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Smg762 wrote: 1) many bolt pistols appear to have no barrel or chamber - just a muzzle brake or flash hider. How to they expect to stabilise or even propel the rounds?
Which ones? Can you give some examples?
2) even with AP ammo, how can bolts penetrate anything....being rocket propelled and huge caliber surely they have almost no velocity
Shaped/explosive charge inside most bolts doesn't care one bit about velocity. And why you're assuming rockets are slow?
Flinty wrote: Regarding stability of the bolt round, if the rocket nozzles in the back of the thing are slightly angled, then the exhaust itself with impart a stabilising spin on the round. No need for a barrel to do that job. And some bolt rounds are described as being seeker ammo, so the rounds may even be able to self-correct their trajectory mid flight. Using space magic.
By "space magic" you mean 1950s tech? Titan ICBM missiles steered entirely by slight change of exhaust direction of its engine using gimbals, if you can hit something 16.000 km away using this ancient "magic", bolts should work perfectly too...
And then you have even more advanced vernier thrusters and pulse vectoring that don't require any moving parts (also 1950s tech, except on Soviet side powering Soviet AD missiles and ICBMs) that should easily be adapted to bolt control systems too:
Hellebore wrote: What people get confused by is the blast suppressor in the front of the gun being the barrel and thus extrapolating bolts being ridiculous.
No. Just no. This IS a barrel hole. You can tell because A) in competent art portrayals instead of heroic gak this bit is far smaller, B) "blast suppressor" that much bigger than real barrel caliber would be completely useless and pointless, C) Horus Heresy bolter barrels have the exact same size despite portraying clearly thin barrel walls and lacking anything that can be hand-waved as "suppressor".
See for yourself, the inner hole in huge suppressor of KSVK rifle is the exact same size as bullet, otherwise there would be no seal to direct gas to the sides and the thing wouldn't work at all:
Spoiler:
If you measure the diameter of the suppressor as a Bolt then you're only getting 5 rounds in the magazine...
Except you don't need to 'extrapolate' anything because in comically stupid heroic scale portrayals, you can clearly see the bolts in mag cutouts. And yes, they are the size of the "suppressor" and there are only ~5 of them visible instead of canon 30-40. Yet another example of squatmarine models being utter .
Flinty wrote: Regarding stability of the bolt round, if the rocket nozzles in the back of the thing are slightly angled, then the exhaust itself with impart a stabilising spin on the round. No need for a barrel to do that job. And some bolt rounds are described as being seeker ammo, so the rounds may even be able to self-correct their trajectory mid flight. Using space magic.
By "space magic" you mean 1950s tech? Titan ICBM missiles steered entirely by slight change of exhaust direction of its engine using gimbals, if you can hit something 16.000 km away using this ancient "magic", bolts should work perfectly too...
And then you have even more advanced vernier thrusters and pulse vectoring that don't require any moving parts (also 1950s tech, except on Soviet side powering Soviet AD missiles and ICBMs) that should easily be adapted to bolt control systems too:
The concepts are 1950s, but ICBMs are rather large, while bolts are somewhat smaller I wasn't clear in my earlier post, but I meant that the ability to pack in a guidance package and all the technical gubbinz that allows the bolt to change direction into a 20mm-ish round needs some decent space magic. However, happy to be proven wrong on that as well
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
I always try to avoid imparting meaning into art and then extrapolate purpose. Most art is made, because it looks cool. Not some kind of analysis of tech.
However, this is fun and I like sharing my other hobbies. Modern firearms.
A muzzle device can have many purposes and its form will deviate based on what is needed. There are plenty of hybrid muzzle devices that try to achieve more than one goal and thus share characteristic across the following types.
A simple Blast deflector designed merely to avoid having as much of the blast directed to the sides, back, up or down may indeed be MUCH larger than the caliber of the barrel. Capturing gasses to minimize sound signature is not the main purpose of these particular devices they are a Quality of life device for the user and anyone left/right of them or designed to prevent dirt kicking up while shooting prone.
A suppressor that IS designed to capture gasses needs baffles but those baffles can be few and hidden from sight. Many suppressors are overbore, ie larger diameter than the caliber of the bullet, but the purpose is usually to minimize back pressure, a compromise to balance the pressure of Gas Operated weapons and make them softer shooting by absorbing recoil. This does impair the suppression capability of the device but you might be surprised at what is good enough or useful despite being much less capable. Decibels are exponential not linear so even just taking the edge off is a distinct advantage.
A muzzle brake, as seen in the photo above, is designed to redirect the gasses and as the name implies cause gasses to slam into perpendicular surfaces causing a Braking effect on recoil. Equal opposite actions counter acting recoil. These devices often amplify the blast to the sides or up so they look VERY different from a blast deflector/ flash can would.
So depending on the role in a military's setting you could see each of these devices being used where a few different versions could look, somewhat, like the depictions of bolt weapons. But was that what the artists were trying to confer, yea prob not, they probably did have references that might have had one or another of these devices. Imitation flattery etc. However Blast deflectors were not really in common use when these designs were first printed..
With all of that said if I had to point at the standard Bolter and explain the muzzle device, Id say it looks like a Blast deflector/Flash can.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2024/01/09 14:58:02
Also worth noting that bolt weapons may have attachments with functions completely alien to what modern humans are trying to achieve. I could see a 7 foot space knight shock trooper wearing brightly-coloured heraldry wanting a flash enhancer to increase the shock-and-awe of their attack before they pull out the giant chainsword...
Not saying this is the case, but the needs of Astartes in particular do not match up that well with modern special forces as they are very much propaganda pieces in most cases.
Edit: I think the above is unlikely, considering Scout and Imperial Guard bolters still have a similar appearance despite stealth being much more beneficial. However, the point that functions could be different to what we need/can achieve today still stands.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/01/09 16:24:43
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
We also have genuine aim assist from the Power Armour’s sensor suites. Calibrate it in training, and any drift or wonkiness caused by the shorter barrel can be compensated for.
Add in the limbs of power armour can lock for stability when shooting, and can also compensate for recoil? Lots of other things to aid overall accuracy.
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Flinty wrote: The concepts are 1950s, but ICBMs are rather large, while bolts are somewhat smaller I wasn't clear in my earlier post, but I meant that the ability to pack in a guidance package and all the technical gubbinz that allows the bolt to change direction into a 20mm-ish round needs some decent space magic. However, happy to be proven wrong on that as well
Eh, yes, it would be expensive and hard to do, but experiments with guided 57 mm autocannon shells and 40 mm grenades are being done in real life, so bolts are not that outrageous in that regard.
Also, thinking about it, you can save some space in guided bolts by simply not having it spin - instead of angled nozzles at the sides to spin, it could use smaller, central engine using its own guidance system to stabilize bolt. It would be again more expensive and complicated mechanism, but we already do it in RL. Such bolt could also add some internal volume by having blunter, less aerodynamic tip like some ICBMs because again, it has active, not passive stabilization so it can get away with it.
Do we even know if bolts spin, anyway? Tank barrels changed from rifled to smooth because not wasting energy spinning projectile makes it faster and most cannon shells can deploy their own stabilizing systems like fins in flight to maintain accuracy (and larger missiles like ICMBs don't spin at all because it would add too much stress to their relatively thin skin), maybe bolts just stabilize using their own engines to begin with...
Look at the picture. There's no ejection port on the boltgun, nor is there a slide or any way for the action to cycle. The rounds feed up into the magazine and are detonated in turn. There could be a primer that ignites the rocket, and this might be enough to reset the trigger and striker or hammer.
The cover art show two boltguns being fired and no casings are flying out. Later on they changed it.
Except this picture proves nothing because the ejection port/slide might simply be on other side and you just can't see it. For example, this portrayal of the bolter from Rogue Trader shows 'nothing' on the side Sister is showing, but you can clearly see ejection port open and venting gas on SM bolter: https://i.redd.it/mtmgnx96xmu21.jpg
And in any case, mags themselves kill the idea bolters were ever caseless. The magazines on real caseless weapons are perfectly straight/flat. The only reason to make a mag curved (which adds complication to mechanism and more jamming points) or in less common type triangular, is to accommodate rim on end of case and/or tapered case, both of which are design choices existing only to make extraction of cases easier. Especially seeing both require much more expensive and difficult to machine chamber with complex shape instead of simple, durable, and easy to clean tube/square chambers caseless weapons use. If mag is sickle shaped, it's most likely not a caseless weapon, sorry.
Flinty wrote: On needlers, space magic means that the toxin shard rides the laser beam. Such minor issues as ballistics or momentum are irrelevant
That doesn't even make any sense, it's like saying that a marine bolter shell is more accurate because Tyranids ate a Tau planet and absorbed their ranged combat ability. It's best to dismiss that as superstitious nonsense, especially since needle weapons are effectively nonexistent in normal battlefield combat.
Funnily enough, laser propulsion is a real thing, so that actually makes much more sense than most of 40K weapons
Then you have Russian beam-riding missiles using the laser to correct themselves (and funnily enough, laser being aimed at missile instead of target also makes it immune to jamming plus hides it from laser detectors/sight which would help with stealth) so maybe this tech was miniaturized in 40K to help sniper projectiles too?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: We also have genuine aim assist from the Power Armour’s sensor suites. Calibrate it in training, and any drift or wonkiness caused by the shorter barrel can be compensated for.
Add in the limbs of power armour can lock for stability when shooting, and can also compensate for recoil? Lots of other things to aid overall accuracy.
This... would only help so much. You can bolt a gun to a stabilised firing rig for a level of consistency between shots that a competition shooter can only dream of, and the gunshots will still display dispersion on the target, with greater dispersion at longer ranges. This dispersion should be random within the variance expected from a given firearm (and will increase as the firearm experiences wear-and-tear and becomes fouled).
Barrel length will alter that degree of dispersion, and it cannot be compensated for by better stabilisation. Better stabilisation can only improve the extra dispersion added by the natural wobble of the firer. However, a bolt pistol may still be sufficiently accurate that such inherent dispersion is entirely acceptable for expected combat ranges.
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
Irbis wrote: Except this picture proves nothing because the ejection port/slide might simply be on other side and you just can't see it. For example, this portrayal of the bolter from Rogue Trader shows 'nothing' on the side Sister is showing, but you can clearly see ejection port open and venting gas on SM bolter
The point is that the artwork is inconsistent. Sometimes there are casings flying out, sometimes there aren't. My favorite is the one using Webley-inspired rimmed casings that are totally out of scale.
And in any case, mags themselves kill the idea bolters were ever caseless. The magazines on real caseless weapons are perfectly straight/flat. The only reason to make a mag curved (which adds complication to mechanism and more jamming points) or in less common type triangular, is to accommodate rim on end of case and/or tapered case, both of which are design choices existing only to make extraction of cases easier. Especially seeing both require much more expensive and difficult to machine chamber with complex shape instead of simple, durable, and easy to clean tube/square chambers caseless weapons use. If mag is sickle shaped, it's most likely not a caseless weapon, sorry.
The magazine is curved because that's how the artists thought magazines should look.
I think it's pretty well proven at this point that autoguns were caseless, not bolters.
Smg762 wrote: 1) many bolt pistols appear to have no barrel or chamber - just a muzzle brake or flash hider. How to they expect to stabilise or even propel the rounds?
Which ones? Can you give some examples?
2) even with AP ammo, how can bolts penetrate anything....being rocket propelled and huge caliber surely they have almost no velocity
Shaped/explosive charge inside most bolts doesn't care one bit about velocity. And why you're assuming rockets are slow?
Flinty wrote: Regarding stability of the bolt round, if the rocket nozzles in the back of the thing are slightly angled, then the exhaust itself with impart a stabilising spin on the round. No need for a barrel to do that job. And some bolt rounds are described as being seeker ammo, so the rounds may even be able to self-correct their trajectory mid flight. Using space magic.
By "space magic" you mean 1950s tech? Titan ICBM missiles steered entirely by slight change of exhaust direction of its engine using gimbals, if you can hit something 16.000 km away using this ancient "magic", bolts should work perfectly too...
And then you have even more advanced vernier thrusters and pulse vectoring that don't require any moving parts (also 1950s tech, except on Soviet side powering Soviet AD missiles and ICBMs) that should easily be adapted to bolt control systems too:
Hellebore wrote: What people get confused by is the blast suppressor in the front of the gun being the barrel and thus extrapolating bolts being ridiculous.
No. Just no. This IS a barrel hole. You can tell because A) in competent art portrayals instead of heroic gak this bit is far smaller, B) "blast suppressor" that much bigger than real barrel caliber would be completely useless and pointless, C) Horus Heresy bolter barrels have the exact same size despite portraying clearly thin barrel walls and lacking anything that can be hand-waved as "suppressor".
See for yourself, the inner hole in huge suppressor of KSVK rifle is the exact same size as bullet, otherwise there would be no seal to direct gas to the sides and the thing wouldn't work at all:
Spoiler:
If you measure the diameter of the suppressor as a Bolt then you're only getting 5 rounds in the magazine...
Except you don't need to 'extrapolate' anything because in comically stupid heroic scale portrayals, you can clearly see the bolts in mag cutouts. And yes, they are the size of the "suppressor" and there are only ~5 of them visible instead of canon 30-40. Yet another example of squatmarine models being utter .
Where did I say the hole was as big as the suppressor? Just because people drill out the hole oversized doesn't mean it is. I said the the outer piece with the outgas holes on either side is the blast suppressor, I said nothing about how narrow the hole is.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make?
A bolter has a 0.75 cal round and it has a magazine with up to 28 rounds - the only time something was said to have 40 it was a box magazine, not the sickle magazine.
If you're argument is that the art is useless at depicting these parameters, then I don't disagree.
The oversizing of the bolter is at least partly explained in the hands of a marine by having it armoured like them. They carry that thing in front of their chest as they advance into heavy fire, if it can't survive the kinds of attacks they can, their weapons will be destroyed before they can use them.
The slab design of the bolter looks to me like an smg with a massive box of armour around it.
In a double stack magazine with 0.75 cal rounds, you're looking at a magazine of 28 rounds being less than 12" long if it is straight, or even shorter if it is curved. The magazine itself is just over 1.5" thick.
It's very hard to tell if a magazine is double or single stacked from a picture unless they show the inside, but given the size of a bolter magazine and the claimed capacity of up to 30 rounds, they are double stacked. They would be very thin otherwise.
Based on the scale of that magazine, the bolter is about 2.5 feet long. The horus heresy bolter shows rounds clearly smaller than the diameter of the barrel and shows 6 in only 3/5s of the magazine (it continues to the top of the magazine catch). A double stack would put that magazine at ~18-20 rounds.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/01/09 23:39:28
The first thing I noticed in that artwork is that the ejection port is located in the wrong place. It should be in line with the barrel, instead it's where the guide rod would be.
Again, GW artists drew what they thought looked realistic, but since we're using retro-future tech, it doesn't work. There's no need for a guide rod with a gyrojet because the entire cartridge is ejected. An ejection port maybe helpful to eject dud rounds, but why would it be above the barrel? How would that work?
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While the vast majority of guns do have the ejection port in line with the barrel, it wouldn't have to be the case. You could have an action where the cartridge moves forward and down when being chambered and backwards and up when the shell is being extracted. There are a few oddball guns which do some strange things like that.
That would be an overly complicated design, but it could be done. Though realistically I think its better to handwaive just say that the barrel for the bolter should be moved up a little
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/01/11 17:39:49
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Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
My willingness to give passes to GW’s artists a pass on dodgy firearm design is dependent on quite how bad the issue is, and changes over time. At the moment a slightly weird position of an ejection port does not annoy me so much
There are worse design decisions out there. Squat double barrelled weapons, I’m looking very much at you
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
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Yeah, those definitely don't work.
If they were revolvers and the drum mag was actually a cylinder then it could work. Like this silly 20 shot French revolver.
Then you'd have some of the cylinders feeding the center and some feeding the upper barrel.
Or if the bottom barrel was a secondary gun like a Le Mat revolver.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/01/11 19:25:54
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
Grey Templar wrote: While the vast majority of guns do have the ejection port in line with the barrel, it wouldn't have to be the case. You could have an action where the cartridge moves forward and down when being chambered and backwards and up when the shell is being extracted. There are a few oddball guns which do some strange things like that.
That would be an overly complicated design, but it could be done. Though realistically I think its better to handwaive just say that the barrel for the bolter should be moved up a little
The odds of the artist (or anyone at GW) having this intent are roughly the same as 10th being the final, definitive edition of 40k.
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Oh for sure. They had no deliberate intent to do that.
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Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
Thinking it over, there are ejection systems that aren't "in line" with the barrel, but the only ones I can think of are those that either spit the casings out of the top or the bottom of the receiver. Pulling it up and then out to the side is unknown to me.
The Krag has that nifty tray feed which isn't in line with the chamber, but the spent round are kicked out the same as any other bolt action.
If GW wanted to be really retro-futuristic, they should have used blow-forward mechanisms, which might have worked well with gyrojets.
Thinking it over, there are ejection systems that aren't "in line" with the barrel, but the only ones I can think of are those that either spit the casings out of the top or the bottom of the receiver. Pulling it up and then out to the side is unknown to me.
The Krag has that nifty tray feed which isn't in line with the chamber, but the spent round are kicked out the same as any other bolt action.
If GW wanted to be really retro-futuristic, they should have used blow-forward mechanisms, which might have worked well with gyrojets.
Is there any reason it couldn't eject diagonally? Is there a mechanical reason for ejecting perpendicular to the magazine? I could see this being a function of making recievers in broadly box shapes, (so holes need to be up/down/left/right for feeding/ejecting) but doesn't seem like a hard requirement.
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
If you eject upward then the spent casing might fall back into the breech and jam the action. Ejecting downward or directly sideways minimises this risk i suppose.
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
Haighus wrote: Is there any reason it couldn't eject diagonally? Is there a mechanical reason for ejecting perpendicular to the magazine? I could see this being a function of making recievers in broadly box shapes, (so holes need to be up/down/left/right for feeding/ejecting) but doesn't seem like a hard requirement.
The short answer is: it would require some additional mechanism. Cartridge ejection is either manual action (pulling the bolt/slide back) or a recoil impulse. As the spent casing goes backward, it hits an "ejector" which forces it out of the action. This is why in slow motion they tumble as they fall out.
If you try to keep that internal and redirect it, you could use the initial ejection to send it up but would then need a second impulse to throw it clear, which adds a lot of complexity.
I mean, there are full-auto weapons that have rather complex ejection systems, but that's not what we're looking at here.
The simple explanation is that the artists just didn't have much practical exposure to firearms, so they drew what looked cool.
Two of my daughters are avid artists, and because they learned to shoot and handle firearms (and take them apart to clean them), their imaginary weapons are more realistic than some because they think about these things.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/01/13 14:46:43
Is there any reason it couldn't eject diagonally? Is there a mechanical reason for ejecting perpendicular to the magazine? I could see this being a function of making recievers in broadly box shapes, (so holes need to be up/down/left/right for feeding/ejecting) but doesn't seem like a hard requirement.
No, but it is more complicated. Which means its more likely to jam.
Sideways ejection is the most common just because it is generally the easiest. Upward ejection is rare, but does exist. Its simple as sideways ejection, but has the issue of casings/other junk potentially falling back into the action.
Downwards is more ideal as it is ambidextrous friendly and doesn't have issues with brass potentially causing issues, but it is more difficult to design since most magazines are under the action and thus in the way of downward ejection.
Now if we took the bolter ejection port at facevalue, there is one reason we could have for why the bolt is presumably moving backwards and up to eject the old casing and pick up a new round to feed forward and down.
The diagonal movement of the bolt could be a space saving method to prevent the need for a long spring as you could have a more compact action and not need an AR style buffer tube. Though this would have negative effects on recoil as it is directed both up as well as rearwards. Could explain the in-universe description of bolters having a lot of recoil when other factors would logically mean they'd not be too bad.
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Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
Grey Templar wrote: The diagonal movement of the bolt could be a space saving method to prevent the need for a long spring as you could have a more compact action and not need an AR style buffer tube. Though this would have negative effects on recoil as it is directed both up as well as rearwards. Could explain the in-universe description of bolters having a lot of recoil when other factors would logically mean they'd not be too bad.
The recoil could be from powered ejection. The source for this power varies by army. Orks get it from Waagh Power, while Imperials draw upon the Emperor's protection and the Machine Spirit.
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You could have some electrically powered ejection aid. Though given the scale of the bolter I would say that is entirely unnecessary. You'd normally have assisted ejection for extremely large shells, like artillery/tanks. But any man sized weapon is not really going to need them. For those things recoil operation should be just fine.
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Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
Here's the storm bolter cut away from 3rd, where you can see the magazines are staggered and the barrels are also VERY thick, far thicker than anything needs to be.
It also lists 3 types of magazine, sickle (20-30 rounds), straight (12-20), drum (40-60 but jams).
The image still depicts a pretty low round count for the storm-bolter; based on some rough measuring the staggered rounds make ~14 in each magazine. But you can also see that the rounds are narrower than the opening in the barrel, despite it saying it's a 0.75 rifled barrel.
Now if those openings are actually 0.75 across, that also makes that stormbolter tiny. Based on that drawing the whole gun is about 5 openings wide, 0.75x5 = 3.75" across.
Can anyone imagine a stormbolter being less than 10cm wide?
The issues with gun size for me are explained by the boxy designs being actual armour on the gun itself. Modern weapons don't have these enclosed cowls around them, they just have the minimum requirements needed to make them work. Hand grips, stocks, barrels, ejection ports etc.
The actual functional components of a bolter are far more compact than the drawing suggests. I've attached another one with outlines showing those minimum requirements (grip, stock, suppressor etc).
The rest of it is armour plating so it can be used to beat orks to death with and protect it from being damaged in combat.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/01/14 23:41:39
The image still depicts a pretty low round count for the storm-bolter; based on some rough measuring the staggered rounds make ~14 in each magazine. But you can also see that the rounds are narrower than the opening in the barrel, despite it saying it's a 0.75 rifled barrel.
Now if those openings are actually 0.75 across, that also makes that stormbolter tiny. Based on that drawing the whole gun is about 5 openings wide, 0.75x5 = 3.75" across.
Can anyone imagine a stormbolter being less than 10cm wide
When looking at the barrel closest to the viewer, there appears to be an inner diametre just visible that is much closer to the diametre of the bolts in the magazine. It appears the barrel flares out dramatically for the "suppressor".
Agree with the rest of your post, although it is clear that bolters contain tech within that bulky casing that modern firearms to not. Aside from the gene-lock grip doodad and the autosenses stuff at the back, apparently there are also "self-repair circuits" (no idea how this functions, maybe nano tech?) and also some kind of recoil dampener ("blast compensator"). The latter is likely to use the inertial dampener tech found on Imperial space craft IMO, and probably allows the weapon to be designed with a ridiculous recoil (hence the super thick barrels etc.) yet brings it down to manageable levels.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/01/15 14:35:09
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
Well what do you know, optional directed ejection. So it does have a secondary ejection system. Because reasons.
Hellebore wrote: The rest of it is armour plating so it can be used to beat orks to death with and protect it from being damaged in combat.
Of course, it doesn't matter if the barrel remains intact if both magazines (and their ammo) is hammered into a shapeless mass, which they surely would, since they project far enough forward to almost certainly be an impact surface. Second look at stripper clips?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/01/15 14:27:11
@ Hellebore - another thought as well, though, is that diagram is based on 2nd edition artwork and models. At that point, storm bolters were pretty small, not that much bigger than the plastic bolters that came with the metal/plastic hybrid Mk 7s that were around at that time.
If someone has the said models to enable a wee side by side that would be amazing. I lost my 2nd ed terminators long ago :(
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Flinty wrote: If someone has the said models to enable a wee side by side that would be amazing. I lost my 2nd ed terminators long ago :(
When I decided to add Nobs in Mega-armor to my 2nd. ed. forces, I bought "current edition" terminators and modded them with Ork heads and weapons. They tower over my vintage 2nd ed. ones, but I don't mind - bigger targets are easier to hit.
if we are complaining about the physics of bolt guns, Storm Bolters are depicted endlessly putting out a "Storm of Bolt rounds" A veritable wall of lead. The size of the rounds in question, and they being MAgazine fed, means they couldn't hold more than 50 rounds at a magazine. That means 20-30 rounds per barrel. Not really a "wall of lead" considering the standard Assault Cannon has 6 barrels and is reported to put out 2000-3000 rounds per minute. Or 30-60 per second.
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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: if we are complaining about the physics of bolt guns, Storm Bolters are depicted endlessly putting out a "Storm of Bolt rounds" A veritable wall of lead. The size of the rounds in question, and they being MAgazine fed, means they couldn't hold more than 50 rounds at a magazine. That means 20-30 rounds per barrel. Not really a "wall of lead" considering the standard Assault Cannon has 6 barrels and is reported to put out 2000-3000 rounds per minute. Or 30-60 per second.
In fairness, that is how all guns in media of any kind tend to get depicted. Bottomless mags are a staple of games and movies.
And most guns are capable of emptying their magazines extremely quickly if fire is sustained. The Assault Cannon is basically an M134 minigun, which has a fire rate of between 2 and 6k RPM. But the most ammo any variant has is 5k rounds in a belt, and some only have 500. So even real guns often only have a minute of ammo at a time anyway.
Realistically, storm bolters will be used in quick accurate bursts. Expending 2-6 rounds per burst taking out specific targets.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
Titan ICBM missiles steered entirely by slight change of exhaust direction of its engine using gimbals, if you can hit something 16.000 km away using this ancient "magic", bolts should work perfectly too...
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I wasn't clear in my earlier post, but I meant that the ability to pack in a guidance package and all the technical gubbinz that allows the bolt to change direction into a 20mm-ish round needs some decent space magic. However, happy to be proven wrong on that as well 
Cadre Coronal Afterglow w1;d0;l0 
