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Some of the Imperium's sniper rifles shoot lasers, others shoot bullets. At first glance, laser is by far the most advantageous, since you don't have to account for gravity, wind, recoil, or the velocity of the projectile. Yet in the fluff, most snipers seem to use bullets.

If you think about it, there is a good reason for that. The laser rifle has a major weakness: each shot reveals your exact position, as if you were firing tracer bullets. This allows the enemy to easily return fire.

So I have a bit of a headcanon about that. I imagine that those armies that train their soldiers quickly and care nothing about their individual lives (Valhallans, penal legions, etc.) favor the laser sniper rifle. Those that devote a lot of time to training their soldiers (Cadians, Space Marines, Vindicare temple) favor the projectile sniper rifle: longer to learn and not as accurate, but at least your snipers have a much lower turnover rate. This can make a massive difference in protracted campaigns, especially when reinforcements are hard to come by.

.

Except Cadian sniper models have all and las weapons, and Eliminators use las fusils.

Not sure that las sniper weapons have visible beams. If they do, the shot will be so instantaneous it is unlikely to be any worse than muzzle flash from a conventional firearm.

Then there are needle weapons that combine handy bits of both technologies

Marine scouts used to use these. Did they get retconned at some point?

Well, taking the Sternguard or Vindecare assasin as examples a bullet allows for specialized payloads. Longer flights, the ability to pass through shields, timed explosives and poisons.

A laser only really has the option to pump up the power to try and pierce through any protection.

Bullets are better for snipers, lasers are better for marksmen.

 Flinty wrote:


Marine scouts used to use these. Did they get retconned at some point?

Everyone used to use them. Eldar, Ratlings, Marines. It was A Thing.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Flinty wrote:


Marine scouts used to use these. Did they get retconned at some point?

Everyone used to use them. Eldar, Ratlings, Marines. It was A Thing.

Indeed, I should have been clearer. I was responding to the idea that Marines favour ballistic sniper/marksman weapons and was recalling the days of my youth, when the sniper options were either needle rifles, or lascannon

There are a few disadvantages to a laser sniper rifle, both in fluff and via real life physics.

In the background of 40k, las weaponry is generally suboptimal vs armored targets. At least with weapons that could fill the niche of a sniper rifle. Not as big a deal for a designated marskman rifle, which is why guardmen use the Long Las. It is generally being used against softer targets, though compared to a regular lasgun it does have slightly better armor penetration. Space Marines and Assassins are going to generally be facing tougher targets, so they have needle rifles or solid projectile weapons generally.

In terms of real life physics, laser vs bullet. Its not so much that you'll be seen and tracked down, but there are things that might stop a theoretical laser rifle as opposed to a bullet. A laser has the advantage of being able to go straight to the target with no deviation, the bad news is you need that path to the target to be 100% free of obstacles. Something as simple as window glass could be enough to hinder the laser shot long enough for the target to evade. A typical sniper round is not going to be phased by regular glass or some twigs in the way.

And again, a laser has only 1 method of delivering damage. Heat energy into the target. A larger caliber bullet can potentially have something nasty besides just a hunk of metal inside it. In WW2 the Soviets and Germans had explosive sniper ammunition for 8mm Mauser and 7.62x54r. You can potentially survive a 200 grain bullet passing through your lung. You are not surviving a 200 grain bullet entering your lung and then detonating a couple grams of explosive filler. Only got hit in the arm? Well, with the normal bullet you'll probably survive. The explosive bullet is ensuring you no longer have an arm and are definitely going to bleed out very very quickly.

You'd need a very very powerful laser to have a similar explosive effect, not something likely to be man portable in the foreseeable future.

In short, las weapons are probably acceptable as designated marksmen rifles(IE: what all the IG 'sniper' models actually would represent), but if you are looking for more specialized results solid projectile is probably superior and worth whatever extra logistics it would require.

The Long Las is a 'good enough' mass produced DMR for the Imperial Guard, but solid projectile weapons are probably superior for the job, but only end up being used by the more specialized snipers.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Something as simple as window glass could be enough to hinder the laser shot long enough for the target to evade.

Huh? A (visible light) laser will pass through glass instantaneously. There will be some reflection, true, but whether that actually hinders the laser is up to the particulars of the glass material, laser frequency, and power levels.

As others have said, a Las sniper weapon needn’t have a visible beam. Or at least, not one in our visual register.

There’s also the curious nature of 40K Lasguns, where they don’t really behave quite like modern Lasers.

The Lasgun uses the same basic technology and operates along the same lines as other laser weapons, emitting a beam of highly-energetic, focused, coherent photons. The high amount of energy carried by the photons of the beam causes the immediate surface area of a target to be vaporised in a small explosion.

Photons rather than light. Afraid I’m no scientist and may have embarrassed myself, but that description pushes them into directed energy weapons, rather than laser?

Photons = light. Or rather, visible light is made up of photons with a particular level of energy. All electromagnetic radiation is made up of photons, and visible light is just one small set of frequencies therein.

Photons are electromagnetic radiation (including visible light), and yes, lasers are directed energy weapons.

I think longlases are pretty good, but it seems that anyone who can uses a needle sniper rifle instead. The differences are clearly slight, because for several editions they used the same rules profile, but presumably there in the lore.

Having said that, the current Scout snipers seem to also be longlas weapons, not needle rifles. The gun stock and body are shaped like a lasgun, with no ejection port and a power cable for the "ammunition" feed. This could still be a needle rifle (there is an odd nubbin on the exterior of the weapon that could be for loading the needles) but it looks an awful lot like a longlas.

The current ratling models (as the other traditional users of needle rifles) have weapons that look like stubby antimaterial rifles. Whether these are still needle rifles or simply conventional bullet weapons is unclear.

The Jackal Alpha is the only definite bullet sniper I can think of other than the Vindicare Exitus rifle and the various stalker boltgun variants.

Needle Rifles don’t quite work in that way.

The Needle is formed from a stored toxin. The laser guides the resulting “dart”, and knocks a hole in the target’s armour/clothing, allowing the dart to penetrate flesh.

The darts are described as “crystallised neurotoxin”. Not sure why I’m certain they’re stored in liquid form though.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Needle Rifles don’t quite work in that way.

The Needle is formed from a stored toxin. The laser guides the resulting “dart”, and knocks a hole in the target’s armour/clothing, allowing the dart to penetrate flesh.

The darts are described as “crystallised neurotoxin”. Not sure why I’m certain they’re stored in liquid form though.

Fair, so the nubbin could be for storing/loading the toxin substrate. The gun still looks like a longlas though.

Yeah. The Needler is essentially a specialised Lasgun, but with Toxic Knobs On. Favoured because it’s completely silent, and all but invisible to the naked eye.

About the only things that can give away there’s a Sniper about would be…..

1. Dave just died in hideous agony
2. Dave’s uniform just smouldered in a tiny area.

Either way, with zero muzzle flash and noise, unless someone has the right equipment and happens to be looking, there’s no immediate way to trace back the shot to source.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Something as simple as window glass could be enough to hinder the laser shot long enough for the target to evade.

Huh? A (visible light) laser will pass through glass instantaneously. There will be some reflection, true, but whether that actually hinders the laser is up to the particulars of the glass material, laser frequency, and power levels.

Yes, the target will still probably get hit, but the heat energy of the laser will be severely reduced by even simple obstacles. It would take a lot of extra energy to burn through it. Especially compared to what little energy a solid projectile will lose.

Take an industrial cutting laser and put some minor debris in the way and it will severely hamper its ability to cut.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Something as simple as window glass could be enough to hinder the laser shot long enough for the target to evade.

Huh? A (visible light) laser will pass through glass instantaneously. There will be some reflection, true, but whether that actually hinders the laser is up to the particulars of the glass material, laser frequency, and power levels.

Yes, the target will still probably get hit, but the heat energy of the laser will be severely reduced by even simple obstacles. It would take a lot of extra energy to burn through it. Especially compared to what little energy a solid projectile will lose.

Take an industrial cutting laser and put some minor debris in the way and it will severely hamper its ability to cut.

#NotAPhysicist, but it all depends on the wavelengths being used. If it's a visible-light laser, then it'll go through glass without trouble because glass is transparent to visible light. If it's also using infra-red, then glass will block more of it because glass is more opaque to infrared. (They use infrared lasers to cut glass). But we're also talking about (visible) lasers with the capacity to blast through armor and the flesh behind it in a single pulse. Glass seems like a non-issue using that precedent. Even if the laser is using infra-red light in addition to the visible, it seems like the levels of energy we're talking about will just punch right through the glass.

Lasers have some limitations, regardless of their power. As previously stated they don't need to be in the visible light range, but one of sufficient power to instantly burn through distant targets will likely ionize air molecules along the path of the beam and show up as a series of sparks. Optical lasers can also be defeated if their operating wavelength is neutralized by the appropriate filters.

The biggest downside to lasers is that even the most powerful ones can be reduced in effectiveness rather quickly under poor weather conditions. Rain, dust or mist will very quickly dissipate coherent light energy. Theoretically a gamma ray laser (graser) could be built that would negate such obstacles but its power source would be have to be ridiculously immense.

Lasers of today also require burn time on target to be effective, even if for a few moments. A bullet striking a target will soon transfer its entire energy into the target but lasers are often required to maintain their exact hit for a brief time to allow penetration. This often is compromised by the vaporization of the target itself, which actually clouds the air right before the target making the laser less efficient the longer it needs to burn through the target surface.

Yeah the cloud/dust thing is pretty damning, isn't it!

The advantage of a laser is the instantaneous, no-recoil, absolute precision you can get out of it. If you can get computerized targeting to focus a weapons grade laser with the speed and precision of a light show, that's a helluva capability.

In Guant's Ghosts overuse of long las requires you to regularly replace the barrels. So that could be another drawback of laser sniper rifles. In a pitched battle you have to bring like a dozen barrels with you.

 amanita wrote:
Lasers of today also require burn time on target to be effective, even if for a few moments. A bullet striking a target will soon transfer its entire energy into the target but lasers are often required to maintain their exact hit for a brief time to allow penetration. This often is compromised by the vaporization of the target itself, which actually clouds the air right before the target making the laser less efficient the longer it needs to burn through the target surface.

This gets into the cover/concealment discussion. Against lasers, concealment may very well become cover, particularly if it is light or energy absorbent.

This in turn buttress the argument for pure kinetic effects, since with sufficient mass they can literally punch through whatever minor cover might be in the way.

Those shiny silver 70s raincoats might just save your life against a sniper's laser!

KamikazeCanuck wrote:In Guant's Ghosts overuse of long las requires you to regularly replace the barrels. So that could be another drawback of laser sniper rifles. In a pitched battle you have to bring like a dozen barrels with you.

especially when using the Hot-shot load, which pumps a whole magazine's worth of energy through in one shot, making the weapon more useful agaisnt heavily armored targets or ultra long range. though we usually only see Larkin and the other Tanith marksmen use those during assassination ops and other uncommon situations. most of the time they seem to use standard magazines and the main advantage of a long-las is the extra range and accuracy. (though many of the Tanith carry physical shell weapons as unofficial backups. Larkin has a bolt action rifle for example. this is sometimes brought up in the earlier novels whenever they run low on lasgun charges, or when in transit on a ship and their official kit is locked up)

personally i would imagine that most Guard units would use the long-las or other lasgun based systems. since they'd simplify logistics. (heck, the power packs are apparently self-charging to a degree, by converting thermal energy. though presumably this is a slow process, given there are a lot of instances of units on long field campaigns running low on charged packs anyway.)

Insectum7 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Something as simple as window glass could be enough to hinder the laser shot long enough for the target to evade.

Huh? A (visible light) laser will pass through glass instantaneously. There will be some reflection, true, but whether that actually hinders the laser is up to the particulars of the glass material, laser frequency, and power levels.

Yes, the target will still probably get hit, but the heat energy of the laser will be severely reduced by even simple obstacles. It would take a lot of extra energy to burn through it. Especially compared to what little energy a solid projectile will lose.

Take an industrial cutting laser and put some minor debris in the way and it will severely hamper its ability to cut.

#NotAPhysicist, but it all depends on the wavelengths being used. If it's a visible-light laser, then it'll go through glass without trouble because glass is transparent to visible light. If it's also using infra-red, then glass will block more of it because glass is more opaque to infrared. (They use infrared lasers to cut glass). But we're also talking about (visible) lasers with the capacity to blast through armor and the flesh behind it in a single pulse. Glass seems like a non-issue using that precedent. Even if the laser is using infra-red light in addition to the visible, it seems like the levels of energy we're talking about will just punch right through the glass.

lasguns have some pretty weird physics to them in general, given we have mentions in multiple books by different authors of the energy pulses ricocheting off metal and cement for example. sometimes the las weapons seem to work more like physical bullets than lasers, which makes it hard to pin down how they work.
that said, reflective glass surfaces seem to offer some protection, like the special glass armor used by the Vitrian Dragoons in First And Only, which has one side with a matt black for stealth, and the other highly reflective for protection from las-weapons.

 Insectum7 wrote:
#NotAPhysicist, but it all depends on the wavelengths being used. If it's a visible-light laser, then it'll go through glass without trouble because glass is transparent to visible light. If it's also using infra-red, then glass will block more of it because glass is more opaque to infrared. (They use infrared lasers to cut glass). But we're also talking about (visible) lasers with the capacity to blast through armor and the flesh behind it in a single pulse. Glass seems like a non-issue using that precedent. Even if the laser is using infra-red light in addition to the visible, it seems like the levels of energy we're talking about will just punch right through the glass.

It depends on the exact wavelength/power level/etc. One major problem with lasers interacting with glass and mirrors is that once you reach a certain power level even very high efficiency in reflection/transmission means quite a bit of energy being dumped into the material. If that's enough to damage the surface you now have opaque burned material, cracked glass that scatters the beam across a wider area, etc. And yeah, you'll destroy the material, but the laser shot has no momentum. If the remains of the glass are opaque and/or scattering for the entire length of the laser pulse then nothing gets through, it just really overkills the obstacle. And because a laser is a tightly focused point of damage any slight aim error on subsequent pulses means hitting a fresh piece of obstacle.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yeah. The Needler is essentially a specialised Lasgun, but with Toxic Knobs On. Favoured because it’s completely silent, and all but invisible to the naked eye.

About the only things that can give away there’s a Sniper about would be…..

1. Dave just died in hideous agony
2. Dave’s uniform just smouldered in a tiny area.

3. The guy with a gun standing right next to the target.

Needle guns as described in 40k are great weapons for a subtle assassination in a civilian context, they're completely useless on the battlefield. A subsonic lightweight needle would have horrible accuracy at anything other than point blank range and there's effectively zero chance it would stay aligned with the laser that allows it to penetrate. You might as well just add a bit more power to the laser so once it penetrates the target's armor it has enough energy left to be fatal by itself.

apparently the stnadard munitorium lasgun uses a visible spectrum laser.. i checked the 40k wiki, and it lists a Retribution Pattern Long-Las (best i can tell, coming from one of the RPG books) which is a heavily customized long las, with its main defining feature (beyond being easily concealed) being it uses a non-visible light spectrum. (described as reducing the penetration but making its shot unnoticeable.)

On needlers, space magic means that the toxin shard rides the laser beam. Such minor issues as ballistics or momentum are irrelevant

Indeed. 40K has a significant level of WizTech.

Whilst they’ve fallen from the zenith of mankind’s technological knowledge, they’re still in many ways far, far in advance of where we are.

This why we can’t really look to modern day lasers as a touch stone for Las Weapons in 40K. Indeed there conflicting descriptions of how Las Weapons work, from coherent beams, to Star Wars style blasts, right up to a pulsing beam.

40K being 40K of course? There’s no reason all those types are accurate depictions, with Lasgun being a catch all “let’s not have the plebs worry too much about it” term.

 Flinty wrote:
On needlers, space magic means that the toxin shard rides the laser beam. Such minor issues as ballistics or momentum are irrelevant

That doesn't even make any sense, it's like saying that a marine bolter shell is more accurate because Tyranids ate a Tau planet and absorbed their ranged combat ability. It's best to dismiss that as superstitious nonsense, especially since needle weapons are effectively nonexistent in normal battlefield combat.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
On needlers, space magic means that the toxin shard rides the laser beam. Such minor issues as ballistics or momentum are irrelevant

That doesn't even make any sense, it's like saying that a marine bolter shell is more accurate because Tyranids ate a Tau planet and absorbed their ranged combat ability. It's best to dismiss that as superstitious nonsense, especially since needle weapons are effectively nonexistent in normal battlefield combat.

...except they are commonly used by Space Marine scouts and ratling snipers... on battlefields. The sniper rifle veteran guardsmen could get was also a needle rifle at one point.

The lore has needle rifles as being superior to a longlas for sniping, although presumably not by a wide margin as the rules were identical.

Obviously in a game where where lascannons can punch through battle tanks we must assume laser technology in 40K is more advanced or different somehow. Even today we have lasers capable of destroying thin skinned targets like drones, missiles and aircraft. And yes, the near instantaneous effectiveness of affecting a target can't be overlooked.

Even lasers need to be focused to be optimal however, since even coherent light spreads out over distance. But the real surprise is that there is recoil from powerful beams. It may be negligible comparatively, but somebody worked out the recoil of the Death Star if it were a laser and able to demolish an earth-sized planet. The recoil just from photons would blow the weapon out the back of the Death Star or propel it backwards at a rate lethal to humans. Crazy.

The IoM can put fusion reactors into handheld rifle sized guns (meltas) with enough power to melt tanks.

Their energy technology is millennia ahead of ours.