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Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Can someone explain the theoretical nuances of how eldar shuriken weaponry impacts a target works? I understand that, broadly, the shurikens basically make parts of your target fall off, but can someone give me a slightly more precise explanation? Some specific questions...

* Do the shurikens "cut" their target or "saw" at their target?
* Are the shurikens prone to bouncing off of armor plates (like ceramite) that are tough enough to withstand them head-on, or would they be more likely to bury themselves into the armor?
* Do the shuriken spin mid-flight, or are they basically just needlessly round throwing knives? ("Thrown" by the catapult/cannon in this case.)
* Would the shuriken be especially prone to curving their path or falling if you shot them at the wrong angle or into the wind?
* It's canon that shuriken come in a bunch of different shapes. What are the theoretical advantages of these different shapes?
* Also, what are the shurikens made of, and did I dream up the idea that the ammo slowly regrows over time?

Note that, "it's a silly ninja star gun; it defies logic," is a perfectly valid answer.


ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User






First and foremost, it's a "Sci-Fi" weapon. So, use your imagination (like when reading a Black Library novel). Unless you are in a tourney game then follow the codex book, or the TO's verdict.

JD 
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut





It's described as a railgun that uses gravity instead of electromagnetism to propel a monomolecular disc at high speed into the target.

As force = mass X acceleration, and the gun is described as highly effective then there are assumptions we can make.

It probably doesn't have a particularly high mass in comparison to a bullet given how thin it is, so the force must come from acceleration.

It probably wouldn't spin, spin stability is only useful in 3 dimensions (bullets corkscrew), spinning in 1 dimension wouldn't make it very stable.

It is made of psychoplastics like wraithbone which are supposed to be as strong or stronger than adamantium, so it's likely they are very resilient to damage and hold an edge well.

The gravity pulse could only work if it created a gradually higher field closer to the tip of the gun, so it pulls the disc toward itself only to shut off and let the disc fly out, like a planet attracting an asteroid.


The banana stick ammunition looks to be ~1 foot long (300mm). Slicing thin pieces off the stick as it fires, assuming a disc thickness of 0.1mm, that's 10 discs per cm, or 300 per stick.

If you go with truly monomolecular discs, then there would be 100s of thousands of ammo discs in a single stick.

It must fire them at very high speeds in order to generate the kind of force they're described as having, which would necessitate that they also travel a long way in the process - the faster they are fired the less effect drag will have on them during their flight time which will be important given how big their surface area is. They would have to contend with extreme friction at such speeds which would heat them up dramatically.


So if they are truly monomolecular, then they probably work more like a long range sand blaster, shredding through the impact point with thousands of shards a second, fired so quickly that 1000 can hit the same location before the target has moved.

If they are not truly monomolecular then they would come out with enough speed to go straight through anything - like a straw through a power pole in a tornado.

I imagine the material they are made of will maintain its shape after impact.

Any material we have today that you fired at this speed is most likely going to liquify in the atmosphere and turn into a plasma.










   
Made in ca
Fully-charged Electropriest






Well "it's a silly ninja star gun" is the correct answer but I will give my best though having no idea at all;

Given that it is effectively a super thin and strong knife shot super speed I will hazard a guess that it is a clean cut rather then a rough tear.

Depends on the armor. If it is tough enough that the blade can not pierce it will either bounce off or shatter, if it is not but it is thick enough that it prevents it from going though it will be embedded.

I would assume they do as it would make them more stable in flight much like how a bullet rotates to make them more stable.

I would assume that a weapon made by the Eldar would be accurate enough to go were aimed at and not curve until gravity overcomes the momentum and would likely not be effected by the wind unless pretty powerful.

Probably not. Just the artists having fun.

According to the wiki it is made from a "plasti-crystal material". I don't know if it can be regrown though
   
Made in pl
Wicked Warp Spider





Ok, so first - rotation is not only important, it is crucial. Gyroscopic stability, anyone? We actually have a physical world representation of how would shuriken catapult work - throwing playing cards. Take a deck of cards, some XPS board and try to hit it from few steps away and make cards penetrate the board. You absolutely need rotation for it.

And as to monofilament - we also have a modern material that is based on the idea - graphene. So basically, a shuriken catapult is accelerating a graphene aka wraithbone Dobble cards at absurd speeds into xps aka ceramite covered GMO humans, space fungi, space fish or figments of collective bad dreams, slicing into or through them. And whether they bounce off, bury or shatter depends on the armour material and armour philosophy, just like with bullets. A meter thick ballistic jello is as good armour as a roll of ductape, a thin sheet of steel, a ceramic tile or high density plastic, just less comfortable to fight in
   
Made in no
Liche Priest Hierophant





Bergen

The biggest problem from a realty standpoint is mass. Those flimsy disks are very light.

Fortunetly they of sett this with 'Sci fi material' and that they are very sharp.

Think of it as death by penetrating thin ninja stars.

Or capitation by very small cheese grater wire.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/22 08:53:29


   
Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






Also worth noting they’re not single shots. Each burst would fire hundreds of Shuriken, essentially flaying the target.

Body armour does of course help. However, the number of shots will mean a decent number are going for natural weak points, such as joins and eye lenses.

There’s an old flavour text from Rogue Trooper, which describes an Ogryn disinterestedly picking Shuriken out after the battle,

   
Made in gb
Moustache-twirling Princeps




United Kingdom

There's art showing the different shapes of the projectiles, and Shuriken Catapults even have their own fluff book.

Spoiler:
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





I think the most important question is what noise do they make. Chk chk Ffffffffffffwaaaaaaannggggggggggg
   
Made in pl
Longtime Dakkanaut





Shurikens are a pretty dumb weapon that never made any sense to me. They could, in theory, work against flesh or elastic armour (so ironically, be really good vs Eldar) but the thing should shatter or harmlessly bounce off any armour plate, because they wouldn't be able to push bits of plate aside. If 40K was realistic, SM and Stormtroopers should be able to reroll failed saves vs shurikens. Twice

Then there is the fact that if your gun can make such high gravity fields, you're probably better off using said field against enemy directly, not use it firing such useless ammunition. That thing must generate thousands of Gs, why would Eldar use dumb chainswords instead of grav swords (let's be generous and assume the grav field has short range) I have no idea. Also, how such a high strenght field doesn't tear off barrel or rip the weapon straight off the hands of user?

mrFickle wrote:
I think the most important question is what noise do they make. Chk chk Ffffffffffffwaaaaaaannggggggggggg

None because noise = lost energy and they would be utterly useless if they managed to lose much of it after being fired.

 Hellebore wrote:
It probably wouldn't spin, spin stability is only useful in 3 dimensions (bullets corkscrew), spinning in 1 dimension wouldn't make it very stable.

...

The banana stick ammunition looks to be ~1 foot long (300mm). Slicing thin pieces off the stick as it fires, assuming a disc thickness of 0.1mm, that's 10 discs per cm, or 300 per stick.

If you go with truly monomolecular discs, then there would be 100s of thousands of ammo discs in a single stick.

Actually conservation of angular momentum would make them greatly resilient to stability loss. See here for a cool demonstration:




Also, 10? You mean 100 per cm, so 3000 per stick? As for monomolecular ones, yeah, but somehow shurikens are described as using ammo in less than a second (which is stupid because no matter how effective your weapon is once it's dry it's useless and you die to second guy who will shoot you once you start desperately try to reload it)...
   
Made in gb
Mad Gyrocopter Pilot





Northumberland

So like with literally everything about Warhammer, the weapon is more about the aesthetic because it is an artistic choice and not one based in reality. Why should it be? It's 40k, it's fabulously far into the future and we have absolutely no real world idea about it. People love to pick this kind of stuff apart and say "pfft wouldn't work" but that means absolutely nothing. You think it doesn't work based on a logic built around what you understand currently, meaning that logic would drastically change if you were in the 42nd millennium.

And also more to the point, doesn't matter if you say "doesn't work" because it does in the game, so that is just what it does

So instead, consider the point of the shuriken and consider the Eldar as a race. Their weaponry embodies what they are and is designed in a way to compliment the lore behind them. So you have ancient space Elves who like High Elves had a lot of 80s exotic 'oriental' hyper stylised designs. This is why they ended up being called shuriken. The name is meant to evoke your own knowledge about the weapon.

Everything about the Eldar is hard, razor sharp and lightning quick, much like glass.

Ignore the potential reality of it, but they likely do spin, but rather than saw into you, they cut and splinter and fragment, causing more damage that way. Hitting hard surfaces they probably fragment quicker and do less damage but over time and with loads of impacts they will eventually cut through and hit even the hardest target.

Think of the Eldar and all their weaponry by the Chinese torture of death by a thousand cuts, only rather than slow misery, it's preternaturally quick.

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Made in us
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So what noise does it make? We’ve all heard bolters in games but I’ve never heard one of these
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut





 Irbis wrote:
Shurikens are a pretty dumb weapon that never made any sense to me. They could, in theory, work against flesh or elastic armour (so ironically, be really good vs Eldar) but the thing should shatter or harmlessly bounce off any armour plate, because they wouldn't be able to push bits of plate aside. If 40K was realistic, SM and Stormtroopers should be able to reroll failed saves vs shurikens. Twice

Then there is the fact that if your gun can make such high gravity fields, you're probably better off using said field against enemy directly, not use it firing such useless ammunition. That thing must generate thousands of Gs, why would Eldar use dumb chainswords instead of grav swords (let's be generous and assume the grav field has short range) I have no idea. Also, how such a high strenght field doesn't tear off barrel or rip the weapon straight off the hands of user?


They have been described as surviving impact and being left stuck in the target, so the material must be very strong to withstand all the forces applied to it. And the monomolecular edge should technically let it slide through any material it hits, assuming the force propelling it is able to overcome the density of the target.

Assuming they do spin, they could push material out the direction of rotation.

 Irbis wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
It probably wouldn't spin, spin stability is only useful in 3 dimensions (bullets corkscrew), spinning in 1 dimension wouldn't make it very stable.

...

The banana stick ammunition looks to be ~1 foot long (300mm). Slicing thin pieces off the stick as it fires, assuming a disc thickness of 0.1mm, that's 10 discs per cm, or 300 per stick.

If you go with truly monomolecular discs, then there would be 100s of thousands of ammo discs in a single stick.

Actually conservation of angular momentum would make them greatly resilient to stability loss. See here for a cool demonstration:

Also, 10? You mean 100 per cm, so 3000 per stick? As for monomolecular ones, yeah, but somehow shurikens are described as using ammo in less than a second (which is stupid because no matter how effective your weapon is once it's dry it's useless and you die to second guy who will shoot you once you start desperately try to reload it)...


Yes lol my maths was bad.

If they are spinning they would have to be spinning at a ridiculous revolution to have any impact on their stability once fired - hundreds of thousands per second.

What amuses me though is how lethally dangerous ricochets would be. With that much spin on them hitting a target and not sticking in would see them fly in all directions, almost as dangerous as the original shot to everyone else in the squad....




mrFickle wrote:
So what noise does it make? We’ve all heard bolters in games but I’ve never heard one of these


Dawn of war gave them a high pitched sound

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=snYTN5P1mZc

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/12/22 21:20:45


   
Made in gb
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 Hellebore wrote:
And the monomolecular edge should technically let it slide through any material it hits, assuming the force propelling it is able to overcome the density of the target.
Assuming that the whole shuriken(rather than just the edge) is monomolecular, and does not deform on contact.
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut





A.T. wrote:
 Hellebore wrote:
And the monomolecular edge should technically let it slide through any material it hits, assuming the force propelling it is able to overcome the density of the target.
Assuming that the whole shuriken(rather than just the edge) is monomolecular, and does not deform on contact.


Well we've got some notion that they retain their shape after impact, having been left stuck in armour.

With a monomolecular leading edge the only thing preventing it moving through an object is the force applied. As in, the sharpest of knives just resting on your finger won't cut it, it requires force to do it. But that leading edge allows the mass of the blade to affect the target even if the rest isn't sharp.

So a wedge being propelled fast enough will push through something if the edge is sharp enough. And given the shuriken must be flung at very high speeds to generate any kind of force for the impact, I would imagine the biggest issue would be the density of the target and how easily it could be deformed around the shuriken edge.

   
Made in pl
Longtime Dakkanaut





 Hellebore wrote:
They have been described as surviving impact and being left stuck in the target, so the material must be very strong to withstand all the forces applied to it. And the monomolecular edge should technically let it slide through any material it hits, assuming the force propelling it is able to overcome the density of the target.

They can be as strong as you want, they just have nearly zero kinetic energy and shouldn't be able to displace material they are trying to cut. Your knife is much more durable than a wooden cutting board but you will never cut it because it can't push wood to the sides, it's pushed back by the rest of the board. That's why saws need to literally push bits of the wood sideways out of cut line.

Now that I think about it, yup, shuriken working like round saw would be far better description than stupid GW one - its edge covered with thousands of teeth and rapidly spinning to eject cut bits of armour aside - too bad it doesn't work like this. It's both far more badass than what GW writer managed to come up with and actually makes some sense

What amuses me though is how lethally dangerous ricochets would be. With that much spin on them hitting a target and not sticking in would see them fly in all directions, almost as dangerous as the original shot to everyone else in the squad....

Yeah, becoming lethal shrapnel (which would be also a big problem during firing, slightest imperfection and the thing explodes in the barrel during acceleration) is another problem with the weapon, but that one can kinda-sorta be ignored with advanced materials or whatever. Though, this makes Eldar close combat squads arming themselves with shuriken pistols especially dumb. Harlequins choosing energy weapons instead proves they have a lot more common sense

Dawn of war gave them a high pitched sound

Yes, but it might be sound made but the gun, no?

 Olthannon wrote:
People love to pick this kind of stuff apart and say "pfft wouldn't work" but that means absolutely nothing.

No. Just no. It wouldn't work because it doesn't adhere to basic weapon functions. Picture a blunt knife. You can scream all you want it's made out of adamantium, wraithbone, or tyranid gakjunk, it's still useless because it's blunt. If fails basic knife function, no amount of "it's future" or "kNiFe LoGiC cHaNgEd" will handwave this away. It fails on so fundamental step it doesn't matter.

 Olthannon wrote:
And also more to the point, doesn't matter if you say "doesn't work" because it does in the game

Erm, no. There is a ton of stuff in game that was written by ignorant people who have no idea of what they are taking about (or didn't stop to think if their description makes any sense) that falls apart once you look at it. For example, that idiotic Forge World book stating Leman Russ armour is equivalent to 120 mm of mild steel (this is thinner than a lot of WW2 era tanks, and less than 10% of what thickest bit of modern tank has). Or that 1 million SM can keep whole galaxy in check. Or that only one regiment of stormtroopers exists and what we use in the game are single companies borrowed from it, a particularly idiotic notion.

I prefer (and find it more fun anyway) to ignore dumb bits and try to come up with ways to make them work, not cover my ears and just accept the most childish, immersion breaking bits that ruin the setting without thinking.
   
Made in gb
Leader of the Sept







The gun is gravitic based. Maybe it leaves a gravitational effect on the projectile after launching that adds the momentum needed to penetrate the target. Wraithbone is warp derived, so maybe it can be both monomolecular and also dense at the same time. Maybe all the projectiles have iff failsafes built in that turn the projectile to dust if it gets near a friendly.

Maybe its space magic from one of the more space magicy forces in the game and modern life shouldn't be applied quite so liberally.

A blunt knife with a space magical power field might be really slicey.

The tank armour thing is just dumb, though, as its poor research rather than poor futurising

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/12/23 00:43:14


Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!

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Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





I think I like the idea of the shurikens just kind of sand blasting the target to shreds; like a million tiny cuts from a buzzsaw.

That might actually kind of explain how they're represented and described pretty well and give a cool bit of fluff to boot. So if you're shooting at a squishy target like a kroot, you're firing enough projectiles with enough cutting power (spin) to create a wide wound and just enough penetrating power (forward propulsion) to have the projectiles sometimes sink into the soft flesh (causing our ogryn or kroot friends to have to dig them out.) You're pumping out so many ninja stars that you don't have to aim that well, and the dispersed injuries might cause enough trauma and instant fluid loss to be lethal even if you didn't saw a limb off or something.

But then against a harder target like a marine, the eldar have to keep their grouping tighter so that the "saw effect" is more concentrated in a smaller area, literally trying to saw the armor apart. So from a dire avenger's point of view, "slowly" pulling your shuriken weapon's sights across a marine's leg is almost like a long-ranged sword swing or continuous laser burst. You have to keep grouping your shots against that same spot until the armor is cut away and the leg is more shuriken than blood vessel.

That would almost make the tendency of the shuriken to bounce off of hard plat a feature rather than a bug. A dozen shurikens embedded in a pauldron would basically just start getting in the way of future shurikens. By bouncing away (and maybe ricocheting into a second target), you're basically avoiding cluttering up the target area until the armor is damaged enough for the shurikens to hit soft flesh.

That does make firing a shuriken pistol in melee sound absolutely terrifying to your own squad though, and I feel like the ground near your target should quickly become dangerous terrain as the floor becomes littered with hundreds of thousands of little knives. XD


ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
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Springfield, VA

A piece of straw can penetrate a wooden telephone pole if propelled at enough speed. (Happened irl in mythbusters - a piece of straw propelled from an airgun penetrated about a quarter of an inch into wood)

So I have no doubt a shuriken given enough speed could penetrate armor. The speed required would be ludicrous, but this is 40K...

They could be travelling at relativistic speeds for all we know. Animations of them certainly show shurikens leaving a trail of ionized air with a blue tint characteristic of Cherenkov radiation - i.e. they could actually be travelling faster than the speed of light in the medium of the atmosphere.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/12/23 04:44:44


 
   
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Krieg! What a hole...

 Irbis wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
People love to pick this kind of stuff apart and say "pfft wouldn't work" but that means absolutely nothing.

No. Just no. It wouldn't work because it doesn't adhere to basic weapon functions. Picture a blunt knife. You can scream all you want it's made out of adamantium, wraithbone, or tyranid gakjunk, it's still useless because it's blunt. If fails basic knife function, no amount of "it's future" or "kNiFe LoGiC cHaNgEd" will handwave this away. It fails on so fundamental step it doesn't matter.

 Olthannon wrote:
And also more to the point, doesn't matter if you say "doesn't work" because it does in the game

Erm, no. There is a ton of stuff in game that was written by ignorant people who have no idea of what they are taking about (or didn't stop to think if their description makes any sense) that falls apart once you look at it. For example, that idiotic Forge World book stating Leman Russ armour is equivalent to 120 mm of mild steel (this is thinner than a lot of WW2 era tanks, and less than 10% of what thickest bit of modern tank has). Or that 1 million SM can keep whole galaxy in check. Or that only one regiment of stormtroopers exists and what we use in the game are single companies borrowed from it, a particularly idiotic notion.

I prefer (and find it more fun anyway) to ignore dumb bits and try to come up with ways to make them work, not cover my ears and just accept the most childish, immersion breaking bits that ruin the setting without thinking.


Hm, well said. I'll have to remember to come back to this post at some point to refer to it as my go-to answer when people try and justify anything because deaMonS aNd pSykeRs and 40k!

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Savageconvoy wrote:
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I think the damaging effect of the Shuriken would definitely be a sand blasting effect. You're doing damage over time, death by a million cuts, style.

In theory, this would be quite effective against unarmored targets. A bunch of individually shallow, but progressively deeper, wounds would be very nasty. It would bleed, a lot, and be very very painful. But it would be less effective against armor, but still usable of course. Which I think lines up with their stats in game. They are relatively short ranged weapons, which makes sense for how the propulsion works and how the disks would destabilize over time.

Really, the only part that is kinda implausible is that the Eldar haven't come up with something a little better with their technology in terms of "basic infantry weapon". Seems like gravity propelled projectiles would be better applied with large projectiles. IE: Normal sized bullets, but using gravity instead of gunpowder, as opposed to short ranged disks.

Shuriken weaponry would be fine as a short ranged area of effect weapon, but basic infantry should have slightly longer ranges.

mrFickle wrote:
So what noise does it make? We’ve all heard bolters in games but I’ve never heard one of these


A single projectile would probably be nearly inaudible. Multiple projectiles might make a soft-buzzing sound. In large numbers it could be quite unsettling.


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Liche Priest Hierophant





Bergen

Think high speed impact motorsycelist VS steel wire.

Just instead of one big wire cut it up photoshop and copy paste it all over.

   
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 Irbis wrote:
Spoiler:
 Hellebore wrote:
They have been described as surviving impact and being left stuck in the target, so the material must be very strong to withstand all the forces applied to it. And the monomolecular edge should technically let it slide through any material it hits, assuming the force propelling it is able to overcome the density of the target.

They can be as strong as you want, they just have nearly zero kinetic energy and shouldn't be able to displace material they are trying to cut. Your knife is much more durable than a wooden cutting board but you will never cut it because it can't push wood to the sides, it's pushed back by the rest of the board. That's why saws need to literally push bits of the wood sideways out of cut line.

Now that I think about it, yup, shuriken working like round saw would be far better description than stupid GW one - its edge covered with thousands of teeth and rapidly spinning to eject cut bits of armour aside - too bad it doesn't work like this. It's both far more badass than what GW writer managed to come up with and actually makes some sense

What amuses me though is how lethally dangerous ricochets would be. With that much spin on them hitting a target and not sticking in would see them fly in all directions, almost as dangerous as the original shot to everyone else in the squad....

Yeah, becoming lethal shrapnel (which would be also a big problem during firing, slightest imperfection and the thing explodes in the barrel during acceleration) is another problem with the weapon, but that one can kinda-sorta be ignored with advanced materials or whatever. Though, this makes Eldar close combat squads arming themselves with shuriken pistols especially dumb. Harlequins choosing energy weapons instead proves they have a lot more common sense

Dawn of war gave them a high pitched sound

Yes, but it might be sound made but the gun, no?

 Olthannon wrote:
People love to pick this kind of stuff apart and say "pfft wouldn't work" but that means absolutely nothing.

No. Just no. It wouldn't work because it doesn't adhere to basic weapon functions. Picture a blunt knife. You can scream all you want it's made out of adamantium, wraithbone, or tyranid gakjunk, it's still useless because it's blunt. If fails basic knife function, no amount of "it's future" or "kNiFe LoGiC cHaNgEd" will handwave this away. It fails on so fundamental step it doesn't matter.

 Olthannon wrote:
And also more to the point, doesn't matter if you say "doesn't work" because it does in the game

Erm, no. There is a ton of stuff in game that was written by ignorant people who have no idea of what they are taking about (or didn't stop to think if their description makes any sense) that falls apart once you look at it. For example, that idiotic Forge World book stating Leman Russ armour is equivalent to 120 mm of mild steel (this is thinner than a lot of WW2 era tanks, and less than 10% of what thickest bit of modern tank has). Or that 1 million SM can keep whole galaxy in check. Or that only one regiment of stormtroopers exists and what we use in the game are single companies borrowed from it, a particularly idiotic notion.

I prefer (and find it more fun anyway) to ignore dumb bits and try to come up with ways to make them work, not cover my ears and just accept the most childish, immersion breaking bits that ruin the setting without thinking.

"Sooo dumb it can't possibly work!!"

A fleck of paint caused significant damage to the Space Shuttle because it was travelling at orbital speeds. At high enough velocities it doesn't much matter what material you're getting hit with.

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 Irbis wrote:


 Olthannon wrote:
People love to pick this kind of stuff apart and say "pfft wouldn't work" but that means absolutely nothing.

No. Just no. It wouldn't work because it doesn't adhere to basic weapon functions. Picture a blunt knife. You can scream all you want it's made out of adamantium, wraithbone, or tyranid gakjunk, it's still useless because it's blunt. If fails basic knife function, no amount of "it's future" or "kNiFe LoGiC cHaNgEd" will handwave this away. It fails on so fundamental step it doesn't matter.

 Olthannon wrote:
And also more to the point, doesn't matter if you say "doesn't work" because it does in the game

Erm, no. There is a ton of stuff in game that was written by ignorant people who have no idea of what they are taking about (or didn't stop to think if their description makes any sense) that falls apart once you look at it. For example, that idiotic Forge World book stating Leman Russ armour is equivalent to 120 mm of mild steel (this is thinner than a lot of WW2 era tanks, and less than 10% of what thickest bit of modern tank has). Or that 1 million SM can keep whole galaxy in check. Or that only one regiment of stormtroopers exists and what we use in the game are single companies borrowed from it, a particularly idiotic notion.

I prefer (and find it more fun anyway) to ignore dumb bits and try to come up with ways to make them work, not cover my ears and just accept the most childish, immersion breaking bits that ruin the setting without thinking.


Jesus wept, well I can't argue with immersion breaking problems in a game like 40k. Who has the time to deal with that

And hey, great for you that you enjoy picking everything apart.

I will pick out a few things. Namely, it isn't childish ignorance, it's purposeful. As I wrote in my post, 40k is not grounded in reality. It's an artistic choice to make the weapons and armour to look and function the way they do. Regardless of how much you don't like that. Reality is barely a concept in 40k. Of course these things don't work as you expect them to. Why on earth would they? And why should they? That's really the whole point I'm getting at here, there is no reason for it to make sense to you.

That's a design choice to make alien weaponry more alien. It doesn't follow physics or it doesn't follow how we currently percieve something. "Alien" as a concept in science fiction is portrayed to seem different and other and unusual and weird. That's why it's useless to pick apart.




One and a half feet in the hobby


My Painting Log of various minis:
# Olthannon's Oscillating Orchard of Opportunity #

 
   
Made in pl
Wicked Warp Spider





 Irbis wrote:
Shurikens are a pretty dumb weapon that never made any sense to me. They could, in theory, work against flesh or elastic armour (so ironically, be really good vs Eldar) but the thing should shatter or harmlessly bounce off any armour plate, because they wouldn't be able to push bits of plate aside. If 40K was realistic, SM and Stormtroopers should be able to reroll failed saves vs shurikens. Twice

Then there is the fact that if your gun can make such high gravity fields, you're probably better off using said field against enemy directly, not use it firing such useless ammunition. That thing must generate thousands of Gs, why would Eldar use dumb chainswords instead of grav swords (let's be generous and assume the grav field has short range) I have no idea. Also, how such a high strenght field doesn't tear off barrel or rip the weapon straight off the hands of user?

mrFickle wrote:
I think the most important question is what noise do they make. Chk chk Ffffffffffffwaaaaaaannggggggggggg

None because noise = lost energy and they would be utterly useless if they managed to lose much of it after being fired.

 Hellebore wrote:
It probably wouldn't spin, spin stability is only useful in 3 dimensions (bullets corkscrew), spinning in 1 dimension wouldn't make it very stable.

...

The banana stick ammunition looks to be ~1 foot long (300mm). Slicing thin pieces off the stick as it fires, assuming a disc thickness of 0.1mm, that's 10 discs per cm, or 300 per stick.

If you go with truly monomolecular discs, then there would be 100s of thousands of ammo discs in a single stick.

Actually conservation of angular momentum would make them greatly resilient to stability loss. See here for a cool demonstration:




Also, 10? You mean 100 per cm, so 3000 per stick? As for monomolecular ones, yeah, but somehow shurikens are described as using ammo in less than a second (which is stupid because no matter how effective your weapon is once it's dry it's useless and you die to second guy who will shoot you once you start desperately try to reload it)...


Here is a video of a real life hand railgun in action. Bear in mind, that this one shoots at relatively low velocity, amunition is thick and it doesn’t spin.




Now a bit of math. A 7.62 cal bullet weights about 25 grams. If you were to make an equivalent shuriken from, say, osmium (just to stay within real parameters for now) you would need a bit more than a cubic centimeter. For a 5cm diameter shuriken this leaves you with about 0,5mm thickness to achieve equal mass so equal energy at equal speeds. For all we know, wraithbone can be denser than that, because Eldar do not seem to mind about weight of their gear too much with all those antigravity pods everywhere. However, with non-chemical propelling there is no mass overhead you have to carry around and no barrel heating problems, so you can have gatling gun RoF without the fuss of multiple barrels, just as you can see in the video above. And you are not bound by amount of powder to achieve higher velocities - real life naval railgun shoots at Mach 7. Now about the gravity - if there are antigrav pods in larger Eldar guns to make them lighter, then they clearly could insulate any internal gravity pulses for a net zero change on the outside of a gun.

No, despite your wall of text, shuriken catapult is no less plausible than any other element of 40k.
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran




Wraithbone is also literally made of magic. It could be super light prior to being put in the gun then ‘activated’ to become super dense as it is fired.

Then, as people have said, mass is generally less important if something is moving fast enough (KE scales linearly with mass but with the square of velocity)
   
Made in no
Liche Priest Hierophant





Bergen

If it is sharp and durable enough does it really need to have mass? Eldar have a lot of one molecule thick things. (I think. I am unsure if I am mixing fictional universes.) If it cuts it cuts. Wires and arteries do not like to be cut.

   
Made in gb
Incorporating Wet-Blending




U.k

They make as much sense as fighting with Chainswords. But are cool.
   
Made in no
Liche Priest Hierophant





Bergen

Have you tested that claim? Is fighting with chainsword less ideal with using just swords? At some point you come across something that is big, to big for the sword.

I think chainsaw (closest practical equivilant) is probably better VS a moose then a sword?

   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






Springfield, VA

 Niiai wrote:
Have you tested that claim? Is fighting with chainsword less ideal with using just swords? At some point you come across something that is big, to big for the sword.

I think chainsaw (closest practical equivilant) is probably better VS a moose then a sword?


It's better until the moose has metal armor on

then the chainsword is more hazardous to the user than the moose

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/23 17:14:54


 
   
 
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