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The massive rate of fire pumped out by a Storm Bolter would necessitate too many magazine changes. Even with 100 round drums there wouldn't be enough shells to help in maintaining a solid stream of fire.

So what'cha think?

IIRC some already have belt fed ones.

as well generally if they are focus firing a 100 shots at something and its not already dead, then they are probably going to fall back and reload anyway.

There is a belt-fed Storm Bolter. It is called Dorn's Arrow and it is a relic. It fires twice as many shots, probably as a benefit of the belt-feeding.

Magazine fed does make it more compact.

Though belf fed designs of heavy bolter/magazine fed exist.

Same for other weapons (belt fed increased chance of dirt in mechanical parts...)

Oh had forgotten the name of the ones on pedro.

also i think pimp daddy calgar has a pair or belt fed ones as well.

I always felt the storm bolter should shoot more, make it a Salvo 2/3 weapon with a 24" range and leave the weapon strength and AP alone otherwise. Won't change anything on terminators and actually make them a little better in the long run.

Just sharing my thoughts on that. Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

The storm bolter on the terminator chaplain is belt-fed

 Red Marine wrote:
The massive rate of fire pumped out by a Storm Bolter would necessitate too many magazine changes. Even with 100 round drums there wouldn't be enough shells to help in maintaining a solid stream of fire.

So what'cha think?

If you're trying to think of it from a realism standpoint, I think you'd have to have a double belt-fed system to keep it rocking.

 Red Marine wrote:
The massive rate of fire pumped out by a Storm Bolter would necessitate too many magazine changes. Even with 100 round drums there wouldn't be enough shells to help in maintaining a solid stream of fire.

So what'cha think?

Making something belt-fed doesn't change it's rate of fire. Conversely, some of the highest rate of fire, man-portable weapons aren't belt fed. But, if we're simply talking about making the storm bolter better in the rules, that's been discussed frequently along with everyone's favorite topic of how to make termies better.

The storm bolter is a legacy weapon that was cool in 2nd Edition and in games like Space Hulk. In today's game, they suffer from having neither a high rate of fire nor a special mechanic like Rending to make them all that useful. Their stats have literally not changed since 3rd Edtion and that's been 18 years now.

CSM terminators have had belt-fed combi's forever

 the_Armyman wrote:

The storm bolter is a legacy weapon that was cool in 2nd Edition and in games like Space Hulk. In today's game, they suffer from having neither a high rate of fire nor a special mechanic

I feel this is pretty much the biggest problem with everything to do with terminators.

 MarsNZ wrote:
CSM terminators have had belt-fed combi's forever

 the_Armyman wrote:

The storm bolter is a legacy weapon that was cool in 2nd Edition and in games like Space Hulk. In today's game, they suffer from having neither a high rate of fire nor a special mechanic

I feel this is pretty much the biggest problem with everything to do with terminators.

Also how do they even change the magazine? I can't even imagine the power fist trying to do anything that requires finesse beyond SMASH.

The old GK wrist-mounted ones were belt-fed. It's one of the few things I really miss on the new models. I tried kitbashing a few myself with some of the Zinge industries belts, but my modeling skills weren't good enough to make it look right. Maybe I'll try again some time...

I think most Storm Bolters modelled nowadays actually are belt-fed. What seems like a magazine is a belt container.

Im aware of Dorn's Arrow. My question was not "Are there belt feed Storm Bolters?". I was curious about peoples thoughts about SBs being belt feed.

I know that belt feeding ammunition to a gun does not make it shoot faster. It was a question searching for peoples opinions/ideas on whether or not they should have a belt to supply a greater amount of shells.

On infantry I believe SBs should be belt feed. SBs imho are for close assault. Regular bolters already have a high filre rate, an SBs would be glutinous. Theres no need to aim, its a weapon who has more in common with a fire hose than a smg or rifle. In a swirling close quarters fire fight you wouldn't want to have to aim let alone reload. Seconds matter and a belt feed would really help.

No, a belt feed would not help in a close-in firefight.

In a close-in firefight, you have shrapnel, stray shots, stray knives, stray fists, flying all over the shop. All it takes is one of those bits of debris to get caught in the belt and your so-unreliable-its-an-in-universe-joke storm bolter is suddenly a not-even-funny-any-more-how-jammed-it-is-deathday-party-invitation.

In-such a ------------------total-cluster frack--------------as you-have-described-----the Storm-Bolter would---------also-be-dam-aged. The b-e-l-t feed wouldn't actually-matter.

The incredibly high rate of fire should allow for suppression of almost any infantry. The large ammunition hopper and belt feed would definitely assist in suppressing opponents.

in the situation you positied, belt feeds would be too prone to damage or fouling, and would be much harder to reload than a magainze swap.

Which is probably why most storm bolters seem to use that design philosphy.

Some should be and some shouldn't. The stormbolter is designed to be compact and it would make sense not to be belt fed on things like terminators. Marines and such providing more fire support it would make sense to have a little higher capacity that way.

A belt feed isn't very useful in a gun that isn't crew served.

The idea of the belt is that the gunner's assistant can attach a fresh belt to the belt that's in use so that the gunner can maintain his cadence and coverage pattern.

For a terminator a big belt box is just harder to change than a big magazine. If you're suggesting they should have a back mounted magazine with a flexible feed to the gun then that's possible without being belt fed.

I kind of wonder at the effective rate of fire of bolters in general; remember they fire incredibly vicious explosive shells, so one hit on most targets is enough. A Space Marine should be disciplined and skilled enough to fire single shots or small bursts at most targets, so the two shots max per turn could actually be fairly accurate across six turns for a bolt gun, though Storm Bolters rules-wise really need at least one extra shot when stationary (and for terminators), not Salvo though, as the half-range thing is a mess.

Reloading definitely introduces some questions, and I think it's something GW doesn't really thing about. It's possible to make regular marines look like they're swapping magazines, and I suppose terminators could hold their weapon in the power fist hand while using their "regular" hand to reload, rather than daintily attempting to slot in a magazine with giant power fist fingers, this at least makes a little more sense. But it's not as if either flavour of marine looks like they have the ammo to actually last long in a battle, even accounting for ammo conservation. Assault Cannons especially look like they'd last for a few seconds at most, as those ammo hoppers can't hold much, even if you assume the rounds fired are tiny but powerful.

But no I don't think storm bolters should be belt fed; I quite like the style that have ammo hoppers or drums rather than magazines though, as they look like they might be easier to replace, whereas a belt on a personal firearm that's being waved around just seems like it'd jam or catch on something; hard to mesh the idea of an unstoppable Astartes warrior with the idea of a storm bolter belt getting caught on a robe

 Red Marine wrote:
In-such a ------------------total-cluster frack--------------as you-have-described-----the Storm-Bolter would---------also-be-dam-aged. The b-e-l-t feed wouldn't actually-matter.

The incredibly high rate of fire should allow for suppression of almost any infantry. The large ammunition hopper and belt feed would definitely assist in suppressing opponents.

The storm bolter would only be damaged by the screw jammed into the feed mechanism where it got caught in the belt - the outside shell of firearms is designed to be resistant to getting bits jammed in the workings, but with a belt feed, what you have is exposed inner workings of the weapon stuck on the outside. The advantage of a box magazine over a belt is that it extends the shell of the weapon out over the ammunition feed. Also that its easier to load the magazine, and easier to reload the weapon between magazines. Oh, and easier to store loaded, although you don't want to do that as a general rule because it weakens the spring and can cause feed failures... but during a battle, much easier to store loaded, since there's basically no chance of the magazine getting jounced and misaligned, which is fairly easy to do with an ammunition belt.

I was never under the impression that bolters and stormbolter had that high a rate of fire. A bolter is a suped up battle rifle, and a stormbolter is just two slapped together. The models themselves already have double or drum magazines to compensate. A stormbolter is a suped up bolter in the same way a terminator is a suped up marine. they arent using them like supressive machineguns, theyre using them the same way regular marines use thier bolter, albeit at closer assault ranges. Chaos combibolters make much more sense ruleswise.

Combi-Bolters are prototype Storm Bolters. The Storm Bolter just has that slightly higher accuracy that lets both shots hit rather than making the one shot more reliable at longer ranges.

But at short range they are the same as stock bolters? That dont make no sense.
Combibolterd also follow the design philosophy of "two of the same weapons means theyre twinlinked"

At short range, accuracy matters less anyway, so the advantage becomes negligible.

Bolters are dumb to begin with. I assume that all bolters have Hollywood clips. Ie, they never run out of ammo until off screen.

There's a bit of false assumption going on- assuming that anything on the models is to scale runs you straight into a wall of impossibility.

When the original SM models were designed, the modeler didn't want them having any extraneous holsters or ammo packs that would ruin the clean lines. He wanted to give the impression that the armour itself would provide for all the marine's needs- the respirator in the helm would have water tubes to remove the need for canteen etc.
The backpack itself was assumed to be an ammo dispenser (those 'vents' on the bottom presumably plop out grenades/magazines on command)

Later fluff had each marine having his own personal banner, which was contained inside his backpack and could telescope out.

As they've evolved to be reactors first, these other functions seem to have been forgotten.

At any rate, we know they fight battles, battles need more than 30 bolts therefore they have magazines about their person. Whether they're shoved between pauldrons or chestplates or come out of the backpack, they exist.

Terminators also carry reloads- Emperor knows where. Mag-clamped to their rear I'd imagine.



The twin sickle/twin straight mags shown here would hold about 30/20 shots x2 respectively.

Assuming a three round burst, x2, that gives a terminator 10-7 shots before he must reload.

In my mind, at full auto, each 3 second burst is one 'dakka' of one seconds length, consisting of 6 shots firing alternately over that second- giving the terminator 10 seconds sustained fire should he choose.


The GK on the left has an ammo hopper in his backpack which feeds down through the armoured cable into his weapon, like the dreadnought's model below.

IMO this is the gold standard for stormbolter ammo supply.
The cons are that you obviously can't borrow a magazine from your battlebrother but ammunition capacity is increased by the length of the armored hose.

The Grey knight to his right has an inferior box mag model which, while they carry up to 50 rounds are known to jam.



This is the dreadnought stormbolter. The dreadnought uses the SB as a reliable sidearm- its heavier gun on the right hardpoint will likely outrange it or be targeting vehicles the SB can't hurt.
The SB comes in handy when the dreadnought engages infantry- allowing him to hose down survivors of a fragmissile/plasmacannon blast or used in conjunction with heavybolter/assaultcannon to create a 1 man crossfire.



And here again we see older pattern 'combibolters' having belt feeds. One assumes they have cultists to attach the next belt.

So yes, the SB should be beltfed whenever possible.
Since the SB's are honoured weapons to the Astartes, it may not be practical or safe to modify them all for beltfeeds (won't someone think of the machine spirits)

In this case they should continue the current practice of having serfs follow the operator around, carrying magazines on trays of polished bronze, if not silver.