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Volleyguns vs. Bolters

On the TT:
As has previously been mentioned, we can't have an entire army armed with Special Weapons. The only way that this could happen is if they decided to make the tabletop match the fluff - this means hugely upping ppm, giving some new special rules base, buffing the statline of each Marine, etc. etc.

In the fluff:
Bolters, in the fluff, were designed to eliminate fleshy targets. It is a machinegun grenade launcher that blows up inside the target. It is the consummate shock 'n awe weapon, and would terrify many foes into outright surrendering. Now, HSVGs might do something similar, but the fluff isn't in total agreement on this - I've seen some sources that portray Lasguns as exploding human flesh, others as burning it away.
Because of this, we see Bolters as being great against most targets, while HSVGs are more specialized for taking down heavily armoured targets (like Space Marines).

Also, you really don't need to be that hostile when you're arguing. Going the "your arguments are bad and you should feel bad!" route doesn't exactly credit your own side of the argument.

 Silverthorne wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Silverthorne wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Silverthorne wrote:
Seriously what did you intend on proving?

That two rounds from your superdeadly space gun can't possibly in any way kill a naked human just because he's a CO.

I hope that what that means is obvious - ie, game mechanics =/= lore.

Marines probably use bolters because they are not that much worse in the lore. In fact, they may well be better. It is understandable why they are not in the game. Imagine how meaningless it would be to have a special weapon worse than S4 Ap5 rapid fire.

Why are you so hostile?

Actually, a standard burst from a HSVG can kill a company commander. (Who would be a captain, by the way, not a major). 4 S4 AP3 shots are sufficient to blot a T3 3W model. So yeah-- seems like the game mechanics and lore are matching up pretty well to me.

Why are you so delicate?

Are you intentionally missing the point she's trying to make to fit with your narrative? Two shots point blank from your super gun can't kill a regular guard officer despite him just being a squishy human because it only takes two out of his three wounds. It would take three. It does not take three shots point blank to kill a regular human with a bolt gun in the lore. So, therefore, either lore=/=gameplay or the Volleygun is inferior.

Do you actually think the HSVG fires 'four shots'? Or a bolter fires two? The profiles indicate the damage that can be done in a single burst, they don't actually mean the boltgun spits out two bolts and the HSVG 4 freems. So messing with the profile doesn't mean that the target only gets shot by 2 las beams, it means nothing at all. A single burst from the HSVG can kill the second toughest, and most important figure in an AM force. A single burst from a boltgun can't. And you are both trying to spin that as somehow invalidating the superiority of the HSVG over the bolter. You're comparing apples to oranges here-- comparing a TT stat with Lore narrative. The Salvo 4 means that it is a very quick firing weapon, not that it fires exactly 4 shots. Obviously the burst of fire represented by the HSVG Salvo-4 profile doesn't mean the Tempestus dude carefully counts 1 2 3 4 and stops pulling the trigger. Same with Rapid Fire 2 on a bolter. So your comparison is totally dead and the water, and honestly, must seem pretty shaky even to you.

The point ----->*
Where you hit------->
You just missed the point entirely.

I never claimed that the Hotshot Volleygun only fires two shots. Only that two shots won't outright kill a Guard commander which doesn't make any sense lore wise if the HSVG was superior lore-wise. It would only take one. So, therefore, you can't equate the TT rules to the rules.

You're trying to cross too many wires here in your comparison to obfuscate how weak your narrative is. You reduce the number of shots the HSVG gets, just to ensure that mechanically it can't top 3 wounds (when it would always get 4 shots at that range....) then say that it is inferior to a boltgun firing three times... in the fluff. You're just literally making things up now to patch up your badly fractured narrative. If you want to say bolters are OmG Wonderful than go ahead, there are plenty of ridiculous plot armored SM that have one-shotted Warbosses with their bolt pistols for you to say that. As far as I'm aware, there are only a few pieces of fluff where a guy with a HSVG goes up against a dude with a bolter that allow for a direct comparison. Want to guess who wins?

Oh, so when it's about Space Marines kicking ass with bolt guns you just can write it off as "Ridiculous plot armor" but when a Stormtrooper with a Volleygun does it it's a fair comparison. How is this not hypocrisy?

We can't directly equate TT rules with fluff, but they do give us a good standing for a *relative* background comparison, even if they're not perfect reflections. For example, the tabletop stats tell us that a Pulse Rifle is more powerful and longer ranged than a Boltgun, but they don't give us direct explosive yields or kinetic energy counts in Joules or what exactly 30" range means vs a 24" range.

It should also be noted that the more reality one tries to inject here, the more both weapons start to break down very quickly. The fundamental concept of a boltgun is both fundamentally flawed and overcomplicated, while real life laser weapons have a huge host of environmental issues that will rapidly degrade their performance (e.g. fog or smoke will have a major impact on the lethality of a laser weapon) and would likely not function anything near how they're portrayed in 40k (i.e. they're not shooting light-bullets, it'd be a continuous beam or pulsing so fast it might as well be firing for an extremely short duration).

 Vaktathi wrote:
We can't directly equate TT rules with fluff, but they do give us a good standing for a *relative* background comparison, even if they're not perfect reflections. For example, the tabletop stats tell us that a Pulse Rifle is more powerful and longer ranged than a Boltgun, but they don't give us direct explosive yields or kinetic energy counts in Joules or what exactly 30" range means vs a 24" range.

I keep telling you that this is BS and I still think it is. Straken isn't stronger than an Ogryn just because he has a bionic arm, nor does said arm offer Ork toughness and PA-equivalent protection. Nor does a singing priest next to him make its PA-level protection three times stronger.

The rules are very good for cherrypicking examples out of to justify one's own bias but that is it. They should be kept very far away from here, for this is the background forum.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
We can't directly equate TT rules with fluff, but they do give us a good standing for a *relative* background comparison, even if they're not perfect reflections. For example, the tabletop stats tell us that a Pulse Rifle is more powerful and longer ranged than a Boltgun, but they don't give us direct explosive yields or kinetic energy counts in Joules or what exactly 30" range means vs a 24" range.

I keep telling you that this is BS and I still think it is. Straken isn't stronger than an Ogryn just because he has a bionic arm

He might be, certainly we can make hydraulic devices today which could deliver more force in a punch or keep a tighter grip or whatever than anything biological. In terms of what the game uses the S stat for, largely physical blows, that could be perfectly possible. Either way, this is delving into the minutae of a specific character, not the broad generalities of ubiquitous and faction defining wargear.

nor does said arm offer Ork toughness and PA-equivalent protection

He's got more bionics than just the arm, that's just all that's showing. Not saying it's always perfect, and especially with individual characters things get fuzzy, but that doesn't mean the information is completely worthless, otherwise it wouldn't function at any extent as a reflection of the the background universe, which is clearly false because otherwise nobody would be bothering to play.

The rules are very good for cherrypicking examples out of to justify one's own bias but that is it. They should be kept very far away from here, for this is the background forum.

If we're cherry picking through one particular character's stats, sure. When we're talking the general broad characteristics of widespread infantry wargear such as infantry small arms, it suits just fine. Again, the fact that a Pulse Rifle in game has a longer range than a Bolter tells us that, in the background universe, Pulse Rifles probably have a longer effective range than bolters. It doesn't tell us exactly how many meters that might be or whatnot, but it's enough for it to be represented in the game stats as a reflection of the larger universe's background.

TL;DR it's good for giving us *relative* information about *broad* characteristics of longstanding staple items, not the tiny details (that vary from edition to edition) of any particular character.

You can't make a blanket statement like that. Bolters vary vastly (especially between human and Astartes bolters) and their game equality is an abstraction. Remember the 3W Company Commander I have been talking about here? How does that, even in general terms, make any sense? Oh, but I am sure you will disregard that. What about how a SM punches harder than his melon-sized frag grenade, and how his fist can damage a Leman Russ but his frag can't? Even in general terms. But you will disregard that too, and we can continue that dance all night.

Come on. The game falls apart, even in the most general of contexts, very quickly. Picking out the parts you think make sense is not an omission you can make here. The game is consistent with nothing but itself, and usually not even that.

I did not read it all because frankly this question was answered at post 7:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
HSVG weren't invented when space marines came out.

The bolter is inferior to the hot shot lasgun. Back in 3d ed the stormtroopers used to have hellguns. Theese had str 3 ap 5 and where replaced in 5th ed by the hotshot lasgun. I hated this change so much since it does not represent the lore and even contradicts it. There is no justifiable fluff reason for this. In the book series Schaffers last chancers (13th penal legion) the main character Kage picks up a certain lasgun that is remarkably similar to the hotshot. It's insanely powerfull but can only last for 100 shots, after that the weapon breaks apart and therefore it's never used by the military.

Also hot shot lasguns has existed in the lore for the longest time as a way for the lasgun to empty the mag in a single powerfull shot. A shot that is still weaker then a bolt shell mind you. It appeared both in Necromunda, Inquisition and Dark Heresy.

There's also an overcharged pack, which pakes a slightly heavier punch at the cost of reliability.

As a side note the space marines scouts use long las as their sniper rifle so space marines clearly are not above using las-weapons.

EDIT: Most weapons rate of fire, maximum range, Magazine size, reliability, availability and ammo types can be found in the fantasy flight games books (DH, RT, OW, BC and DW). Including the diffrences between human sized and astartes sized equipment.

What you're referring to, Nerak, is just the Cruddacing of Stormtroopers.

The Hot-Shot Lasgun thing is literally just them redoing the stats of the Hellgun to be better, and renaming it. The 5th edition book actually has an instance where you can see that they just used "Find and Replace" on the Stormtrooper entry to remove mentions of Hellgun with Hotshot Lasgun.

Which is super dumb. They were two distinctive weapon types. They did not need to be merged.
Not to mention that hellgun sounds cooler.

It's not even that they were "merged".

They removed "Hellguns" because of the stupid Ordo Hereticus weapon, the "Hellrifle"(the stupid Jezzail styled weapon that was in the first Grey Knights codex dunno if it's in the new one) and the idea that somehow people would confuse the two.

 Ashiraya wrote:
You can't make a blanket statement like that. Bolters vary vastly (especially between human and Astartes bolters) and their game equality is an abstraction. Remember the 3W Company Commander I have been talking about here? How does that, even in general terms, make any sense? Oh, but I am sure you will disregard that. What about how a SM punches harder than his melon-sized frag grenade, and how his fist can damage a Leman Russ but his frag can't? Even in general terms. But you will disregard that too, and we can continue that dance all night.

Again, you're delving into details here, not the broad generalities. For instance, Bolters vary vastly, but not enough to be distinguishable in game terms vs between a Lasgun or Pulse Rifle, same reason an Autopistol and Autorifle both have S3, despite that there's a vast difference in kinetic energy between a pistol and rifle round. Likewise, a Frag Grenade doesn't really have all *that* much oomf against any one target, its goal is to try and throw a bunch of metal splinters about that only need to go an inch or two into a human body to kill, it's entirely conceivable that a Space Marine could delver more force in a punch to a single target than a frag grenade's shrapnel. I'm not getting into things like Character wounds because they're clearly exaggerated (same thing with SM's, a Captain isn't really 3x as hard to kill physically as a Tac marine) for game effects and we can identify and acknowledge that in those cases.

I'm not saying its perfect or always useful, the game rules are absolutely full of absurd stuff, but if it wasn't *broadly* reflective of the background, it wouldn't function at all as any sort of reflection of it and nobody would play the game at all.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It's not even that they were "merged".

They removed "Hellguns" because of the stupid Ordo Hereticus weapon, the "Hellrifle"(the stupid Jezzail styled weapon that was in the first Grey Knights codex dunno if it's in the new one) and the idea that somehow people would confuse the two.

Hey, I thought the Hellrifles were kinda cool. Not a big fan of the "jezzail" style described in the book, but I liked that they used Dark Eldar tech. Gear like that helps give radical Ordo Xenos Inquisitors some flavor. It is kind of annoying that they thought that fans are too stupid to tell the difference between a Hellgun and a Hellrifle.

It was Dark Eldar tech? I thought it was demon tech, hence the hell. If its Dark Eldar, then shouldn't it have been called a pain rifle or something?
Also, wasn't it an Ordo Malleus thing?

 fallinq wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
It's not even that they were "merged".

They removed "Hellguns" because of the stupid Ordo Hereticus weapon, the "Hellrifle"(the stupid Jezzail styled weapon that was in the first Grey Knights codex dunno if it's in the new one) and the idea that somehow people would confuse the two.

Hey, I thought the Hellrifles were kinda cool. Not a big fan of the "jezzail" style described in the book, but I liked that they used Dark Eldar tech. Gear like that helps give radical Ordo Xenos Inquisitors some flavor. It is kind of annoying that they thought that fans are too stupid to tell the difference between a Hellgun and a Hellrifle.

On the other hand, they think we're smart enough to remember the difference between a Stormblade, a Stormhammer and a Doomhammer super heavy tank.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
It was Dark Eldar tech? I thought it was demon tech, hence the hell. If its Dark Eldar, then shouldn't it have been called a pain rifle or something?
Also, wasn't it an Ordo Malleus thing?

There's no mention of it being Dark Eldar tech. I think fallinq is just making an assumption because the gun fires "razor sharp shards".

 Vaktathi wrote:



I'm not saying its perfect or always useful, the game rules are absolutely full of absurd stuff, but if it wasn't *broadly* reflective of the background, it wouldn't function at all as any sort of reflection of it and nobody would play the game at all.

And I am saying that 'the game stats are accurate and good except all this fethton of stuff I don't like, just ignore that' is not very convincing.

The nature of 40k's canon lets you cherrypick but do not try to pass it off as anything else than your own headcanon.

It is broadly reflective in the sense that Marines wear relatively heavy armor and operate in squads of 5 or 10 just as in the lore, but anything more detailed and it falls apart faster than you can cobble it together again.

The hotshot lasgun was in the 2nd ed codex, where it was a strenght 4 no AP lasgun

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:



I'm not saying its perfect or always useful, the game rules are absolutely full of absurd stuff, but if it wasn't *broadly* reflective of the background, it wouldn't function at all as any sort of reflection of it and nobody would play the game at all.

And I am saying that 'the game stats are accurate and good except all this fethton of stuff I don't like, just ignore that' is not very convincing.

thats...not what I'm saying. My point was that for ubiquitous and general stuff, like say Boltguns vs Pulse Rifles, it gives us an idea of their *relative* capabilities.

I'm not sure how much more I need to repeat that. Im not talking about wounds on X character or the minutae of Bolter variants, but how the game treats entire classes of things. For example, bolters as a whole are S4, more powerful than Lasguns and Autoguns as a whole are at S3, but are weaker and shorter ranged than Pulse Rifles as a whole, and that this tells us how these classes of weapons broadly rank within the 40k background universe. It tells us that a Leman Russ is better armored than a Predator, that a Lascannon is a more capable anti tank weapon than a Krak missile, or that an Ogryn is stronger and hardier than a naked Space Marine, or that a Space Marine is better armor than a Stormtrooper, or that a Rhino lacks the speed and armor of a Wave Serpent, that an Eldar has faster reflexes than a Guardsmen, who in turn is generally a bit more on the ball than an Ork or Tau Fire Warrior. Big picture stuff.

It is broadly reflective in the sense that Marines wear relatively heavy armor and operate in squads of 5 or 10 just as in the lore, but anything more detailed and it falls apart faster than you can cobble it together again.

I believe thats pretty much exactly the kind of thing I was saying. These stats reflect that Space Marines as a whole are tougher and better armored than say, Dire Avengers as a whole. It tells us theres enough differences to matter and be be relevant enough to reflect on a tactical level, but I'm not saying it tells us in detail how each would survive an axe wound or how much faster an SM heals than an Eldar or anything like that.

The game doesn't match the fluff because the game needs BALANCE we don't have that. This applies to HSVG and Bolters. Bolters, by the fluff, EASILY one shot things that are multi-wound on the table top. HSVG both a) suffer from power creep, and b) aren't as demoralizing/destructive as bolters are in the fluff. we're we to actually go "yeah, marines should have HSVG," then the balance of the game would be stupid (because now your 10-man squad pumps out 40 AP: 3 shots per turn).


to expand on this, let's look at the 'movie marines' list (arguably the closest table-top equivalent to fluff accurate marines):

a regular dude has: WS/BS of 5, S/T of 6, 2 wounds, 3 attacks base, and I of 5. They have a 3+ re-rollable armour save, and a 3++ invuln. Their knives are rending, their chainswords are AP: 3 and cause double wounds. All still accurate to what we see in the fluff. Then we get to the bolters: 36" range, S: 6 AP: 4 Assault 4, rending. Not perfect, but LEAGUES more accurate to what we see in the fluff. Would a full army (40+ models) of this be fun to play against? No, hence why it's toned down.

the point of this was to just clarify WHY bolters are so weak on the table top: not representative of the fluff AND not effected by power creep over the years.

@Vaktathi I don't think the game numerics are reliable enough to even tell that.

To take an example similar to the boltgun-pulse, a veteran Tempestus Scion is WS3, whereas a Marine Scout is WS4. Now, the Marine may have the advantage due to raw strength, resilience and speed, but the sheer veterancy disparity should not leave the Scion behind in skill too! The Scout may have more melee time in his training schedule but he also needs training in heavy weapons usage, bike riding etc. so it evens out.

That ones a particular bugbear with me as I think scions have a grip of stat problems in general, though thats a topic for another thread

 Vaktathi wrote:
That ones a particular bugbear with me as I think scions have a grip of stat problems in general

WELCOME TO THE LIFE OF ANY MEQ PLAYER.

MAY I TAKE YOUR HAT, SIR?

Unfortunately, the venerable Boltgun just doesn't have as much power creep.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Unfortunately, the venerable Boltgun just doesn't have as much power creep.

Bah, just make it strength 5 AP 4 in the next addition to make up for it.

 Brennonjw wrote:
The game doesn't match the fluff because the game needs BALANCE we don't have that. This applies to HSVG and Bolters. Bolters, by the fluff, EASILY one shot things that are multi-wound on the table top. HSVG both a) suffer from power creep, and b) aren't as demoralizing/destructive as bolters are in the fluff. we're we to actually go "yeah, marines should have HSVG," then the balance of the game would be stupid (because now your 10-man squad pumps out 40 AP: 3 shots per turn).


to expand on this, let's look at the 'movie marines' list (arguably the closest table-top equivalent to fluff accurate marines):

a regular dude has: WS/BS of 5, S/T of 6, 2 wounds, 3 attacks base, and I of 5. They have a 3+ re-rollable armour save, and a 3++ invuln. Their knives are rending, their chainswords are AP: 3 and cause double wounds. All still accurate to what we see in the fluff. Then we get to the bolters: 36" range, S: 6 AP: 4 Assault 4, rending. Not perfect, but LEAGUES more accurate to what we see in the fluff. Would a full army (40+ models) of this be fun to play against? No, hence why it's toned down.

the point of this was to just clarify WHY bolters are so weak on the table top: not representative of the fluff AND not effected by power creep over the years.

To be honest that'd be better than how Space Marines are represented now. If GW made a codex like that, it'd be fun

Its ridiculous, I wouldn't bother playing agaisnt it

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Brennonjw wrote:
-snip-

the point of this was to just clarify WHY bolters are so weak on the table top: not representative of the fluff AND not effected by power creep over the years.

To be honest that'd be better than how Space Marines are represented now. If GW made a codex like that, it'd be fun

Except for one thing.

When the Movie Marines list was released, part of the article explicitly stated that it was not supposed to be Fluff Accurate, and that they were far, far more powerful than fluff Space Marines are supposed to be, but that they had plot armour because they were supposed to be how Marines would be represented in an action movie, like Predator or Die Hard.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Brennonjw wrote:
-snip-

the point of this was to just clarify WHY bolters are so weak on the table top: not representative of the fluff AND not effected by power creep over the years.

To be honest that'd be better than how Space Marines are represented now. If GW made a codex like that, it'd be fun

Except for one thing.

When the Movie Marines list was released, part of the article explicitly stated that it was not supposed to be Fluff Accurate, and that they were far, far more powerful than fluff Space Marines are supposed to be, but that they had plot armour because they were supposed to be how Marines would be represented in an action movie, like Predator or Die Hard.

yet the movie marines STILL more closely match up to what marines are in the books, (it's been a while on this next one) RPGs, and fluff overall. Point in case: in horus rising we have it shown that loosing 5-6 marines is something that was rare at best against normal humans, and loosing 2 smaller squads to a single daemon was something that was devastating (both the shock of the marines dying and, you know, the daemon). this has been something thats constant through the fluff when they are not trying to make something look extra spooky (i.e. the 'marines die in droves' approach to make a warboss look better, etc.)

Except it's not, really. That's all power creep that's set in as the authors all try to do 'bigger and more badass' marines than the last author.

If you want a more accurate representation of marines then play Epic or try the deathwatch rpg out. In 40k the most accurate marines I got was actually when we played kill team back in 4th ed. The smaller scale made the marines surprisingly tough. When all you have are some 6 marines vs 30 orcs they suddenly become more badass.

In the fluff the marines are warrior monks that sleep 4 hours a night and devote all other time ('cept for 15 minutes a day...) to perfecting their combat prowess. A beast that can spit acid, devour your brain to learn all there is to know about you, resist any disease or toxin and has all his senses hightened to superhuman levels. With duplicates of almost every major organ and the ability to regenerate and recover from almost any wound they are war incarnate. Give this monster the toughest and most advanced armour produced by a galaxy spinning empire and arm him with a small rpg launcher. Yet the strongest weapon of this being is his undying will and fanatical faith in the Emperor and the Imperium he serves. This does not mean they can't have an unlucky day next to a meltagun or die from slipping and breaking their neck. It does not mean they can go toe to toe with a greater deamon and expect all to be swell. It does however mean that where humans can perform outstanding feats the space marines can perform deeds worthy of legends.