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How many rounds would a typical guardsman carry for his autogun when in action?
What would a heavy weapons team prefer against Orks, Heavy Bolter or Autocannon?
And who exactly gets to carry autopistols?

Most Guard regiments carry lasguns, but Imperial Armour vol.5 (Siege of Vraks, part 1) lists a Death Korps of Krieg infantry squad trooper as carrying a lasgun plus four power packs - each good for 25 shots before needing recharged.

Against Ork infantry, the heavy bolter, I think. The autocannon is a light anti-armour weapon, for use against light vehicles (Buggies, light trukks, etc) or armoured infantry (Mega-armour, for example).

As for pistols, officially it'd be heavy or special weapon gunners, officers (unless they choose to carry a lasgun) and vehicle crews (unless they've got carbines). Unofficially, anyone who can scrounge one, probably.

You might carry more projectile ammo but mainly because a Las cell you could tie on your shoulder or backpack and solar charge as you march.

A magazine once gone is gone.

Not many regiments use Autoguns anymore, as Andrew said. Lasgun Power Packs range wildly in the number of shots they can produce before a recharge is required; this is due both to the origin of the Power Pack and the Megathule setting that the Guardsman has set the Lasgun to - more powerful settings pack more of a punch, but take less shots to deplete the charge. Guardsman can even overcharge the Pack to explode before tossing their Lasguns at the enemy. It's pretty last ditch, but it can sometimes pack enough punch to blow through something as tough as Dreadnought armour.

I'd also go with the Heavy Bolter, for roughly the same reasons Andrew said

Pistols are usually given to Officers, from Sergeants to Commanders - they're not usually standard issue amongst the rank and file. However, some regiments use them more than others, and sometimes Veteran units who prefer close combat will use them instead of a Lasgun so they can hold their Combat Blades and possibly Chainswords in the other hand.

Hope this answers your questions

G.A

Thanks! I'm writing a story about a part of a regiment are forced to dig down and hold a fortress against an Ork invasion. They're old timey and carry semi auto rifles with bayonets.

 Matthew wrote:
Thanks! I'm writing a story about a part of a regiment are forced to dig down and hold a fortress against an Ork invasion. They're old timey and carry semi auto rifles with bayonets.

Ah, that helps clarify it a bit

Autoguns certainly aren't as common as Lasguns within the Imperial Guard, but due to how cheap they are to manufacture, along with their ammunition, they nonetheless see regular combat.

An Agripinaa Pattern Autogun typically has a 20-30 round stacked magazine. If we were to consider this to be the same for something like the Armageddon Pattern Autogun (probably the most common Autogun Pattern in the galaxy) then I would say that each of your Guardsman would carry 60-90 rounds on their person, depending on how well supplied they are.

Autopistols can have anything from 5 to 30 round magazines. The Voss Pattern typically has 30 rounds, and comes with a folding skeletal stock (fancy!) - I'd use that for your Officers

Hope this helps

G.A

 General Annoyance wrote:

 Matthew wrote:
Thanks! I'm writing a story about a part of a regiment are forced to dig down and hold a fortress against an Ork invasion. They're old timey and carry semi auto rifles with bayonets.

Ah, that helps clarify it a bit

Autoguns certainly aren't as common as Lasguns within the Imperial Guard, but due to how cheap they are to manufacture, along with their ammunition, they nonetheless see regular combat.

An Agripinaa Pattern Autogun typically has a 20-30 round stacked magazine. If we were to consider this to be the same for something like the Armageddon Pattern Autogun (probably the most common Autogun Pattern in the galaxy) then I would say that each of your Guardsman would carry 60-90 rounds on their person, depending on how well supplied they are.

Autopistols can have anything from 5 to 30 round magazines. The Voss Pattern typically has 30 rounds, and comes with a folding skeletal stock (fancy!) - I'd use that for your Officers

Hope this helps

G.A

Not sure on 90.
If its a extended fire fight. A modern automatic can expend that in a few minutes on sustained contact.
On extended patrols, or in straight up fights some soldiers can carry up to 600-1000 rounds. And expend them all needing resupply if enaged for a while.

Though that does include extra belts for tgr machine guns spread across a squad to feed the support gunners.

Well, US Army standard combat load is 210 rounds (6 full 30 round mags, +1 in the gun), but as jhe90 said, on partol I carried alot more then that, depending on how long and where we were going. Pistol was usually only 2 extra mags, but I always carried 4. But I'd say no less then around 200 rounds for autoguns.

Keep in mind these are Guardsman we're talking about people, not modern day soldiers - the Munitorum wouldn't expect them to last long enough to use 200+ rounds of ammunition

I looked on google to fund a real world example. Even ww2 troops would carry any extra they could and still fight, because no ammo is dead.

Its not unlikely a veteran sqayd un guard do same and in most intense areas be heavily loaded for a prolonged battle where resupply might be cut off and running out of ammo be a very very bad idea.

Also splitting extra support ammo over a sqaud dates back to Germans in ww2 to feed the massive rates of fire of the mg42 and centered the fire team round the guns.

This could also include in 40k a extra drum for auto cannon, mortor rounds or a heavy stubber belt.

Of course a chmerra could be if you piled ammo in every place possible, under seats and strapping to the roof etc mean a mechanised sqaud carry alot more. Especially on a big offensive. That could keep other units supplied during a intense push and keep the moving during a breakthrough.

Considering that the OP is making a group of Guard who are locking down a fortress against an Ork invasion, I could see your idea of people carrying more ammunition fitting for the likelihood that their supply lines will be severed, and that they plan to hold against a siege that could last for weeks, even months.

However, I'd put my money on the typical Guardsman being deployed with much less spare ammunition - Autogun ammo may be cheap, but the Imperium still values their munition supply more than the Guardsmen who will use it

G.A

If your defending positions, its easy to set up ammo points.

Ie maybe every 2nd bunker along a wall has a good stock of ammo and spare weaponry.
The defenders will use alot, and its more sense than having people run to main armoury.

You could just carry 3 magazines eyes and have box's of ammo on wall soldiers just grab from as needed in battle.

And ofc, this scenario also ties into some novel fluff where a Catachan officer had his men use autoguns and anything else that makes noise because Orks respect noise. A lasgun kills just as well as an autogun but the latter makes more noise so the orks are more likely to break after taking casualties due to their own ideas about what makes a weapon deadly.

Spetulhu wrote:
And ofc, this scenario also ties into some novel fluff where a Catachan officer had his men use autoguns and anything else that makes noise because Orks respect noise. A lasgun kills just as well as an autogun but the latter makes more noise so the orks are more likely to break after taking casualties due to their own ideas about what makes a weapon deadly.

Steel legion of armageddon too I think.

 jhe90 wrote:


You could just carry 3 magazines eyes and have box's of ammo on wall soldiers just grab from as needed in battle.

You still have to put the bullets in the mags, which is a rather dangerous task to do when you're being shot at, better to give everyone enough mags. They're rather easy to carry, friend of mine could easily fit 16 mags in his vest, and that was during training. Not to mention whatever mags you could fit in your backpack. The normal guardsmen usually only have 2-3 battery packs for their lasguns because each packs hold more then 30 shots. One exception for that are the Kriegsmen, but Krieg gotta Krieg I guess ...

Hmm, would a regiment from a more old timey planet use bolt action rifles?

Typically a regiment would be given standard issue equipment, including the Lasgun. However, it has been known for a few regiments to fight even with crossbows and other ancient ranged weapons due to the world they originate from being on a timespin, so it is perfectly possible for a regiment to use bolt action weapons. Certainly not common, and certainly not left unattended if the Munitorum has anything to say about it, however.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:


You could just carry 3 magazines eyes and have box's of ammo on wall soldiers just grab from as needed in battle.

You still have to put the bullets in the mags, which is a rather dangerous task to do when you're being shot at, better to give everyone enough mags. They're rather easy to carry, friend of mine could easily fit 16 mags in his vest, and that was during training. Not to mention whatever mags you could fit in your backpack. The normal guardsmen usually only have 2-3 battery packs for their lasguns because each packs hold more then 30 shots. One exception for that are the Kriegsmen, but Krieg gotta Krieg I guess ...

Well I kinda meant pre loaded grab mags. There ready to go in seconds.
The expended could be collected up after and reloaded or chucked in a box and swapped out during the battle for wall.

There's a box of them every few metres down the wall.

And yeah, not impossible if bolt action is best they have.

1. Depending on the regiment. Poorer units would have 2-3 mags, while richer ones could even have full rigs, given to their soldiers.

2. Bolt weaponry was perfect for killing Orks. Accept no substitutes, unless we're talking about flame weaponry.

3. Officers or those Guardsmen who befriended some Rattlings.

Remember that the 40k universe runs on "rule of cool". So if you think it would be cool to have a unit of guards defend trenches against orks using bolt action weapons to get a proper WW1-feeling... then that is how they will do it! You can even have archaic bolt-action lasguns if you think that is even cooler because 40k-tech is weird.

Also: Planetary defense forces have much less standardisation than the imperial guard since they are set up by the local ruler with whatever tech they have available. Sometimes PDFs are recruited/appropriated/converted directly to formal guard regiments. And then it might take while for the munitorum to catch up and equip them properly, sometimes several generations depending on communiations and cultural willingness to change :-)

If they use bolt-action or other repeater type weapons that require manual loading between each shot they will spend ammo at a slower rate than the modern automatic and semi-automatic weapons given in the examples above.

Mellon wrote:
Remember that the 40k universe runs on "rule of cool". So if you think it would be cool to have a unit of guards defend trenches against orks using bolt action weapons to get a proper WW1-feeling... then that is how they will do it! You can even have archaic bolt-action lasguns if you think that is even cooler because 40k-tech is weird.

I think "rule of cool" is used too much by writers to play ignorant to some parts of the lore they may not have read. However, in this scenario, the idea of bolt action rifles could work, although it would definitely be a very rare scenario on the battlefields of the 41st Millennium.

I don't think you could have a bolt action laser weapon - the closet thing you could get to is the Laser Musket you see in Fallout 4, with a crank to charge up each shot:



It certainly wouldn't be something that would be made in a factory, but hand built out of Lasgun parts and common items that can be used as focusing arrays, much like how the Laser Musket is built out of a AER9 Rifle Barrel and an improvised capacitor.

Again, possible, but only if the Munitorum has somehow been cut off from the world that these Guardsmen were fighting on.

G.A

The Bolt Action could just be to give the gun a few seconds to recharge - there are already "Las-Lock"s in the fluff.

from a fan site but seems accurate:

A Las-Lock is an energy weapon that uses much of the same technology as a standard Lasgun or Laspistol, but more closely resembles a flintlock rifle. Las-Locks are, presumably, adaptations of present-day laser weapons technology that are used by less technologically advanced societies who have regressed from the modern day Imperial standard. Las-Locks are single-shot, with primitive capacitors that require the need to reload after every shot. While this presents many problems with the rate of fire, the single laser bolt that Las-Locks fire is considerably more powerful than those fired by standard Imperial laser weapons.

 Mr Morden wrote:
The Bolt Action could just be to give the gun a few seconds to recharge - there are already "Las-Lock"s in the fluff.

from a fan site but seems accurate:

A Las-Lock is an energy weapon that uses much of the same technology as a standard Lasgun or Laspistol, but more closely resembles a flintlock rifle. Las-Locks are, presumably, adaptations of present-day laser weapons technology that are used by less technologically advanced societies who have regressed from the modern day Imperial standard. Las-Locks are single-shot, with primitive capacitors that require the need to reload after every shot. While this presents many problems with the rate of fire, the single laser bolt that Las-Locks fire is considerably more powerful than those fired by standard Imperial laser weapons.

It may be from a fan site, but it is accurate. In fact, you can even see this in model form

However, that weapon is both very large and typically only used by the lowest servants of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and it certainly isn't as mass produced as a Lasgun is. If the Munitorum were present at all, they'd give the Guardsmen Lasguns rather than those.

It's much more likely for a similar weapon to be made by hand and used instead, or just use an ancient bolt action rifle.

As an aside, when I was in the Army, my unit's standard load-out was 4 hand grenades (2 frag, 2 smoke), 1300 rounds for the M-16A2 (300 rounds in 10 magazines, the remaining 1000 in ammo boxes, for reloading said magazines), and 1 claymore mine.

Every other soldier carried either 2 mortar rockets, 1 box of ammo for the M-60 (the M-249 was not yet in wide circulation) or 1 battery for the RTO's radio. The "other" of every other soldier carried an AT-4 anti-tank weapon.

I'm pretty sure the "4 laspacks per guardsman" (some 100 shots) is a misconsception. This number first showed up in 3ed eyes of terror campaign. It was a bit of fluff text that stated "troopers ammunition is currently extremly low with each soldier only having 4 laspacks available". Hence I'd assume many more is standard. Probably around the equalevent of today's soldiers, some 1000shots. Of course a laspack can be recharged through light, heat or a powersource (which could make less ammunition acceptable) but 4th ed Ig codex stated that using light or heat repeatedly would damaged the pack and hurt it's longlivety, eventually leading to malfunctions.

Concerning the pistols and autoguns it's not as weird as one might think. The lasgun is the most used weapon in the Imperium but according to only war by FFgames it's definetly possible for regiments to swap the lasgun out for the autoguns. For instance, if a planet produces autoguns but don't produce lasguns it might be more profitable for the departement munitorum to issue out ammunition rather then re-kit those regiments with new weapons. Apply the same logic to pistols. I'd even go so far as to say that a pistol sidearm is common among regiments, in the same way that it's common in the modern military.

Lasgun Power Packs actually carry a lot more charge than "enough for 25 shots" - most can fire about 5 times that amount on standard power settings. It's only when you crank up the power that you run out of ammo quickly.

Believe it or not, the Autogun is actually more common in the Imperium as a whole; Lasguns aren't far behind, but considering that they are only issued to the Astra Millitarum and similar arms of the Imperium's military, Hive Gangs, Pirates, Traders and Civilians will rather buy or use an Autogun, whose ammunition is very easy to acquire, than have to find a Lasgun being sold on the black market.

G.A

The Lucius pattern lasgun fires more powerful beams at the cost of ammo consumption. I think Only War gives the standard lasgun 60 shots, while the Lucius one has 25 but does more damage

According to the Munitorum Manual, a typical Lasgun can fire 150 shots per Power Pack, although of course, numbers vary between the pattern of Lasgun, the Power Pack being used and where it was produced, and the power setting that the Lasgun is firing at.