremely deeply (as opposed to thrusting).

I always carry a knife, and often carry a handgun (CHL wooo!), and if I run into anything that's going to threaten my life, I'm not reaching for the knife.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
The primer is an explosive, is it not?

Yes, but its not the kind of explosive you'd want as your propellant.

Propellant needs to have a lot of power, but you also want it to be stable for safety purposes. This means you need the primer, which is a specialized kind of explosive that can ignite the otherwise stable explosive.

Thats why things like C4 and other high explosives are often fairly stable. You can put C4 in a fire and it won't explode, it just burns kinda like wax.

I can't believe I have to explain this, but here we go...

The primer in question is in the boltround itself, yes? Yes. The boltround is basically a weather-immune cartridge (like most brass rounds today, those things are shelf-stable for decades). An electric jolt activated by one of the ubiquitous "power cells" in 40K, or even through an induction pad in the grip run off the power armor's fusion reactor, is enough to detonate the primer, which then causes the chain-reaction that sends the boltround downrange. When it comes to a bullet, there is no real functional difference between a firing pin and an electric firing assembly. They're both there to pop the primer. That's all they do.

The electric firing assembly has several advantages over a firing pin. One, they're a lot harder to break. Two, they permit replacing a trigger with a firing stud or button, which reduces "trigger jerk" on long-range precision shots (such as from a Stalker-pattern bolter). Three, if they *do* break, they're a lot easier to replace and repair, since they're basically some wires attached to a battery or other source of power (such as the fusion reactor in a Marine's Power Armor), rather than a precision-tooled piece of metal that has to be within very tight tolerances to operate. Four, they don't wear out like firing pins do over repeated use, which results in misfires, bent cartridges and a host of similar issues. Five, you can keep the assembly in a sealed module in the weapon, which saves on maintenance, as it keeps environmental debris, dust, dirt, etc. out of the weapon... and the wires/pins don't need to be oiled or all that bothered about carbon build-up (and when they get to the point where they are, they are much easier to clean than a firing pin and bolt assembly).

Ultimate point being, a boltgun is fully operational in any environment, including underwater and in the vacuum of space, save one where the whole place is flooded with an explosive gas. In such an environment, the weapon will still operate, but you will wish that it had not.

 Psienesis wrote:

The electric firing assembly has several advantages over a firing pin. One, they're a lot harder to break. Two, they permit replacing a trigger with a firing stud or button, which reduces "trigger jerk" on long-range precision shots (such as from a Stalker-pattern bolter). Three, if they *do* break, they're a lot easier to replace and repair, since they're basically some wires attached to a battery or other source of power (such as the fusion reactor in a Marine's Power Armor), rather than a precision-tooled piece of metal that has to be within very tight tolerances to operate. Four, they don't wear out like firing pins do over repeated use, which results in misfires, bent cartridges and a host of similar issues. Five, you can keep the assembly in a sealed module in the weapon, which saves on maintenance, as it keeps environmental debris, dust, dirt, etc. out of the weapon... and the wires/pins don't need to be oiled or all that bothered about carbon build-up (and when they get to the point where they are, they are much easier to clean than a firing pin and bolt assembly).

One - I don't agree. Small electrical switches and spring loaded electrical pins are significantly more vulnerable to damage then a small number of hardened steel parts and large springs. This is why electrical ignition is extremely rare in military small arms.
Two - Actually, it's not trigger jerk but reduced lock time which improves accuracy with electrical triggers.
Three - This would depend entirely on the design of the weapon. There are rifles where the complete trigger pack can be removed as a unit with the removal of a single pin. Equally, an electrical trigger can be many small parts that are difficult to remove. It is entirely a function of design, neither is inherently better.
Four - Electrical switches absolutely do wear out as do the contacts for the electrical primer and you'll also need contacts between the bolter and the armour if you're proposing to use the armour's power source. (you'll also render the weapon useless if a proper grip isn't made - this does not seem like good design) If you have a separate power source in the weapon then you have an additional point of failure.
Five - Actually carbon build up on the electrical contacts for the primer is a real problem with electrical ignition. This is why electrical triggers are only gaining ground in precision applications where round counts will be low and in mounted applications (like aircraft) which also have relatively low round counts between significant maintenance and which will be at least partially electrically operated regardless of ignition system.

 Vaktathi wrote:

With regards to the ammo issue, yes, the statistics of every kill requiring tens of thousands of rounds are true, but one must understand that the vast majority of those rounds are fired in suppression fire and crew served automatic weapons fire hosing down entire areas. One will notice that, despite the fact that yes, firearms can run out of ammunition, nobody on modern battlefields is running around trying to stab anyone to death. The few instances you can find are stand out precisely because of their rarity. Soldiers go into battle with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and crew served weapons often with thousands of rounds.

Modern day warfare is very different from what 40k represents. Heck, even WW2 has numerous stories of melee weapons such as bayonettes, shovels and even sabers used with unexpectedly great results. I remember reading about a group of 3 cossacks with sabers overruning a german mechanised column.

Anywayz, current day warfare is about positioning, cover and tactical movement. When you get out of ammo, you simply retreat. Every special force soldier who doesn't always have an option to retreat, for example, when they get thrown at the enemy backlines, are well trained to use their melee weapons. 40k often depicts situations when forces have nowhere to retreat. In this context, it's a good idea to have a dedicated melee weapon.

Besides, modern day weapons way outperform modern day defensive mechanisms a person could wear. 1 proper hit usually means a dead or at least incapacitated foe. In 40k not so much. You can shoot an ork that's a few meters away from you with your bolter and he might not get killed. Not telling about even tougher foes. And a ranged weapon provides no protection from melee attacks. You can't effectively parry with a bolter. Whereas that damn ork is running at you swinging his rusty choppa. You can't effectively grapple with a shooting weapon that's not a short pistol.

Do these guys work in munitions design and manufactor or something?

 koooaei wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

With regards to the ammo issue, yes, the statistics of every kill requiring tens of thousands of rounds are true, but one must understand that the vast majority of those rounds are fired in suppression fire and crew served automatic weapons fire hosing down entire areas. One will notice that, despite the fact that yes, firearms can run out of ammunition, nobody on modern battlefields is running around trying to stab anyone to death. The few instances you can find are stand out precisely because of their rarity. Soldiers go into battle with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and crew served weapons often with thousands of rounds.

Modern day warfare is very different from what 40k represents. Heck, even WW2 has numerous stories of melee weapons such as bayonettes, shovels and even sabers used with unexpectedly great results. I remember reading about a group of 3 cossacks with sabers overruning a german mechanised column.

Anywayz, current day warfare is about positioning, cover and tactical movement. When you get out of ammo, you simply retreat. Every special force soldier who doesn't always have an option to retreat, for example, when they get thrown at the enemy backlines, are well trained to use their melee weapons. 40k often depicts situations when forces have nowhere to retreat. In this context, it's a good idea to have a dedicated melee weapon.

Besides, modern day weapons way outperform modern day defensive mechanisms a person could wear. 1 proper hit usually means a dead or at least incapacitated foe. In 40k not so much. You can shoot an ork that's a few meters away from you with your bolter and he might not get killed. Not telling about even tougher foes. And a ranged weapon provides no protection from melee attacks. You can't effectively parry with a bolter. Whereas that damn ork is running at you swinging his rusty choppa. You can't effectively grapple with a shooting weapon that's not a short pistol.

Artillery> and machine guns. These are the main killers during both world wars. Matters of parrying swords or axes pale in comparission to that kind of firepower, even when it comes to spaceorks.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
The primer is an explosive, is it not?

Yes, but its not the kind of explosive you'd want as your propellant.

Propellant needs to have a lot of power, but you also want it to be stable for safety purposes. This means you need the primer, which is a specialized kind of explosive that can ignite the otherwise stable explosive.

Thats why things like C4 and other high explosives are often fairly stable. You can put C4 in a fire and it won't explode, it just burns kinda like wax.

I can't believe I have to explain this, but here we go...

The primer in question is in the boltround itself, yes? Yes. The boltround is basically a weather-immune cartridge (like most brass rounds today, those things are shelf-stable for decades). An electric jolt activated by one of the ubiquitous "power cells" in 40K, or even through an induction pad in the grip run off the power armor's fusion reactor, is enough to detonate the primer, which then causes the chain-reaction that sends the boltround downrange. When it comes to a bullet, there is no real functional difference between a firing pin and an electric firing assembly. They're both there to pop the primer. That's all they do.

The electric firing assembly has several advantages over a firing pin. One, they're a lot harder to break. Two, they permit replacing a trigger with a firing stud or button, which reduces "trigger jerk" on long-range precision shots (such as from a Stalker-pattern bolter). Three, if they *do* break, they're a lot easier to replace and repair, since they're basically some wires attached to a battery or other source of power (such as the fusion reactor in a Marine's Power Armor), rather than a precision-tooled piece of metal that has to be within very tight tolerances to operate. Four, they don't wear out like firing pins do over repeated use, which results in misfires, bent cartridges and a host of similar issues. Five, you can keep the assembly in a sealed module in the weapon, which saves on maintenance, as it keeps environmental debris, dust, dirt, etc. out of the weapon... and the wires/pins don't need to be oiled or all that bothered about carbon build-up (and when they get to the point where they are, they are much easier to clean than a firing pin and bolt assembly).

Ultimate point being, a boltgun is fully operational in any environment, including underwater and in the vacuum of space, save one where the whole place is flooded with an explosive gas. In such an environment, the weapon will still operate, but you will wish that it had not.

Sorry, I wasn't refuting your electric primer ignition. Just explaining what the primer was to Scott using your quote.

Any material short comings of today can be waved off by virtue of it being set in the year 40k.

So remind me what keeps a gun from being a melee weapon that can shoot?

Like my example of bayonetted rifles vs Assegai in the Zulu wars, a gun can also be an effective melee weapon, whereas a pure melee weapon cannot be a terribly effective firearm.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
So remind me what keeps a gum from being a melee weapon that can shoot?

Like my example of bayonetted rifles vs Assegai in the Zulu wars, a gun can also be an effective melee weapon, whereas a pure melee weapon cannot be a terribly effective firearm.

It can be a decent ranged weapon if you have a very good throwing arm and a piece of rope though

Unless its made for throwing, not so much.

Rifle with bayonet is the best compromise. Or you build sharp pointy guns like armored core 4.

 koooaei wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

With regards to the ammo issue, yes, the statistics of every kill requiring tens of thousands of rounds are true, but one must understand that the vast majority of those rounds are fired in suppression fire and crew served automatic weapons fire hosing down entire areas. One will notice that, despite the fact that yes, firearms can run out of ammunition, nobody on modern battlefields is running around trying to stab anyone to death. The few instances you can find are stand out precisely because of their rarity. Soldiers go into battle with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and crew served weapons often with thousands of rounds.

Modern day warfare is very different from what 40k represents. Heck, even WW2 has numerous stories of melee weapons such as bayonettes, shovels and even sabers used with unexpectedly great results. I remember reading about a group of 3 cossacks with sabers overruning a german mechanised column.

They get used, but usually because a firearm wasn't handy (hard to use a 5ft long rifle with a bolt action and a 5 round magazine as anything but a club in close quarters, if they had pistols or submachineguns however...). Things with cossack cavalry (as opposed to dragoon infantry) attacking with sabers and the like were, IIRC, against retreating and routing infantry columns (and, again, IIRC, in low light conditions like dusk through ravines and valleys), not strong mechanized forces.

Anywayz, current day warfare is about positioning, cover and tactical movement. When you get out of ammo, you simply retreat. Every special force soldier who doesn't always have an option to retreat, for example, when they get thrown at the enemy backlines, are well trained to use their melee weapons. 40k often depicts situations when forces have nowhere to retreat. In this context, it's a good idea to have a dedicated melee weapon.

The problem is that if the enemy still has ammo, you're basically screwed at that point and will probably never get to use that weapon

Besides, modern day weapons way outperform modern day defensive mechanisms a person could wear. 1 proper hit usually means a dead or at least incapacitated foe. In 40k not so much. You can shoot an ork that's a few meters away from you with your bolter and he might not get killed.

How would an blade do anything different? A gun could drill 6 holes into an Ork much faster and more effectively than a sword, knife, or axe would.

Not telling about even tougher foes. And a ranged weapon provides no protection from melee attacks. You can't effectively parry with a bolter.

You can block melee attacks with guns, there's a whole technique to it (though I wouldn't want to have to), that's a whole part of bayonet training. But, more importantly, if you've got a bolter, the chances of the other guy swinging a Choppa at you are going to be practically nil when you can shoot him first.

Whereas that damn ork is running at you swinging his rusty choppa. You can't effectively grapple with a shooting weapon that's not a short pistol.

I think the point would be to shoot him first, and there's a reason vast gobs or Orks die before any get properly stuck in.

There are lots of ways to make guns into melee weapons in the 41st millenium.

Shroud the stock in a toggle-able power field and BOOM power maul.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just as an example

 aka_mythos wrote:
Any material short comings of today can be waved off by virtue of it being set in the year 40k.

Not really, but if you say so.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There are lots of ways to make guns into melee weapons in the 41st millenium.

Shroud the stock in a toggle-able power field and BOOM power maul.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just as an example

Won't that be expensive and potentially harmful to the user?
You have a gun, and then you have to redesign the gun to support a power field.
Also, a power field disintegrates flesh, right? What if you accidentally flick the switch when trying the aim the damn thing?
If you are going to put a power weapon on a gun, it should be on the end that you want to point at the enemy.

A detachable power bayonet sounds more reasonable. Just stick a ring on a power sword.
Or rather a power knife.

A gun with a bayonette is never as good melee weapon as a proper spear.

Its shorter, that's about the only disadvantage it has.

Its a lot less encumbering than carrying a spear, and you can still shoot the spearman from far away.

 koooaei wrote:
A gun with a bayonette is never as good melee weapon as a proper spear.

not too many soldiers carrying spears, these days.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
A gun with a bayonette is never as good melee weapon as a proper spear.

not too many soldiers carrying spears, these days.

SJ

Not many soldiers today fight 7ft tall green fungus aliens who are slightly bulletproof.
Ork bones can resist high velocity impacts, and they have this spongy stuff that protects their vital organs, which they don't have many of.
You would pretty much either have to dismember one, shoot them with a really big gun that hits a weak point, or shoot them a bunch and hope something breaks.

Melee weapons are good at the former, might get through the spongy mass too. Aren't kevlar vests susceptible to stabby things, like knives, as they work by absorbing the kinetic energy from a bullet? That spongy stuff probably works like that.

A big gun can probably do the former as well. That's probably what bolters were designed for; explode inside of a ork, tearing up its organs and maybe removing a limb.

The IG practice the latter. It sometimes works.

Love the fact Orks (at least in the old fluff - not seen much reference in recent stuff) are effectively walking mushrooms with heads that are fruiting bodies - explains why they could soak up so many bullets without suffering much ill-effect

 Wulfmar wrote:
Love the fact Orks (at least in the old fluff - not seen much reference in recent stuff) are effectively walking mushrooms with heads that are fruiting bodies - explains why they could soak up so many bullets without suffering much ill-effect

Yeah, most of their body is composed of a fungal mass. Other than that, they don't have many organs.
They have a brain, but its relatively small and behind a thick skull. They have a stomach, and some sort of organ that serves as its liver, kidney and pancreas.
I think they have a heart, but I didn't read anything about it, and logically they should have an intestinal tract, unless they excrete waste from their skin, or have a very efficient digestive system.

Supposedly they can also photosynthesize, and of course they reproduce by constantly spreading spores, especially in their death throes.