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.

This has bothered me to no end since day one. Burst cannon barrels point inward. At first I thought it was because of technical limitations on GW’s part, but then I saw the space marine miniguns and now I have no idea and it drives me crazy. Is there a rationale behind this?

It's a strange choice but the good news is that it doesn't matter. Even if they were real weapons only one barrel would fire at a time and as long as you had that point on the weapon lined up you'd be able to hit your target.

In game: To show alien tech as being different than Imperial tech?

In real world: Because the original GW sculptor made it that way & his bosses said "Looks great." & put it into production?

This might provide a potential reason?

 Daedalus81 wrote:
This might provide a potential reason?

The angle of the barrels is so extreme that any attempt at convergence would give you zero range.

I always thought it was due to Tau being dumb....oops I meant the design of them....no I think I mean both.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
This might provide a potential reason?

The angle of the barrels is so extreme that any attempt at convergence would give you zero range.

Yea I can envision that being the idea though - it'd be hard to model without making it too subtle. As long as it creates a spread pattern optimal for their crappy fish eyes then all is good, maybe?

Why do you think they only hit on 4s? Nobody told them it was important to have your guns fire straight.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Why do you think they only hit on 4s? Nobody told them it was important to have your guns fire straight.

There’s my answer

Thinking in a sci-fi reason, perhaps the bullets get a high electrostatic charge and they need it in order to compensate for it?

Perhaps has some sort of AI targeting adjustment that moves the barrel automatically to point the target better and all are modeled as they were shooting at a nearby target?

Perhaps part of the design is to have a microwave projector in these parts of the barrel in order to give an extra punch and guidance to the projectiles?

nah. just face it. It just because it looks cool in this way

psipso wrote:
Thinking in a sci-fi reason, perhaps the bullets get a high electrostatic charge and they need it in order to compensate for it?

More or less this. Burst cannons don't even use bullets, they are essentially a bunch of pulse carbines slapped together so use a kind of plasma technology for their discharge. You can come up with whatever justification you want as to why they need to have the barrels converge for some reason.

It's so that if an enemy steals a burst cannon and uses it against the owner, they will still only hit on 4+.

It's to better aim at the one brain cell shared between a whole squad of marines of course.

I always assumed it was because they're not shooting bullets, or even really act in act way mechanically similar to a rotary ballistic cannon, even though they may look coincidentally similar. Maybe the "barrels" are some kind of charging rods that focus some energy pulse into a point in front of the weapon before discharging a safe distance away from the user. Use whatever sci-fi magic justification you want.

They only look like miniguns because that's a good aesthetic shorthand for "this weapon shoots really fast"

Because GW's designers aren't weapons designers.
The same way they have no real concept of big numbers in a vast universe.

(In an empire of 10^6 worlds, 10^6 hardcore power armoured troops means diddly jack.)

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
This might provide a potential reason?

The angle of the barrels is so extreme that any attempt at convergence would give you zero range.

Also, IRL rotary barreled guns generally only fire from 1 barrel at any given time, rendering convergence unnecessary. Maybe it's less like a minigun and more akin to the Death Star laser, where the barrels converge into one main beam?

So I don't like the design of the converging barrels either... it just looks wrong - but there is a potential engineering related reason.

The further away something is from center of rotation the more energy it takes to spin. If one barrel is aligned with the rest of the firing mechanism while the rotational axis of the barrels is offset slightly then it would be a solution to both reduce the profile of, and power required to rotate, the barrels. It would also reduce the structural strain on the end of the barrel.

The problem with this is that it would be finnicky as all hell and a better solution would be to just have all the barrels start in a tighter configuration at the base.
In addition to that - it would increase cost/chance of breakdown. Having the rotational axis match with the main axis of the gun is just going to make it more robust over all.

But if you can think of some reason as to why the base of each barrel would need to be so far apart compared to the end, then yea it would make sense I guess

Vilehydra wrote:
So I don't like the design of the converging barrels either... it just looks wrong - but there is a potential engineering related reason.

The further away something is from center of rotation the more energy it takes to spin. If one barrel is aligned with the rest of the firing mechanism while the rotational axis of the barrels is offset slightly then it would be a solution to both reduce the profile of, and power required to rotate, the barrels. It would also reduce the structural strain on the end of the barrel.

The problem with this is that it would be finnicky as all hell and a better solution would be to just have all the barrels start in a tighter configuration at the base.
In addition to that - it would increase cost/chance of breakdown. Having the rotational axis match with the main axis of the gun is just going to make it more robust over all.

But if you can think of some reason as to why the base of each barrel would need to be so far apart compared to the end, then yea it would make sense I guess

I'm going to go out on a limb here & guess that you're waaaay overthinking how the design of this model came about.

In a ballistic gun it does make sense for the barrels to converge, as the barrels themselves are conical to a point, compare the vulcan gatling used in an f4 for example.
In an energy weapon, it's totally unrealistic for a sub-ftl space faring race of goat-fish caste communists to have converging barrels on their space guns.

Given its functionally a plasma based weapon, I assume it’s a cooling function? Greater space at the point of origin to help prevent overheating, perhaps married to a magnet doohickey in the disc that holds the business ends together realign the shot as it leaves each barrel?

The Heavy Gun Drones of yesteryear had burst cannon. Those burst cannon had parallel barrels. Basically, whatever the magic space reason, noone told forgeworld for.a while

I'm always amused by the bending over backwards to justify decisions that clearly had no justification beyond rule of cool.

ccs wrote:

Vilehydra wrote:
So I don't like the design of the converging barrels either... it just looks wrong - but there is a potential engineering related reason.

The further away something is from center of rotation the more energy it takes to spin. If one barrel is aligned with the rest of the firing mechanism while the rotational axis of the barrels is offset slightly then it would be a solution to both reduce the profile of, and power required to rotate, the barrels. It would also reduce the structural strain on the end of the barrel.

The problem with this is that it would be finnicky as all hell and a better solution would be to just have all the barrels start in a tighter configuration at the base.
In addition to that - it would increase cost/chance of breakdown. Having the rotational axis match with the main axis of the gun is just going to make it more robust over all.

But if you can think of some reason as to why the base of each barrel would need to be so far apart compared to the end, then yea it would make sense I guess

I'm going to go out on a limb here & guess that you're waaaay overthinking how the design of this model came about.

Oh for sure, this is definitely not why it was designed this way - but its fun to think about the implications of the design

 Flinty wrote:
The Heavy Gun Drones of yesteryear had burst cannon. Those burst cannon had parallel barrels. Basically, whatever the magic space reason, noone told forgeworld for.a while

Something, something Drone BCs are not attached to a living thing so it's not a problem if they go explodey something something?

I dunno...

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I'm always amused by the bending over backwards to justify decisions that clearly had no justification beyond rule of cool.

No one is bending. Just noodling on potential inspiration from the designer. None of it really matters.