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@lost templar: so a pulse rifle as carried by a fire warrior is comparable to a super-heavy bolter? (since a pulse is weaker than a bolt) I guess you could fluff Guela Auxiliaries as carrying bolt-gun level pulse weapons (same abilities as lasgun)

I have a question. Plasma guns use some kind of linear accelerator technology to propel the plasma from the weapon torwards the target, right?

It is generally agreed that tau pulse rifle are a weak form of plasma gun, so it could be assumed that it utilizes the same tech.

If the tau have only just developed a man portable rail gun (which obviously uses a linear accelerator), where did they get the technoogy required to manufacture their pulse weapons?

I may be totally wrong on this, but it has got me thinking.

Darkchild

I think the crack-whine is accurate, and as for the ammunition, I would say energy. I imagine the sound the pulse makes as it impacts on targets is a heavy thud followed by an 'aaahhhhh'. But as the stats of the guns suggests, S5, the target would be knocked back a fair bit. Sorta like a miniature shotgun effect.

The Firewarrior game (which I detest) looks like the carbine and rifle have a sort of battery/clip. But what a pulse round would do to an unarmoured target? My guess is separate the top bit from the bottom bit...

I always thought of it like a lightning strike, electricution and third degree burns.

I think people would do well to remember that GW has flat out stated that the game stats are abstractions and that the novel fluff is of much higher canonicity.
That said, the pulse weapons fire small pulses of somehow contained plasma (plasma tends to be difficult to mantain any containment on IRL) at high velocity at the target.  This tends to leave massive burn wounds that can all but vaporize the chest of a normal human.  This makes them of similar yield to bolters, although the bolters method of delivery makes it far more effective against both tightly grouped targets, and a psychologically more terrifying weapon (seeing the guy 10 feet from you all but disappear into a cloud of red goo is much more impressive then seeing his chest burnt out, even if they require the same amount of energy).

Hmm but what is more scarier: Your best friend being blown away with a shell, and watching him bleed, or your best friend with a nicely cauterised chest cavity so you can see his insides? And who is to say that burnt flesh isnt torn away, so instead of a cloud of blood, it is a cloud of flesh? Erm, lets leave this subject... quickly

Ok, this forum is "fluff for nutters", right? Well part of the fluff is reading what GW has written pertaining to the subject of the 40k universe.

And what has GW written about pulse tech? Well, the old tau codex said, pertaining to pulse rifles, pulse carbines and burst cannons "All three weapons are variants of the same technology. An induction field is used to propel a particle. The particle reacts by breaking down to create a plasma pulse as it leaves the barrel."


So there you have it. It uses the basic principles of rail guns to propel the particle.

So to the questions.

How does it work? A particle of some sort is accelerated by an induction field down the barrel. This particle then reacts to begin breaking down into plasma. To me. This sounds like some form of atomic decay. Maybe the Tau have discovered some transuranic element that is both magnetic (and thus susseptable to magnetic influence) and will break down and/or decay to a daughter product of plasma. What causes this decay? Who knows. Could be spontanious decay due to being released from it's containment field. Could be a reaction to air. Could be anything. I'll wait for GW to "fill in the blank". It, however, is called a "Pulse" because of it's delivery. Imperial (and tau) pulse weaponry releases a small stream of plasma contained within magnetic canisters at a target. Instead of plasma being the fired product... pulse weaponry DEPENDS on plasma being the byproduct of the decay process to do the damage.

Effect on the human body? Plasma is matter in a superheated state. So, if the pulse completely reacts and becomes nothing but a small plasma pulse by the time it reaches the target... it should just burn a hole through the body. As to the size of the hole... I have no idea. I assume from some of the pictures in the old tau codex of an imperial guardsman presumably getting hit by a plasma pulse, that it'll cause a volleyball sized ENTRY WOUND. So presumably the pulse expands with distance (a not unreasonable assumption), or it simply has a nasty reaction when it touches flesh (instant superheating to steam of the water within the molecules of the body where the pulse impacts).

If the range is short enough that the pulse hasn't decayed fully into plasma, presumably the high velocities inherent with other induction field weaponry (rail guns, rail rifles) causes plenty of damage just from the impact of the particle.

Sound? Who knows. I'd assume it would be loud, same as with other induction field weapons. That, and it would seem rather silly to "waste" usable space and weight on a man portable infantry weapon on sound suppression technology. Besides. Stealth isn't the tau armies main shtick. Though they DO have stealth teams, their main shtick is massive and accurate ranged firepower. If they can accurately hit targets thousands of yards away (what I'd assume 30" is supposed to represent in the "real world", when 48" is miles away), who CARES how much noise it makes.

Color? I'm going with the cover art. Bluish white. Just like all other GW representations of plasma weaponry firing.




Anyways. That would be my analysis of tau pulse weaponry as someone with a scientific technical background.

Just wondering how you explain the AP5 and pinning effects of the pulse carbine.

The pinning effect was explained as being a side effect of the underslung grenade launcher. Unfortunately that's all it does in the rules.

Well, let's see.

Off the top of my head, an imperial preacher is a model with armor value (-), that is to say, is wearing no armor at all.

Armor value 6 is probably WW2 level flak jacket protection. Better than nothing... but not much.

Armor value 5 is probably state of the art kevlar and ceramic armor. Can stop bullets and shrapnel, but not all the time, and there's gaps in the armor to keep weight down.

Armor value 4 is "next gen" kevlar and ceramic armor, if you will. Lighter and stronger, so less gaps and better protection.



So, AP-5 makes a mockery of current state of the art body armor, but can't negate "next gen" armor.

As for pinning? Well, just figure a weapon that not only slices through decent armor like a hot knife through butter, but also pumps out flash-bang grenades to disorient you. Of course this would get the normal person to tend to keep their heads down (be pinned).

As a side note I found recently a pretty cool Tau site that suffers from a bit of a Flash-overdose. Part of the site is a Tau soundboard featuring sound effects for all the Tau weapons. Some of them are pretty cool.

http://www.pathoftau.com/index.html

Click on Sound Board.