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Help needed, I need some inspiration to model a Bombardment Cannon (normally mounted on Space Marine Strike Cruisers and Battle Barges). I just have no clue what one would look like. Do you have any ideas or anything? Please share them here (pictures would be even better!).

Thanks in advance!

The bombardment cannons are the turrets on the Space Marine BFG ship models. They would be likely be bigger than titan class weaponry.

Yup, orders of magnitude large than Titan class weapons.

Have a picture of slaves loading a cannon on an Imperial vessel. Note that the round is NOT being loaded by the crew in the foreground, but the tiny figures in the background.

That might be a torpedo to be fair.

That's a torpedo. The gun batteries on an Imperial ship are illustrated as giant cannons that get pulled up against what are essentially airlocks in the side of the ship that the barrel seals against.

Oh, nice. Might I ask what book that illustration is from?

It is not from the BFG rulebook or the BFG Armada Book. I suspect it is (good) fan-art. The rulebooks and fanatic/BFG magazines were black and white.

looks almost like forgeworld.

Tygre wrote:
I suspect it is (good) fan-art.

A Google Image Search suggests the artist is The-First-Magelord.

But those are broadside macro cannons, not bombardment cannons.

Why is the Macro cannon supported by that complicated adjustable robotic arm when there's only one exit port, it would be a bloomin' nightmare to get that lined up!

Weapon batteries are abstracted in BFG. They can consist of many types of weapons, not necessarily projectile. For example, the Tyrant class cruiser has visually identical weapon ports but has superfired plasma weapons, that in BFG are represented purely by weapon batteries. The Murder class cruiser that used to form the mainstay of Battlefleet Obscurus before being replaced by the Lunar class also had only weapon batteries as BFG stats, but was described as having several decks of the finest plasma cannons produced by the Adeptus Mechanicus.

That art is fan-art and the text is fan speculation by the artist The First Magelord. Notably it conflicts with the BFG scale given by Andy Chambers which had roughly 1 cm = 1000 km and 1 turn being a telescoping timeframe from 1 hour at long range to 15 minutes or less at close range. The weapon range of the Lunar class cruiser's weapon batteries were 30cm. That means 30,000 km. If the shot is moving at several thousand km/sec as the art claims, then it shouldn't need to travel half an hour to hit it s target.

I just posted that fan-art because I couldn't find the rulebook art I was thinking of. I haven't dug my Blue Rulebook out of storage, but I'm pretty sure the below image is the one I remember from the rulebook, which the fan art is based upon.



Regardless, Bombardment cannons are indeed macro-turrets. While obviously scales are exaggerated on the models, I have heard them described in places as weapons larger than a titan. Imagine them as reverse Orbital defense guns.

Bombardment cannons are really just extra large macrocannons that have access to Magma Bomb warheads.

The fluff is sparse on what a Magma bomb is, but it seems to likely be some sort of thermonuclear weapon that generates immense heat at the impact site. Specifically designed for reducing planetary defenses to dust, they are just as effective against warships.

Modern nuclear bombs only convert a tiny fraction of their mass into actual energy, less than 1%. If you had a nuclear bomb that instead converted 40-50% you would have a obscenely more powerful, and cleaner, warhead that could melt all the way down to planetary crusts.

 Kroem wrote:
Why is the Macro cannon supported by that complicated adjustable robotic arm when there's only one exit port, it would be a bloomin' nightmare to get that lined up!

It looks to be inspired by, and possibly meant to function similarly to, a "disappearing mount" for coastal defense:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_gun

I suspect the artists want to invoke the imagery of old-timey muzzle loading cannons, with human crew having to push the gun into position for each shot. Just scaled up to 40k levels of epic bigness.