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Don't use the 40k wiki. It's extremely unreliable and fanfiction gets unnoticed there for years.

Lexicanum is what you want to use. It has actual in-line citations, so information from there can be used in discussions.

For those who aren't aware, a heavier gun actually dampens recoil if you're shooting the same type of ammo, since more energy is spent moving the gun. That would give a SM bolter less recoil than a SoB bolter if they're shooting the same type of bolt.

So one conclusion I can make from this discussion is that it's really the bolt pistol that's crazy. You're saying this is a .75 gun shot one-handed designed to pierce armor at 1 yard? It also looks like it weighs 20 lbs and they hand those out to the guard like candy.

I'd rather have a plasma pistol, at least I can take a few shots before it might explode. A bolt pistol looks like it would break my wrist on the first shot.

Yeah, this definitely is no small gun this.



(Don't worry, Guardsman, it's a 3+ to wound and you get your 5+ armour save. You can probably tank that hit)

In any case, one of the main benefits of gyrojet ammo is the elimination of the recoil, so bolters of any type would have very little recoil.

I think they do that to play up how powerful the bolter seems to be.

It's a gyrojet -and- it has bonecracking recoil! Wow it must be so powerful!

Genuinely, I'd give pretty decent odds this was the thought process, if they even thought about gyrojet recoil at all in the first place.

Orkeosaurus wrote:To be honest the wiki does have some real groaners:

The Space Marines are not the only warriors of the Imperium to carry boltguns into battle, but the version carried by the Firstborn Adeptus Astartes, the Mark Vb Godwyn Pattern Boltgun, is by far the largest and most devastating. By comparison, the smaller patterns of boltgun carried by the Adeptus Sororitas or the champions of the Astra Militarum are pale reflections. So large is the Godwyn Pattern that no normal man could heft one, let alone survive its unforgiving recoil.

Yes, if a human tries to shoot a regular space marine bolter he will instantly die from the recoil. And the mechanically identical versions used by other armies are only "pale reflections" for some reason.

Right, but that line doesn't actually say the recoil would instantly kill a non-augmented human does it? It's saying this bolter is built for superhuman bioengineered warriors. A normal human couldn't just pick it up off the floor and wield it themselves. So mighty are the Space Marines a normal human would likely have their entire arm dislocated from the force of the recoil or even ripped off. Or smash their skull if they try and aim down the iron sights. But that isn't exactly snappy written down, so you're supposed to fill in the blanks yourself.

And that isn't that crazy. Poor weapon control can easily lead to an accident even with a fairly low calibre weapon. The point of that text is to let you know as the reader that a bolter is a fething big gun and regular human dweebs can't carry it or use it without causing themselves serious mischief.

Ashiraya wrote:I think they do that to play up how powerful the bolter seems to be.

It's a gyrojet -and- it has bonecracking recoil! Wow it must be so powerful!

Genuinely, I'd give pretty decent odds this was the thought process, if they even thought about gyrojet recoil at all in the first place.

The trouble is we use the gyrojet because its the only modern-ish analogue for how a bolter works based on what the in-universe workings of a bolter are. But the gyrojet was a heap of crap and didn't work. The gyrojet worked with a very heavy barrel to off-set the recoil of the initial charge. Presumably to make it function like a bolter properly should you reach a point where the heaviness of the barrel becomes too much for the mass reactive rounds you're wanting to fire at the velocity you are firing it at. Thus you get recoil. At which point, you then bioengineer the users to compensate for that recoil.

 Olthannon wrote:

Orkeosaurus wrote:To be honest the wiki does have some real groaners:

The Space Marines are not the only warriors of the Imperium to carry boltguns into battle, but the version carried by the Firstborn Adeptus Astartes, the Mark Vb Godwyn Pattern Boltgun, is by far the largest and most devastating. By comparison, the smaller patterns of boltgun carried by the Adeptus Sororitas or the champions of the Astra Militarum are pale reflections. So large is the Godwyn Pattern that no normal man could heft one, let alone survive its unforgiving recoil.

Yes, if a human tries to shoot a regular space marine bolter he will instantly die from the recoil. And the mechanically identical versions used by other armies are only "pale reflections" for some reason.

Right, but that line doesn't actually say the recoil would instantly kill a non-augmented human does it?

Well if you fail to survive something you're dead. Of course it's meant to be hyperbole, but the hyperbole sounds dumb. Especially because space marine bolters aren't even all that big for a gun in 40k, a Guard plasma gun looks heavier than a SM bolter. And Harker is a human who carries a heavy bolter and shoots it from the hip, you can say he's "abnormally strong" but he's otherwise just a guy in a t-shirt.

It's like saying "no man can survive the extra-spicy buffalo wings" when you really just mean they're too spicy for most people. It's cheesy.

 Crimson wrote:
In any case, one of the main benefits of gyrojet ammo is the elimination of the recoil, so bolters of any type would have very little recoil.

Bolters aren't gyrojets though. Gyrojets were 100% rocket propelled small arms.
But bolters are two stage propulsion - initial kicking charge and rocket propulsion in flight. They're rocket assisted (similar to some specialised long range artillery shells).
Which means they will have an initial recoil proportional to how much that initial charge is.

And it’s how much that initial charge that’s the main question here.

Does it need to be significant, if it’s mostly to give the bolt round enough rifle spin for accuracy, with the rocket then providing the real velocity?

Is it what we’d consider a standard charge for a round of that calibre, with the rocket motor then kicking it up to ludicrous speed?

Is it somewhere in between? Where in the middle might it sit? Is their a minimum, however dinky, range before the fired bolt round can do its whole detonate inside you thing? If so, if I shoot you within that range, can the bolt round go straight through you then blow up your luckless mate just over there?

On the minimum range thing? Given Bolt Pistols seem to use the same rounds as a Boltgun, seemingly not. Otherwise they’d be kind of ineffective at very short ranges. So I think we can reasonably extrapolate that if there is a minimum range? It might only be mere centimetres.

I think the initial charge is fairly equivalent to a round of the calibre, only a little bit less.
Bolters are regularly shown piercing heavy armour at even point blank range (I'm reminded of the 5th edition SM codex illustration where a bolter blows through a CSM at point blank range).
Although how accurate is that illustration as I don't think any lore holds that a bolter can blow clean through a suit of power armour and out the other side.

But the idea of zero-range armour penetration consists nicely with the usual depiction of bolter casings being fairly large and not dissimilar to what we would expect from a normal round.

There also wouldn't be any point in the charge unless it had at least a medium amount of oomph. You can start the rocket motor inside the barrel so you don't actually need anything for initial spin

The art definitely needs to be viewed through a rule of cool filter. Not necessarily complete fantasy, but certainly exaggerated somewhat.

Though side thought? As I think we broadly accept a Bolt Round is unlikely to blow the back out of an Astartes? Surely that makes the injury worse, as the blast has less places to go, concentrating it more?

I mean, I’m using “worse” here for a certain value of that word. Power Armour or Pants, when a Bolt Round detonates in your chest, you’re not gonna walk it off. But unless I really, really* don’t understand physics? With the blast contained, the contents are going to get minced even finer?

Which seems like a nice counter to the general resilience of an Astartes when it comes to using small arms against them. A contained bolt blast is going to be more focussed, and more likely to kill outright than simply horribly maim?

*As opposed to “don’t understand them but have a rudimentary grasp”.

The bottom line is the entirety of 40k is just rule of cool. There's no logic or consistency beyond what's cool. So trying to work out logic just doesn't make sense.

Like take the models for example. The Leman Russ ostensibly has a 120mm main gun. But based on the model you'd think it had 10x that. Yet all the artistic depictions of the Leman Russ (including those technical schematics which state 120mm) follow the proportions of the tabletop model.
How do you square that circle? What's the "actual canon"?

Well, it’s a Battle Cannon, innit?

Ashiraya wrote:Don't use the 40k wiki. It's extremely unreliable and fanfiction gets unnoticed there for years.

Lexicanum is what you want to use. It has actual in-line citations, so information from there can be used in discussions.

This.

The 40k Wiki is useless as a source for anything beyond vibes and seeing what the meme version of 40k is. Lexicanum is far, far more accurate. Not perfect, but decent.

kirotheavenger wrote:The bottom line is the entirety of 40k is just rule of cool. There's no logic or consistency beyond what's cool. So trying to work out logic just doesn't make sense.

Like take the models for example. The Leman Russ ostensibly has a 120mm main gun. But based on the model you'd think it had 10x that. Yet all the artistic depictions of the Leman Russ (including those technical schematics which state 120mm) follow the proportions of the tabletop model.
How do you square that circle? What's the "actual canon"?

It is supposed to have a liquid-cooling shroud, so more like a maxim gun. This seems unnecessary for a relatively-slow firing weapon, but we know that Russes can be environmentally sealed and at least the HH version can operate in a vacuum. Cooling is far more important in those circumstances. It probably isn't needed on most worlds, but then no one is going to modify the sacred STC design- that would be heresy!



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Re. calibre- I've seen heavy bolters described as 1.0 calibre (an inch), but I've not personally seen a source. The only source with a number I do know is the Sol-pattern heavy bolter (the classic style that is carried on the shoulder). This has a calibre of 0.7, apparently the same as Phobos-pattern boltguns and actually smaller than a standard Godwyn-pattern boltgun round!

Having a longer barrel might account for that, or perhaps using hotter versions of the ammunition used in boltguns, or merely having the same calibre but actually being very different bolts with the heavy bolter ammunition essentially being necked down.

 Haighus wrote:

It is supposed to have a liquid-cooling shroud, so more like a maxim gun. This seems unnecessary for a relatively-slow firing weapon, but we know that Russes can be environmentally sealed and at least the HH version can operate in a vacuum. Cooling is far more important in those circumstances. It probably isn't needed on most worlds, but then no one is going to modify the sacred STC design- that would be heresy!

What's the source for the watercooling?
I've never seen that mentioned before and it's clearly not what's depicted on the model or the schematics (which have ammunition sized to fit the barrel we see).

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

It is supposed to have a liquid-cooling shroud, so more like a maxim gun. This seems unnecessary for a relatively-slow firing weapon, but we know that Russes can be environmentally sealed and at least the HH version can operate in a vacuum. Cooling is far more important in those circumstances. It probably isn't needed on most worlds, but then no one is going to modify the sacred STC design- that would be heresy!

What's the source for the watercooling?
I've never seen that mentioned before and it's clearly not what's depicted on the model or the schematics (which have ammunition sized to fit the barrel we see).

Epic: Armageddon rulebook, pg. 95. It is in the description for the Leman Russ. Technically, that is for the Mars pattern, but it makes sense that it holds for other Leman Russ.

If you have a copy of the PDFs that GW published on their website awhile back, then it is in the Background and Forces document in the Imperial Guard section, and is pg. 38 of the PDF.

Huh, so it does. Case in point that 40k lore has no consistency right
I don't think it really detracts from my point though, a waterjacket shouldn't affect the observed calibre of the barrel which is immense and carried through to the internally carried shells in crosssection views as well.

That’s also assuming the Mechanicus are numerate.

Well yes but if we start to assume that then literally all of the lore starts to become meaningless.

Then again it probably *is* a safe assumption given how wildly off a lot of 40k's numbers are.
I believe Leman Russ canonically have about as much armour as you'd expect on a second world war era tank, despite being one of the most heavily armoured vehicles in the 41st millenium.
Also wars like Vraks, allegedly the most brutal and bloody war in the entirety of 40k, had fewer casualties than WW2.

kirotheavenger wrote:Huh, so it does. Case in point that 40k lore has no consistency right
I don't think it really detracts from my point though, a waterjacket shouldn't affect the observed calibre of the barrel which is immense and carried through to the internally carried shells in crosssection views as well.

You do have to come down somewhere when it comes to depictions and lore. My impression is that the lore in Epic: Armageddon is an attempt to rationalise the oversized, heroic-scale barrels on the 2nd edition Leman Russ kit, which were iconic but a bit silly in scale. That has then been undermined by the cut-away art you mention (which I think coincided with FW selling loose shells for tank models, so was probably intended to support sales of heroic-scaled parts).

I prefer to go with the 120mm lore (or thereabouts, some patterns probably have different calibres), with a large water-cooled jacket, and the apparent bore diameter is actually just the bore of the flash suppressor and not the whole barrel. But that is a rationalisation made by cherry-picking favourable parts of the lore.

kirotheavenger wrote:Well yes but if we start to assume that then literally all of the lore starts to become meaningless.

Then again it probably *is* a safe assumption given how wildly off a lot of 40k's numbers are.
I believe Leman Russ canonically have about as much armour as you'd expect on a second world war era tank, despite being one of the most heavily armoured vehicles in the 41st millenium.
Also wars like Vraks, allegedly the most brutal and bloody war in the entirety of 40k, had fewer casualties than WW2.

Those numbers are from the original Imperial Armour and Imperial Armour II (not to be confused with Imperial Armour volume 1 and 2). The thicknesses by themselves are fine- we have no idea about what materials they are made from, and some space magic tech super material could be very protective for a thin plate. In our reality, a plate of Dorchester block is far more protective than the same thickness of rolled homogenous steel, for example.

However, I think they made the mistake somewhere of saying the thickness was equivalent to a value in rolled homogenous steel, which is always silly for science fantasy writers to nail their colours to the mast like that, and when doing that the values were late-WW2/early-Cold war thicknesses. I can't remember where that extra detail is from, but the lore on thicknesses is fine if you discount that particular nugget of info.

Vraks was never presented as the most bloody, merely a particularly long siege war. Bear in mind that Vraks only had a population of 8 million prior to the war, that is smaller than London alone. A war that essentially killed in the ballpark of 22 million is pretty massive for a world with a population that small. I'm pretty sure the HH was the bloodiest war, and in 40k it would be the 3rd war for Armageddon or the 13th Black Crusade that have the most combat deaths (as opposed to simply wiping out entire hive world populations via exterminatus or Tyranids or what not, which will routinely run into the billions).

Tbf yeah the Vraks bit is a bit outdated now 40k includes the 42nd millenium with more armaggeddons and black crusades.
That's not really the point though, the point is a massive planetary war famous for the attritional meat grinder so profound there's accusations of using cloning to maintain the numbers.
And it's not even that big by 1940s Earth standards.

It's very common in 40k. IIRC on Taros they deployed 8 regiments. 8 regiments to conquer a planet, that's nothing.

I’d love a proper recalling of numbers in 40K. Just broadly.

I know the Law Of Large Numbers is a bugger, because it’s increasingly difficult for our sad little monkey brains to comprehend what they actually entail.

For instance? Let’s say Vraks cost 1,000,000,000 Guardsmen’s lives. That sounds like a lot. But right now there’s 8,000,000,000 or so of us regular humans. So a billion lives spent defending an entire world still really isn’t that many. But much beyond that just feels….a bit silly.

I've just clocked out of the numbers thing at this point tbh.

All the way back in Dan Abnett's early 2000s Eisenhorn novels you see them recall a legendary campaign waged by a warmaster 500 years ago, where a whole 4 million (!!!!) guardsmen were deployed to wage war on a single world. The characters reminisce about how that sort of scale just doesn't happen any more in the present day of the setting.

I always considered Vraks to be a rather unimportant battle in the grand scheme of 40k, so it's low numbers compared to IRL world-wide conflict don't bother me that much.

That said, on topic:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XbHmcRC7r1c

Here's a guy firing a .700 caliber rifle, just .05 small than a regular Bolt round, he seems to handle the kick rather well.

 Bobthehero wrote:
I always considered Vraks to be a rather unimportant battle in the grand scheme of 40k, so it's low numbers compared to IRL world-wide conflict don't bother me that much.

That said, on topic:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XbHmcRC7r1c

Here's a guy firing a .700 caliber rifle, just .05 small than a regular Bolt round, he seems to handle the kick rather well.

Come to think of it, maybe the real difference between Guard and Marine bolters is that Guard bolters are single shot and Marine bolters fire a 4-round burst.

I imagine if the .700 above fired a 4-round burst the outcome might be a teensy bit different...


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 kirotheavenger wrote:
Tbf yeah the Vraks bit is a bit outdated now 40k includes the 42nd millenium with more armaggeddons and black crusades.
That's not really the point though, the point is a massive planetary war famous for the attritional meat grinder so profound there's accusations of using cloning to maintain the numbers.
And it's not even that big by 1940s Earth standards.

It's very common in 40k. IIRC on Taros they deployed 8 regiments. 8 regiments to conquer a planet, that's nothing.

Vraks was published _after_ the Armageddon and 13th Black Crusade global campaigns had concluded. Those are very much in the lore prior to Vraks.

To be honest, I think you are overstating the importance and scale of Vraks in the setting, and conflating some of the lore. It was the focus of three IA books because it was interesting for the story they wanted to tell and the models they wanted to sell. The war is objectively smaller than, say, the Badab War in IA 9 and 10 though.

Vraks was a small world only important because it was essentially an Imperial Guard storehouse for the region. It had a low population but warehouses upon warehouses of munitions. The Imperium then does what the Imperium does and engages in a bloody meatgrinder to slowly recapture it in a pyrrhic victory.

_Krieg_ engages in something like cloning. Not because of Vraks specifically, but because it is a world dedicated to producing soldiers for the meatgrinder above all else. It is their primary export. There are Krieg regiments fighting and dying across the galaxy. 5 were deployed to Armageddon in the early phases of the 3rd war!

I think the scale of most 40k campaigns works when viewing the Imperium as a colonial empire. The comparison isn't WW2, it is the 16th-19th century European empires. How many British soldiers were needed to take and hold India? Not that many compared to the huge population in the region at the time. Most Imperial planets are sparsely populated, and those that aren't are occupied more than integrated.

There are actually some lore examples that go into this "paradox".

Would that perhaps file under “you probably could, but due to the sheer size and weight of the gun and its kickback, not with anything approximating accuracy”?

I mean, if you’re struggling to life the gun in the first place, it seems unlikely you’d be able to adopt a proper firing stance with it. And yes you almost certainly could prop it up on something (say a handy flat topped low wall) which would allow initial aiming, but does nothing to help properly control the recoil.

I’m put in mind of the bit in Seagal’s only passable movie Under Siege, where Erika Eleniak tries to shoot what I think is a Mac10, only for it to buck right out her grip?

I like the idea that Guardsmen can only reasonably use a bolter in single shot mode, whereas only an Astartes has the main character energy to utilise it in rapid fire.
But presumably even they can get a useful rate of single-shots downrange as they retain the "rapid fire" in game and bolters are at least presumably *lower* recoil than a traditional gun of the same power would imply.

I think the fact that the Guard (and indeed, 30k era human auxiliary troops) use bolters at all suggests they get at least a useful degree of accuracy out of the weapons

If they’re the same model.

I’m struggling to find a source outside the 40K Wiki thing to confirm, but I’m sure I’ve read in-universe stuff about human sized Bolters being smaller than the Astartes ones.

May even have been something said in WD, in which case I doubt I’ll ever find it. Will check my 1st and 2nd Ed sources though. Got complete sets, so a few things to flick through in search of an answer either way.

It wouldn't surprise me if there was some reference to it now.

40k lore has been around so long, none of it is now written by the original authors from the same vision. It's all separate authors with only very limited oversight and collaboration writing their own stories from how they perceive the lore and what they want the lore to be.

We've seen several examples of what used to clearly incorrect 'meme lore' now canonised in novels, stories, and rules.
So what even is lore? If Rick Priestly wrote one thing in Rogue Trader and Joe Bloggs writes another - who's correct?

Gonna have a quick bunk off work to skip through the relevant books. Back in a jiffy!


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Well, it’s not from the Battle Manual or Wargear book (flavour text is identical across both). But that’s when it was only Marines and Orks that carried Bolters.

Codex Sisters of Battle? Quick flick through found nothing.

Codex Imperial Guard? Quick flick through found nothing.

Inquisitor Rulebook is no help either. It offers different flavours of Boltgun, but no real detail.