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Nabterayl
04-08-2010, 12:23 PM
And for that, I think you seriously underestimate the power of the lasgun or the durability of flak armor. Flak armor is actually quite advanced, providing quit a bit of protection and then even MORE against blasts and shrapnel-- it's especially designed to protect against small arms,shrapnel, proximity blasts, etc. Just because armor is heavy enough to require an exoskeleton does not make it superior-- it just makes it heavy. The lasgun is a very deadly weapon, which never jams, has self-replenishing ammunition, and can kill any normal human in a single shot with ease, or any other common member of any race in 40k (even Marines, Necrons, and Orks can be taken down with a single shot, despite their superior anatomies)
Right, which makes it ... as powerful as an assault rifle, but more reliable. I don't think I've ever seen lasguns depicted as anything other than that.


Flak Armor, which is wildly superior to anything modern society can even concieve of putting on standard infantry just looks rather pathetic in the tabletop game.
Wait wait wait, source that for me. In what sense is flak armor wildly superior to anything modern society can even conceive of putting on standard infantry?


Bolters are equivalent, if not actually superior, to modern anti-tank weaponry, and carapace armor is able to block it-- that is, carapace armor is able to block what we today would consider anti-tank weaponry.
I'm going to have to disagree with you on bolters being the equivalent to modern anti-tank weaponry. Are you talking about man-portable ATGMs?


Autocannons are better than any modern tank's main cannon
Source?


Furthermore I would also argue that the comparison to Sisters is still incorrect. The lowest, most inexperienced and unskilled Sisters are equivalent, using your own comparison, to the best of the best of the Terran Marines.
I'm perfectly willing to move the conversation out of Sororitas territory, since that gets into weirdness that has no StarCraft equivalent.

The technological scale of 40K is anchored, for me, by a couple of things. One is the lasgun-autogun equivalency. Autoguns are consistently depicted with capabilities and mechanisms equivalent to (and in some cases, inferior to) modern assault rifles, and lasguns are consistently depicted as having equivalent lethality. There's obviously some wiggle room in there, since "modern assault rifles" describes a range of lethalities, but I haven't read anything to suggest that a lasgun is materially more lethal than what we use today. That is, of course, quite lethal indeed, but the fact that a lasgun can stop a rampaging space marine or ork with a single shot says more to me about the realities of wounding mechanisms than it does about the over-the-top firepower of a las bolt.

Another anchor for me is the Earthshaker cannon, which we know is a 132mm weapon with an effective range of 15 kilometers. That is, as you know (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M109_Paladin), not impressive at all. And yet this is a front-line weapon for the Imperial Guard. While it's true that we don't have any hard data (that I know of) about the explosive yield of an Earthshaker's shell, the specifications we do have are distinctly substandard by comparison to equivalent first-world hardware.

Back to StarCraft ...

The point that I'm making is that the destructive scale of StarCraft is not, as I understand the fluff, very different from the destructive scale of 40K. Yes, it takes an upgraded marine six bursts to put down an upgraded zergling, but we should take that with the same grain of salt we take the fact that a space marine needs 2.25 bursts to put down a naked human being. Fluff-wise, StarCraft has its own autogun equivalents, which are definitely depicted as being seriously inferior in firepower to a marine's coil rifle, and which are definitely depicted as being essentially impotent against marine power armor. That is, I submit, the essential relationship of the autogun (and thus the lasgun) to 40K power armor as well.

Melissia
04-08-2010, 12:58 PM
On the flak armor...

The source on flak armor is Dark Heresy-- it's comprised of layers of ablative and impact-absorbent material, designed to provie good protection against small arms and very good protection against shrapnel and blasts. And before you ask, I do believe Dark Heresy is, roughly speaking, Canon-- it's endorsed by Games Workshop and indeed Games Workshop's own writers contributed to it and its supplements (most notable Andy Hoare). The Improved Outer Tactical Vest used by the US Army (one of the most-- if not the most-- technologically advanced modern armies, despite how much people might want to bash it) weighs 35 pounds (just the vest, protecting only the front chest and abdomen), while a full set of Guard Flak Armor-- protecting all areas of the body, including the back, arms, legs, head, shoulders, etc-- weighs roughly 24 pounds.

So, even if you're going to argue that the Flak Armor provides equivalent protection (which I don't agree with, but we really don't have ballistics for the Flak Armor in order to argue either way), it provides full body protection while weighing less than just the front chest and abdomen protection the body armor the US Military provides. I'd say that very clearly makes it superior.

Nabterayl
04-08-2010, 01:11 PM
That's a fair point; I'll certainly concede that it's incredibly light for what it does.

Melissia
04-08-2010, 01:13 PM
If tabletop wanted to be true to the fluff, Guard would get a 5+ save against normal attacks, and a 4+ save against blast templates (but not flamer templates), as Guard Flak Armor is equivalent to light carapace armor when it comes to protection against blasts and shrapnel. But I think this wouldn't ever be put in place simply because of balance and complexity issues.

Paul
04-08-2010, 01:18 PM
I've argued this with my friends; you just opened a can of worms.

The inferior 132mm shell with a range of only 15 kilometers is slightly less powerful than. . .

the plasma annihilator on a Titan, save for blast radius: both ignore infantry armor, one is Str 10, the other is Str. 9.

How can it be that a gun, inferior to modern arms, can fire a shell with such intense explosive yields as to be able to mimic the force and heat of a plasma (i.e. star-material, in my interpretation) blast from the largest war machine known to mankind?

40k is deeply flawed. My favorite part is where the rear armor on a leman russ is equivalent to a log cabin. It's in the buildings section: log cabins are Armor 10.

My ancient, 1939-manufacture Tokarev TT-33 can knock out a Leman Russ in the butt. 40,000 years later. So can a boltgun:

Therefore, in terms of pure strength, my TT-33 7.62 x 25mm pistol is as strong as the main weapon issued to Space Marines firing mass-reactive explosive .75 cal. rounds.

40k is deeply flawed.

Melissia
04-08-2010, 01:20 PM
I don't take the building section in TT 40k seriously. Neither should you :P

Paul
04-08-2010, 01:21 PM
I don't take the building section in TT 40k seriously. Neither should you :P

I think they're useful for armour comparisons.

Melissia
04-08-2010, 01:27 PM
I don't.... keep in mind that the other comparisons that have been made. The lasgun and autogun are roughly equivalent, and the autogun, as poitned out by Nab in the above posts, is stated to be roughly equivalent or at least comparable (superior in some areas, inferior in others) to modern assault rifles.* These weapons cannot even hope to penetrate the rear armor of a Leman Russ. The building section, I think, is just poorly thought through.


*In Dark Heresy terms, the standard, generic autogun has the same damage, same semi-auto rate of fire as the lasgun. The Lasgun has more 30 shots per laspack (the autogun appears to have a fifteen round doublestacked magazine), and is longer ranged, while the autogun is 0.5 kg lighter and has a fully automatic mode the lasgun doesn't.

Rafe_131
04-08-2010, 01:35 PM
I'd say an autocannon is more in line with a modern round ranging anywhere from the .50 cal up to a 20mm chain gun. Those rounds, like the autocannon of 40k, is not designed to defeat the heavy armor found on Main Battle Tanks, but light to medium armor more akin to "thin skin" transports and APCs.

So, no. I'd say an autocannon is not better than a modern 120mm main gun found on many of todays tanks in any way other than cyclic rate and ease of transport.

Just my opinion

Paul
04-08-2010, 01:42 PM
I don't.... keep in mind that the other comparisons that have been made. The lasgun and autogun are roughly equivalent, and the autogun, as poitned out by Nab in the above posts, is stated to be roughly equivalent or at least comparable (superior in some areas, inferior in others) to modern assault rifles.* These weapons cannot even hope to penetrate the rear armor of a Leman Russ. The building section, I think, is just poorly thought through.


*In Dark Heresy terms, the standard, generic autogun has the same damage, same semi-auto rate of fire as the lasgun. The Lasgun has more 30 shots per laspack (the autogun appears to have a fifteen round doublestacked magazine), and is longer ranged, while the autogun is 0.5 kg lighter and has a fully automatic mode the lasgun doesn't.

Poorly thought out or otherwise, the Building section in 40K is canon as far as I am concerned. A boltgun can glance a Log Cabin. A lasgun, cannot.

So, if a Lasgun is indeed comparable to a high-powered assault rifle, then...


40K has some DAMN strong logs.

Melissia
04-08-2010, 01:45 PM
I'd say an autocannon is more in line with a modern round ranging anywhere from the .50 cal up to a 20mm chain gun. Those rounds, like the autocannon of 40k, is not designed to defeat the heavy armor found on Main Battle Tanks, but light to medium armor more akin to "thin skin" transports and APCs.
But then I would argue that the armor on Imperial vehicles is better than the armor on modern vehicles to begin with, therefor the light anti-tank would still have to be better than the main cannons of a modern tank.

Paul
04-08-2010, 01:53 PM
But then I would argue that the armor on Imperial vehicles is better than the armor on modern vehicles to begin with, therefor the light anti-tank would still have to be better than the main cannons of a modern tank.

This.

It is internally consistent. The frontal adamantium plating on a Chimera (if the building rules are ignored, which I still disagree on, but I digress) is pretty damn thick. To knock it out, the Autocannon would have to penetrate much more dense plating than a modern 20mm or 14.5mm antimaterial round would to knock out, say, a Stryker.

Melissa's logic follows.

Nabterayl
04-08-2010, 02:21 PM
But then I would argue that the armor on Imperial vehicles is better than the armor on modern vehicles to begin with, therefor the light anti-tank would still have to be better than the main cannons of a modern tank.
I definitely don't agree with that. IA2 states unequivocally with regard to a Land Raider that "The front armour is 98mm thick, but provides protection equivalent to approximately 300mm of conventional steel." That is not at all impressive compared to what we see today (http://www.members.tripod.com/collinsj/protect.htm).

And that's Land Raider armor, which "represents the very peak of the Adeptus Mechanicus knowledge," the same armor technology that is "utilised on other vehicles, such as the main armour plating on Titans" (also IA2). It follows that the RHA equivalent of a Chimera is some unknown amount less than 300mm. A 25mm APFSDS round can penetrate something like 60mm RHA, and I'm not sure whether it's fair to say that a Chimera's best protection is five times worse than a Land Raider's, so it is possible that an autocannon can do better than a Bushmaster. But with an upper limit of 300mm, there's no way that an autocannon exceeds the anti-armor abilities of modern anti-armor weaponry. Comes to that, not even Tau rail guns compare favorably to modern anti-armor weaponry.

40K, I think, belongs to the sub-genre of science fiction wherein researchers expend enormous ingenuity to do the same damn thing in more complicated ways, at the expense of actually advancing the frontiers of what is possible. For instance, I'm sure it is extraordinarily difficult to build a plasma cannon, but all that effort has gone into building a weapon that can't defeat 300mm RHA equivalent armor, and has less destructive power than a shoulder-fired missile.

It's a lot like BattleTech, really, a universe where printed circuits are a virtually lost technology, where a gun that can fire 750 meters is considered long-ranged, and yet mankind can travel between the stars. Similarly, 40K is a universe with starships that are kilometers long and fly through hell, with practical laser and plasma weaponry compact enough to be wielded by unaugmented infantry, but with anti-tank weaponry that is routinely defeated by 300mm RHA equivalent.

Rafe_131
04-08-2010, 02:30 PM
If an autocannon round, which I would say could be carried easily in a pants pocket, is the equal of a modern, 37 pound 120mm cannon round, then a battle cannon on a Russ should be able to destroy continents in one fell swoop...or boom rather....

Denzark
04-08-2010, 04:13 PM
I see the autogun as a modern assault rifle. (I get this starting point from 40K Rogue Trader 1st Ed - not the RPG) A Heavy Stubber is broadly a HMG - think Russian DSHK (sp?) or Browning M2 - both .50 cal. A Leman Russ Vanquisher round is broadly a APFDS - Sabot - so you have a 2/3 chance of at least a glance, 50% chance of a hit penetrating the best armour in 40K. Yes the Guard tank gunner has only a 50% chance to hit but modern optics would presumably be better due to the chances of tankies getting a first hit K-Kill on a tank, compared to IG.

I would give autocannon as 20-30mm cannon similar to Bradley/Warrior AFV gun. HK missiles would be TOW/SAGGER or whatever missile an AFV would have.

Bolters are harder to qualify, but .50 cal is roughly 12.5 mm. So .75 cal bolt shells = 18.75mm roughly? Because of their automatic capacity and explosive effect I would call them what the brits refer to as Grenade Machine Gun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_GMG I know this is 40mm but closest thing in modern times I know of no short barrelled 20mm automatic weapon.

Flak armour is probably broadly equivalent of todays body armour such as Osprey worn by Brits - proven to turn direct hits to the plate from 7.62mm. I don't think carpace or powered armour can be equated to anything. Some modern real life body armour displaces force like Eldar mesh.

Melissia
04-08-2010, 04:17 PM
Broadly equivalent, except cheaper, lighter, and covers more of the body.

As I said, 24 pounds for complete and total body armor-- boots, shins, chest, abdomen, arms, shoulders, helmet, etc, both front and back, compared to 35 pounds for just front chest and abdomen armor.

Keep in mind there's more to armor than just "does it protect good", just like there's more to weapons than just "does it kill well". Weight is an important factor, as is usability and expense. Many of the best modern armors are quite expensive, and yet I don't think they're that much better than Flak if at all.

Nabterayl
04-08-2010, 04:46 PM
The effectiveness of flak armor is something that's difficult to quantify, because it runs you up into individual DMly narrative styles (I'm not a D&D player, but I'm used to calling them DMs in all systems, even my own). In Dark Heresy, an autogun round on average over time will deal 8.5 damage, which means a person wearing Guard-issue flak will take 4.5 points of damage per shot, on average over time. What that means, though, is a philosophical question for the DM. Did the flak armor stop the shot if it still dealt 4.5 damage? Is 4.5 points of damage equivalent to the injury one can sustain from armor that does stop a rifle bullet? Some DMs would say yes, others would say no.

Melissia
04-08-2010, 04:51 PM
I would say it amounts to a combination of the injury you suffer when it does stop the bulet, and a sort of using up a bit of luck-- when you get critically injured or die in DH, you've run out of luck and got that one last wound that will cause you to be unable to continue fighting properly.

Mind you, this is because that is the justification DnD uses and, well, I like many people started off roleplaying in DnD

Gooball
04-08-2010, 07:40 PM
They are genetically modified SUPER logs of course!
yeah but in all honesty 40k has more loopholes than a spork (makes no sense i know but i vowed i'd say spork today)
it is kinda ridiculous to compare the real world to 40k (A universe were certain areas of it don't even obey physics and all that stuff)

Duke
04-08-2010, 11:30 PM
What we have to remember is that the land raider is still no much more than a kitted out tractor. So I think it is interesting that our modern stuf would be roughly equivelent.

The_Ancient
04-09-2010, 04:43 AM
bear in mind also technology has been lost and regained over time and nobody understands how most of it works (which is a whole other topic that concerns me) so discrepancies in the power tech-level and effectiveness could be due to crappy STC plans pre stc schematics and all sorts

DarkLink
04-09-2010, 01:36 PM
Poorly thought out or otherwise, the Building section in 40K is canon as far as I am concerned. A boltgun can glance a Log Cabin. A lasgun, cannot.

So, if a Lasgun is indeed comparable to a high-powered assault rifle, then...


40K has some DAMN strong logs.

Try shooting a log and seeing if you can put a bullet through it.

A 1-2 foot thick wall of wood will stop any modern small arms fire. I would be amazed if a Bolter or Lasgun had the firepower to punch/burn through a log cabin wall in one shot, so long as we're not talking about 2x4's. Which have their own funny effects on ballistics, actually, but we're not talking about bullets here.

In fact, lasguns shouldn't have any penetrative power whatsoever. A laser deposits all of its energy on the point of impact. The only way to hurt anything under the surface is to burn/melt its way through the armor. Once it hits flesh, it causes some pretty ugly wounds. But it would practically just bounce off ceramic armor, since the ceramic would just absorb all the energy with little to no ill effect.

Melissia
04-09-2010, 02:08 PM
Supposedly it actually causes a small explosion on impact, from the flash heating. Depends on the material.

Paul
04-09-2010, 04:26 PM
Try shooting a log and seeing if you can put a bullet through it.

A 1-2 foot thick wall of wood will stop any modern small arms fire. I would be amazed if a Bolter or Lasgun had the firepower to punch/burn through a log cabin wall in one shot, so long as we're not talking about 2x4's. Which have their own funny effects on ballistics, actually, but we're not talking about bullets here.

In fact, lasguns shouldn't have any penetrative power whatsoever. A laser deposits all of its energy on the point of impact. The only way to hurt anything under the surface is to burn/melt its way through the armor. Once it hits flesh, it causes some pretty ugly wounds. But it would practically just bounce off ceramic armor, since the ceramic would just absorb all the energy with little to no ill effect.


I have personal experience to refute this. My TT-33 pistol (again) as well as my Mosin-Nagant firing 7.62 x 54mm steel jacketed rounds have both gone through piles of wood intended to stop bullets at a friend's ranch that were 1-2 feet thick.

DarkLink
04-09-2010, 05:16 PM
Hmm, 7.62x54mm steel jackets has pretty impressive penetration, but were those solid logs you were shooting through?

To counter your anecdotal evidence, I present my own: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC8jnSaCqxY

Because mythbusters are awesome.

On a side note, they use a very similar, albeit slightly weaker, 7.62x51mm NATO in the video.

RogueGarou
04-09-2010, 11:48 PM
Mythbusters is a fun watch sometimes but it does have its share of errors and inconsistencies. As well as some real no brainers, like the shooting into water. If you have not seen the episode, they decide that you are safe from being shot at by being under a couple of feet of water. They proved this by firing high velocity rounds into a swimming pool. AFTER showing that low velocity rounds fired from a pistol and a shotgun were lethal at much greater distances. They switched to using a swimming pool after a shotgun slug went the length of their test tank, penetrated their ballistic gelatin, bounced off of the bottom of the tank, completely penetrated the ballistic gelatin again on the ricochet and expended the remainder of the slugs kinetic energy before coming to rest atop the ballistic gelatin. The hydrostatic shock of the slug imparting some of its kinetic energy on the water damaged their test tank beyond repair so they then switched to high velocity rifle rounds and a swimming pool. I know a .50 BMG round was tested and as I recall so was .223 Remington and a black powder round, don't recall if it was a musket or a Minie (sp?) round. The properties of water, impacts at high speed on water, hydrodynamic properties, and the design of some rounds mean they would fragment spectacularly when fired into water. Anyway, just a little anecdote to toss out there.

The term and class for autocannon is somewhat flexible and all-encompassing in the 40k fluff. In the Gaunt's Ghosts novels anything from .30 caliber (approx. 7.62mm) to .50 caliber (approx 12.7mm) and up have been referred to as autocannon. Basic physics dictate the penetrative and destructive capabilities of this class of weapon. They are a projectile propelled by a chemical reaction. Typically, the longer the barrel of the weapon, the more energy is imparted on the projectile from the rapid combustion of the propellant. Design of the projectile, weapon, and propellant will increase or decrease the performance of the weapon.

At times in the game and fluff there are distinctions between stub pistols, autopistols, autoguns, heavy stubbers, and autocannon based on the caliber of the chambered round and firing and loading mechanism involved. I do not recall ever seeing a definitive chart listing what would classify each weapon or projectile into a certain grade of weapon. Seeing as how the game is more about fun and abstracts, it would probably be tough to come up with a definitive scale.

The boltgun fires essentially a self contained gyrojet propelled shotshell. The standard round being an explosive charge with a "mass-reactive" detonator. The design is to only detonate after impact with a sufficiently dense material has been encountered. This has been shown in the fiction to be anywhere from human body tissues or perhaps clothing and denser. Against unprotected tissues the idea is the round will penetrate and then explode within the body a fraction of a second after impact, creating quite devastating and debilitating wounds. Its effect against armor would be more dependent upon this explosive force than its kinetic energy as the bore of the bolt round is said to be .75 caliber, rather large, and not to be a discarded sabot design or even an impact discarding round such as the Gecko safety rounds marketed some years ago.

Laser weaponry has also had revisions to its effectiveness and power consumption and performance depending on the fluff material and the time of the writing. Also in the Gaunt's Ghosts series of novels, lasguns are shown to have multiple power settings and some have selective rate of fire, including a fully automatic mode. Sniper and hotshot energy cells have had various descriptions over time, as well. The lasers depicted are typical science fiction lasers which discharge an extremely high amount of energy in an extremely short length of time. This energy discharge is then distributed into the target where it will superheat the target area to varying effects. If the target area resists the intense energy transfer, it may exhibit burning, melting or other heat related marring. At our current level of technology laser, or directed energy weapons, lack the capability to discharge the extremely high levels of energy in the short timespan as depicted in more science fiction. Sometime in the future this may no longer be the case.

Railgun technology, similar to Tau designs, is currently in testing and shows a good deal of promise. These are typified by the US Navy railgun testbeds and what may become a type-standard naval bombardment weapon mounted on future classes of warship. The round is fired at a hyper-velocity, one of the test sources I read indicated testing with a projectile reaching Mach 17. These class of weapons are a pure kinetic kill weapon. Rail gun technology is similar to but different than magnetic coil gun proposals.

All of the above weapons are available today in some fashion either in real world development and testing or as a forgotten idea passed over due to the constraints of the manufacturing processes and design limitations of the time. Other technologies which have been passed over like the gyrojet include the Tround (a triangular cartridge) and nearly all caseless ammunitions. One currently developed weapon technology that does not have a corollary in the 40k universe is the Metal Storm weapon system. A very cool weapon platform which primes and fires the rounds by electrical impulse. The theoretical rate of fire for some Metal Storm applications is 1 million rounds per minute.

Plasma weapons technology lies somewhere beyond the current design capabilities of present-day technology. As described in the 40k fluff, a magnetic field contains the plasma charge and the field is maintained through unknown means until the plasma charge reaches its destination or the limit of the fields generation at which point the plasma is released to devastating effect. Some theoretical ideas for a type of plasma weapon include using a laser or other directed energy beam to establish a pathway for a particle or pellet of an unstable material to follow. Upon establishing the pathway, the material is deposited into the energy stream and moved at high velocity towards the target area. Along the way the energy beam will act to destabilize the material further until it reaches a highly charged plasmic state or possibly undergoes a nuclear reaction, ideally at about the time that it reaches the target to maximize destructive potential.

Anyway, take all of the above with whatever grain of salt you feel appropriate. Remember, your mileage may vary. In short, the small arms and crew served weapons in the 40k universe very well maybe superior to current weapons. They may also not be that much superior due to game balance and generalization.

One last anecdote. The humble .22 long rifle cartridge is very common in my part of the United States. It is used for target shooting, plinking, small game, varmint and pest elimination, et cetera. It can NOT penetrate a thick wooden structure. For example, a telephone pole or a typical motorcycle helmet. However, what one round can not accomplish, many can do quite well. There was a twin barreled .22 caliber rifle manufactured in the mid-1980's, and a conversion kit as well, firing from two 50 or 100 round magazines. Their rate of fire pretty much turned the little .22 into a buzzsaw which was capable of cutting through a telephone pole or a motorcycle helmet.

DarkLink
04-10-2010, 10:12 PM
Wood can have some funny ballistic effects. For example, most pistol rounds will punch through thin wood/barriers like plywood or drywall. However, a 5.56mm assault rifle round may not. Yet a 5.56mm will punch through much more body armor than a pistol round.

Basically, the pistol round has lots of mass and little velocity. It just breaks through the wood. On the other hand, the 5.56 has roughly 3 times the velocity, and significantly less mass. When it hits the wood, it easily punches through but immediately fragments. If someone were leaning against the wall they'd be in trouble, but otherwise the 5.56 is stopped. Note that this may not be true for every type of loading in the 5.56x45mm.

Also, a bullet will penetrate separated pieces of wood much easier than a single solid block, generally. That's probably why some bullets could punch through a foot of wood, but then a tree trunk a foot thick could stop a bullet.


And, for you conspiracy theorists out there, bullets do not necessarily travel straight after they impact an object. A bullet can enter a person and come out in a different direction than it entered. Just so you know.

Paul
04-10-2010, 10:27 PM
And, for you conspiracy theorists out there, bullets do not necessarily travel straight after they impact an object. A bullet can enter a person and come out in a different direction than it entered. Just so you know.

Very true. When I was in the army, we were taught that the suppressive effect of automatic fire is increased through walls, while it's actual effectiveness decreases, because the spread is higher and the bullets are tumbling but there is almost no way to guarantee the bullet is not going to travel straight into the ground or ceiling.

DarkLink
04-11-2010, 12:58 PM
Yeah, you can look up ballistic gel tests and the first thing you'll notice is that bullets rarely go straight through them. They often skew off at weird angles. And then there's this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ABGIJwiGBc



Of course, Bolters and Lasguns don't need to worry too much about this sort of stuff, as they do all of their damage on impact.

Melissia
04-11-2010, 01:41 PM
Or an instant after impact, in the case of bolter shells. They penetrate and then explode.

Though lasguns CAN completely burn through a person's flesh and leave a hole in their body (cauterized) if it hits them directly IIRC.

DarkLink
04-11-2010, 07:51 PM
Lasers hitting flesh have some kind of weird effects. Very lethal, if the laser has enough energy, but very weird. This (http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3l2.html) goes into more detail. Suffice to say, lasguns probably wouldn't work that way in real life.

eldargal
04-11-2010, 07:54 PM
I always assumed lasguns temporarily blinded the target, causing them to fall into mantraps or accidentally stab themselves and their comrades in a humorous, slapstick manner.

Freefall945
04-11-2010, 07:59 PM
The problem here is that lasguns don't fire laser beams- rather, they fire lasbolts which 'whicker', if Sir Dan of Abnett is to be beleived, as they flash through the air. Las, like Adamantium, is a fictional construct which bears only those similarities to modern materials, energies or physical principles as is dramatically required.

Melissia
04-11-2010, 09:05 PM
And lasbolts also pop or explode on impact.

Freefall945
04-11-2010, 09:11 PM
And they have recoil!

Old_Paladin
04-12-2010, 01:45 PM
Lasbolts, as discribed as Abnett, are... weird, to say the least.
When the hit an object, they 'pop' causing conclussive damage that plups flesh and bursts blood vessels (causing a spray of blood), then they have a heat flash, that burns the wound closed. So you don't bleed out, but still have internal hemeraging.

Of course, this isn't consistant. Lasweapons seem to follow the rules of 'works how I need it, at the time,' as plenty of characters bleed to death from lasgun wounds when it makes the moment dramatic.