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Hi all, I had some questions about 40k lore.. specifically the workings of guns.
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?
2) even with AP ammo, how can bolts penetrate anything....being rocket propelled and huge caliber surely they have almost no velocity
3) how can some of the larger marines change or carry magazines, and surely once they've expended the 15 or so rounds, the gun is useless....especially for terminators or chainsword weilders
4) how does power armour hold up against bolt guns, and what about lasguns or shuriken guns
2) depictions vary quite frustratingly. But there are descriptions of the Bolt having an initial charge, then the rocket kicks in. Add in a suitably dense pointy bit, and penetration occurs.
3) magclamps. Also, Powerfists aren’t active 100% of the time. Magclamp extra mags to your body. Deactivate power field and after hours or days of practice, learn how to get deft with it to reload.
4) The Inquisitor game has the most detailed presentation of Space Marine Power Armour. It’s not simply thick, heavy plating. Firstly, there’s an ablative layer on each location.
Whilst it does of course have weak spots, those tend to vary from Mark to Mark. For instance, Mk2-7 the neck seal is an obvious weak point. Mk8 had a raised collar to mitigate this - but round could get wedged in it. Mk10 (so Primaris stuff) seems to have a more efficient collar.
Its effectiveness against different weapons will vary greatly. Let’s consider the same location struck by different weapons, and assume penetration.
Let’s go with the elbow joint, which by necessity is probably the most prominent weak spot.
Lasgun - depends how much of the energy blast was absorbed in the penetration. But is seems unlikely to cripple a Marine. Flashburn, possibly vaporisation of flesh. Certainly enough to send a non-Marine into shock, but against a Marine’s post-human physiology, in-built armour analgesics etc? You need lots of Lasguns to reliably get the job done.
Shuriken Catapult - these are trickier, as they absolute don’t fire a single shurkien at a time, but a cloud. So if one hits that weak spot, we can reasonably assume others will. Now there’s a decent chance the discs will lose enough “oomph” to come out the other side. But you’re still having that arm sliced off internally, with a not negligible chance the whole thing is coming off there and then. I’d argue the former is worse, because that limb is now dead weight, and any discs part of that slicing are now rattling around.
Bolter - this is why they’re deadly. They penetrate your armour, they detonate. And they don’t really do flesh wounds as a result. One good hit, and your toast, whether you’re wearing Underpants or Terminator Armour. On the elbow joint? That arm is gone, man. Gone.
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1/2) They were not designed by people with a good understanding of weaponry before the days of the Internet. You or I can just hope online and get a full mechanical breakdown of most firearms, that wasn't possible. 40k is themes and aesthetics, not hard science.
3) In the video game Space Marine, the Stormbolter carries 100 rounds per magazine. Yes, it has a high ROF but those rounds are all Bolt rounds so a Terminator doesn't need to fire massive amounts to kill most enemies. Terminators are also not meant to be used during long engagements as they are close assault units designed for decapitating strikes and rely more on the CQC power than shooting.
Regular Astartes carry spare magazines into battle and unlike a Lasgun or Autogun, one shot is usually enough to kill most foes, if not multiple with the shrapnel from the unfortunate target.
4) Power Armour holds up fine with a few shots but concentrated fire will bring down an Astartes. Lasguns are far less likely to unless there are a significant number or the shooter gets lucky.
Shuriken weapons are inconsistent probably more than any other weapon. Sometimes they're only useful against lightly armoured targets and other times they can shred Power Armour. Depends on the writer, though that can be said for pretty much every 40k weapon.
For 2) it has been implemented in the fluff that bolts are actually fired and then the rocket kicks in.
Concerning 3) the pre-Primaris Godwyn-pattern has a capacity of 30 rounds (this hardly lines up with the miniatures, but it's what the fluff says ).
How terminators reload? Well, ... Not sure we ever see or hear it works in detail, but going from games and fluff we can say they do.
The fluff also says that you can magnetize stuff at the Power armour (like the chainsword to reload I guess).
Also worth keeping in mind that Space Marines tend to be highly mobile, and whilst they can partake in extended missions, what we see in 40K games is a specific strike more or less in its entirety.
“Just off screen” we can expect some kind of logistics, be that a Thunderhawk or two ready to collect, or Rhinos parked up somewhere safe.
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A lot of this is only a problem if you accept miniature scales as accurate and buy into the memeflation of marines.
Bolters have always been 0.75 cal rounds, and their sickle mags carry 30. They aren't firing coke cans. You can fit 30 rounds in the mag at 75 cal.
Generally they have a magazine with 20-30 rounds depending on shape.
Despite some Mandela effect, there has never been an instance bolters were described as caseless. In 2nd ed the autogun was described as caseless.
People assumed they were caseless because gyrojet weapons were.
But.40k consistently describes bolters as having a casing and charge AND rocket propulsion.
Shuriken catapults are interesting. They rely on narrow edge and high velocity to penetrate. The psychoplastics the Eldar use are very hard and light, they're super materials.
To impart the amount of energy needed to be lethal for something that light, it will be travelling at extremely high speeds, high % light speed type speeds.
The shuriken catapult is a railgun in all but name, using gravitic propulsion rather than magnetic fields.
Given the stick ammo is ~300mm long (12 inches) even at 1mm thick that's 300 rounds. I expect they're at least 1/10th of a mm thick if not thinner and a full auto capability, That gives you what is effectively a railgun sandblaster that is firing high speed flechettes one after the other drilling into the target.
They can either be thin enough to pass through the targets molecules and disrupt them like monofilament wire, or thicker and push through with their cutting edge.
Whichever way you look at it, to get a shuriken catapult to function in a lethal manner requires some extreme physics making it quite a crazy gun.
Thanks. I guess the remaoning unanswerable question is how bolts can defeat armour, given the obviously low velocity. Physics would dictate that even with the hardest metal on the planet, a bolt couldn't defeat powe armour if it's a slow gyrojet type thing
Eh. It’s a setting of not only literal space magic, but also unknown thousands of years of development and that of real world physics.
Consider that we’ve gone from simple Muskets to Anti-Tank rifles, and through various iterations thereof, over the past, what, 300 or so years? Who knows what alloys, propellants and tips might be discovered across that time period.
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The impression I get is that power armor holds up to the first couple shuriken volleys. The shurikens will carve away at the ceramite sort of kind of like taking a belt sander to wood. Eventually, the armor becomes compromised, and the shurikens start buzzsawing their way through flesh and blood. Or alternatively, the shurikens find a lucky angleand carve their way through the gaps in the actual plate. A marine with his arm raised could theoretically take a storm of shurikens to the armpit and functionally have his arm lobbed off even if 99% of the shurikens are bouncing ineffectively off of the plate.
One of the weirder considerations is what happens with the shurikens after they bounce off. Like, the sheer volume of projectiles makes it seem like they'd be at risk of bouncing into each other. And I have to imagine you *don't* want to be walking bearfoot through a recentbattlefield where the ground is just a molecule-thin sheet of sharp metal snowflakes.
Regarding bolters vs power armor: they mention here and there in the HH novels how bolters are frankly kind of *bad* at killing marines. They were never meant to be an anti-marine weapon. They were meant to punch into less armored targets and then explode, either to kill extra gnarly aliens or to scare the snot out of other humans.
In books, the description is more often than not that the first few volleys of bolter shots fail to kill target marines. The shot tend to bounce of armor (hitting hard enough to potentially damage the armor in the same manner as a sledgehammer), and then maybe do some bonus damage with the sheer force of the possible subsequent explosion. Sometimes a description will go out of its way to emphasize that close proximity to the target or landing a hit somewhere not covered by plate (look at the cabling on some marines' toros) results in the bolt shot having enough raw strength to penetrate a bit and then explode.
My headcanon is that the payload of the explosion is doing a lot of the heavy-lifting.
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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.
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
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1-2) Bolters do have chambers and barrels. The models are however not made by people who really properly understand guns.
They are based on the real world Gyrojet weapon. Which fired caseless rockets down a smoothbore "barrel" and relied on the velocity of the rocket engine on its own.
Bolters were originally caseless too, but have evolved since their first depiction. They are now a hybrid of gyrojet and conventional firearms. They are cased ammunition which is fired by a primer igniting a propellent which accelerates the bolt down the rifled barrel. However, in addition to this normal firearm operation, the projectile itself has a rocket engine inside it which continues to accelerate it after firing. This fixes the problem Gyrojets had at close range where they were not very dangerous till they had traveled about 30 ft or so, and you could literally stick your finger in the barrel Loony Toons style and hold the rocket inside when fired. Since bolters have a normal explosive charge as well as the rocket they are dangerous at point blank as well.
As with all AP ammo, bolters rely on the velocity of the projectile to impact the target. I mean, thats how all projectiles work. Mass*Velocity=Energy. And on top of this, bolt shells have an explosive charge that detonates after penetration.
3) Power and Terminator armor still has perfectly functional hands. Reloading isn't really an issue, assuming you even need to in a combat at all. A human sized bolter has a listed magazine size of 24. Marine bolters have a slightly larger magazine of 28. Stormbolters have 60 round capacity. In most fights, you probably wont need to reload under duress, but if you do even a Terminator can reload his stormbolter. Power fists are still capable of fine enough movements to do it, otherwise there would be no point to having distinct fingers and a thumb.
4) As with real life armor, it is complicated. Penetration is dependent on the angle of the incoming ammunition as well as the raw thickness of the armor itself. So while a Bolter can theoretically penetrate power armor anywhere, except probably the pauldrons, in practice it needs to be a good shot on a part that is relatively flat to your incoming attack. A shot that is off by even a little bit will hit at an angle and be deflected. And power armor doesn't have very many flat surfaces, especially if a marine is moving and taking cover.
Which is really how any kind of armor works. It rarely works by taking the full force of an attack, it relies on deflecting the blow and the relative slope of the armor to have thicker protection than exists on paper.
Shurikan would be particularly dangerous due to the area of effect. Its hard to hit a joint or weakspot with a single attack, but a cloud of flying razors is going to hit a weakspot somewhere.
This is for War Thunder, but if you want an idea of how a bolter does its damage. Look at the APHECBC shell.
Keep in mind there are other types of bolter ammo. Some could be described as HEAT warheads or other exotic things.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2023/12/25 04:17:18
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.
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IIRC the only mention of bolters being caseless was in one of the first White Dwarfs. It has of course been thoroughly retconned at this point.
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.
Smg762 wrote: Thanks. I guess the remaoning unanswerable question is how bolts can defeat armour, given the obviously low velocity. Physics would dictate that even with the hardest metal on the planet, a bolt couldn't defeat powe armour if it's a slow gyrojet type thing
The simplest way to get more velocity out of a short barrel (or rocket with limited acceleration distance) is to make the propellant 'burn' faster. At some point you move from deflagration to detonation, but it's still basically the same principle. Dump energy into the projectile faster and you get it going fast in less distance. This puts a lot of strain on the chamber, barrel, rocket exhaust, etc. so it isn't used much in real life (but there are propellant mixes specifically intended to get good performance out of short barrel rifles; usually combined with heavier projectiles which work with less velocity). In 40k, you can tell yourself that those parts of the weapon are made of super materials (which aren't as practical to use in armour for some reason), or just accept that it is a silly setting where realism isn't really a consideration.
If you insist on trying to make 40k plausible, I suggest thinking of depictions in miniature, art, etc. as only very rough approximations of the 'real' objects. Bolt pistols probably would have barrels at least a few inches longer than the rocket itself, Catachans don't really have completely different muscles to normal humans, most people don't have a pelvis as wide as their femur is long, or hands big enough to cover their scalp, Leman Russ tanks and Taurox and Chimera APCs have functional suspension rather than armour plating extending right to the track, and so on.
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Bolts are "low velocity", but relative to other bullets not in general. They're still going fast, are quite heavy, and have a rocket that is constantly accelerating their projectile for a good portion of the flight path.
This would mean that a Bolter has greater penetration the further the target is, at least till the point the rocket motor burns out. But even at close range the bolt still has enough oomph for anti-personnel work.
As for barrel length, remember that the weapons on miniatures are not to proper scale. They are larger and clunkier then they should be. But even without that, a bolt pistol still has room for 3-4 inches of barrel length. That is on the short end for pistols, but well within normal allowances. Add the rocket engine and the projectile will have plenty of velocity.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/12/25 20:30:10
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.
Bolters also seem to have a depleted uranium core but this is from a single description in a single book and the only reason why I remember it is exactly that, it was never mentioned before or since so could just be that authors reasoning behind them.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’ve got access to the Inquisitor rule book, but only the Vault version. No idea if it has weapon descriptions left in.
Sorry for the blurriness on the pic. My copy of Inquisitor was on the bookshelf for years, and not well-thumbed.
Once again, GW made a game that no one really played but we have one of the best known characters from it- Eisenhorn. (More due to Dan Abnett's work ethic than GW)
Anyways, back on tropic: Modern day Automatic shotguns resemble a passing resemblance to some Mk's of bolters:
I'd assumed that bolt shells are about the same size as deer slugs, but due to in-exactness when it comes to scaling up, I think the models show bolter shells are the size of a soda can!
The frag 12 might be the closest common usage thingy, but the OICW probably wins as closest thing overall. 20mm smart explosive rounds with programmable warheads. Not quite mass reactive, but could be programmed for a similar effect.
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
As noted in the thread linked above, GW's original concept for weaponry was based on trendy futuristic weapon concepts, like gyrojets and caseless ammunition.
The .75 caliber of bolters is also a "Marines are BIG" thing, because while in the 80s armies were going from .30 cal (7.62mm) to .223 (5.56mm), GW's future was THREE TIMES AS LARGE.
"In the far future, the .50 AE Desert Eagle will be puny and underpowered, derided as a mouse gun."
Tyranid weapons are also interesting, as they just don’t behave as regular firearms, real world or 40K, do.
The relatively simple Fleshborer of course launches a voracious beetle, which expends its brief life chewing through whatever it impacts. Against exposed body parts, that’s horrific damage. But, you’re probably safe if if the first volley hits a flak jacket. Again, it’s the weak points you need to worry about.
The Deathspitter however is far more concerning. The initial shot can and will kill. But if it goes splat? You and your squad mates are showered in droplets of a highly acidic compound. Not only is that potentially lethal in itself? But it’s going to degrade even the thickest armour over time, so on a scale 40K isn’t set to properly represent, a volley of Deathspitter shots seems liable to leave your armour in a state where the smaller bioweapons will have an easier time getting you dead.
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I could be misremembering, but I thought the point of at least one of the "standard" tyranid guns was that the living ammunition was "smart" enough to seek a weak point. As in, a bug that impacts your pauldron might scurry around trying to find a relatively soft joint to chew on rather than scratching away at the ceramite directly.
But again, I could be misremembering.
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Some, perhaps. Certainly the Hiveguard Impaler is able to guide its own flight.
Fleshborers I’m really not sure. It could the weapon beast itself (as opposed to the organism it’s attached to) has an instinctual aim for Soft Bits? I don’t recall the beetle being described as searching for the softer bits. Simply impacting and getting their chew on until they’re exhausted their incredibly short life energy.
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Sounds about right. Though I’d imagine any Borer Beetle that lands half on/half off a squishy bit will be able to adjust the direction of its efforts accordingly.
Devourer is particularly unpleasant, given the worms eat their way to the brain.
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I think I was thinking of devourers. When I read the 3rd(?) edition codex, iirc the Living Ammunition rule was rerolls to-wound. Which made sense to me as the little gribblies basically eating their way towards a second (hopefully more lethal) location if their initial impact/early burrowing didn't kill the target.
See: Any moment in television where a character survives because the bullet was a smidge to the left. Well, these bullets eat their way a smidge to the right.
But I suppose that could just be burrowing in a random direction rather than landing in a flakk jacket and actively pointing yourself towards flesh.
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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Cadre Coronal Afterglow w1;d0;l0 
