Fluff wise, these should translate to at least AP 4 on the tabletop... I mean it shoots baby missiles

Bro, bolters go through 8 inches of armored steel.

This.

Gyrojet didn't ignite propellant outside the barrel, it ignited in the chamber and continued to burn for some time. Actually at longer ranges (10+m) gyrojet were pretty damn impressive. Problems were the fact that even minor defects/irregularities in the projectile greatly reducing the accuracy and the fact for the first few meters it was going really fucking slow.

>Rocket means you don't lose velocity as fast as on a bullet
this doesn't apply when it comes to thumb sized ammo
you're not firing a space rocket with 95% of its mass being fuel, you're firing a glorified firecracker with a piece of metal on one end
a piece of metal which in case of Bolter ammo probably makes up majority of of the weight
I don't care if the propellant is Emperor's tears mixed with powdered Grey Knight, you don't have a barrel to give it enough pressure, to shoot it forward strong enough

then I would fucking nerf them if anything

It's OK to like scifi stuff, just... don't try to give everything scientific sense
it's just doesn't fucking work most of the time

All bolt weapons should be Rending and fuck you if you think otherwise.

>this doesn't apply when it comes to thumb sized ammo

Why not? The moment a bullet leaves the barrel, it starts losing velocity. On a bolt the rocket booster kicks in after it leaves the barrel, so it's just gaining speed for a while before the rocket shuts down and then the projectile loses its velocity.

How does that not make sense to you? Have you not noticed how in the real world armour penetrating rounds are often high speed, because they need that speed to build kinetic energy to punch through stuff. Bolts are suppose to explode inside of you, so they can't rely on the payload to pierce the armour, they need to punch through physically.

Daily reminder that 40k is full of stupid legacy issues that will never change.

Now go exchange those bolters for grav-cannons and be happy about it.

Bolter rounds have a primary charge and a propellant charge, so putting your hand in front of one is a bad idea.

A Bolter using real world materials would be hilariously weak, but apparently the propellant of the 41st Millennium is incredibly advanced. A mortal attempting to fire an Astartes pattern Bolter or bolt pistol would get a broken arm. This is especially ridiculous considering heavier weapons=less recoil, and Bolters are fukken heavy. A real world equivalent would be something like the MK19 mounted grenade launcher, which weighs in at around 77lbs.

You stupid idiots, Bolters have been two-stage weapons for like the last decade and a half.

First the shell is propelled out of the barrel rapidly by a chemical charge (i.e. "normal" bullet) and the gyrojet activates outside of the barrel. This also primes the explosive within the individual - it is a common issue where firing at somebody with a Bolt weapon, while still quite lethal, can often cause the explosive to not arm properly and detonate outside of the individual.

Did you just decide to skip the "On a bolt the rocket booster kicks in after it leaves the barrel" part of my post or what?

>Daily reminder that 40k is full of stupid legacy issues that will never change.
I'm going to make them give back our past.

>A Bolter using real world materials would be hilariously weak, but apparently the propellant of the 41st Millennium is incredibly advanced.

Do explain.

>A mortal attempting to fire an Astartes pattern Bolter or bolt pistol would get a broken arm.

While firing heavy bolters and autocannons from the hip is no problem.

>This is especially ridiculous considering heavier weapons=less recoil

Only when firing the same cartridge. They don't put big anti-tank guns on vehicle just because they're heavy.

>Bolters are fukken heavy.

Yet perfectly usable by humans.

>A real world equivalent would be something like the MK19 mounted grenade launcher, which weighs in at around 77lbs.

Except bolters are not 40mm, they're between .50 and .75 caliber.

Stop trying to apply real world physics and practicality to bolters.

Human-size and Marine-size bolters are two different things. DH lists separate statblocks for each, and really, it should be immediately evident from the sheer size difference between the two. Any gun a human could reasonably shoulder would look like a toy in a Marine's huge, sausage-fingers-can't-fit-under-the-trigger-guard hands.

Godwyn for life. All otehr need not apply.

>Human-size and Marine-size bolters are two different things.
that's just FFG's bullshit

Boltguns are boltguns. Humans have used them in 40k for years. Humans use bolt ammunition in their shotguns. Humans can shoulder heavy bolters, autocannons, and stubbers without (much) issue.

Marines are only seven feet tall. They're big, but not THAT big.

>Human-size and Marine-size bolters are two different things.

Only if you got FFG books shoved so far up your ass you're spouting Veeky Forums may-mays.

Even FFG books say bolters are .75 caliber and that the main difference between Astartes and non-Astartes is ergonomics. Seeing that GW seems to think Marine bolters go down to .50 caliber, makes you wonder just how tiny human bolters have to be. 9mm? Maybe for heavy bolters.

That's why I gave my legion dudes Godwyn/Ultima bolters, because .75 for the win.

to be fair to FFG they had a reason for doing this.
They were trying to scale up the power level of the game, and having bolters be still useful at the power level they'd chosen for space marines (which did make them feel appropriately superhuman) would result in bolters being stupidly powerful for lower levels of play.

To also be fair, FFG did kinda screw up with how they ramped that power level up making the bolters way too powerful compared to other options.

Also, while this is a kinda big fucking with the fluff (if somewhat justified), I still call bullshit on people who act like FFG books were fucking fluff up all the time. Most of it's just expanding into places that had not been established yet.

>Do explain.
I was thinking of the failed gyro-jet pistol earlier in the thread. Considering it had a max round velocity of 380 m/s. Fat ass Bolter rounds are capable of piercing power armor, so they must be flying pretty damn fast.

>While firing heavy bolters and autocannons from the hip is no problem.
>Yet perfectly usable by humans.
I thought it was pretty common knowledge that bolters come in different sizes and shapes.
>The Space Marines are not the only warriors of the Imperium to carry boltguns into battle, but the version carried by the Adeptus Astartes, the MK Vb Godwyn pattern boltgun, is by far the largest and most devastating. By comparison, the smaller patterns of boltgun carried by the Adeptus Sororitas or the champions of the Imperial Guard are pale reflections.

>Except bolters are not 40mm, they're between .50 and .75 caliber.
Of course, but they're in the same size range and offer similar destructive capability.

>to be fair to FFG they had a reason for doing this.
absolutely

it's just something that can be safely ignored when talking about the universe, because it's purely for the sake of gameplay (much like people don't, or shouldn't take in-game weapon ranges and shit at face value)

weapon ranges are also something FFG really fucked up with, but again it's not something that honestly matters because it will never come up or be brought into 40k proper

If only somebody there had informed them of, I dunno, special bolter rounds. There's a whole host of them in the fluff and different editions of the game from basically

>I was thinking of the failed gyro-jet pistol earlier in the thread.

Well, 60's technology and all that. Also, the bullets used that rocket energy to launch out of the gun as well. On a bolter they leave the gun at speeds good enough to penetrate armour, so any additional speed the rocket adds is just bonus.

>I thought it was pretty common knowledge that bolters come in different sizes and shapes.
>Of course, but they're in the same size range and offer similar destructive capability.

Never seen bolters range in size from a large rifle to a GMG. Most bolters seem to be relatively equal in size.

>but again it's not something that honestly matters because it will never come up or be brought into 40k proper
I mean by this standard the table top ranges are also hilarious.
The manticore missiles is 120" Which is silly and would never come up in an actual table top game.
It also less than a kilometer once you translate it. Which is pretty damn short for rocket artillery.

they did use those. They were introduced in the same book as the astartes pattern bolt rounds.

The problem is, that in the fluff those were always used for special purposes, and bolsters should still have been able to fire standard astartes rounds and be useful at the scale, so it doesn't get them around that problem.

Rather than using d6 we should be using d10 for AP rolls. This would allow a wider range of options and reduce AP2 bloat currently happening.

>I mean by this standard the table top ranges are also hilarious.
Yeah, for real. It's almost like FFG took those ranges literally when making their books.

I don't remember specifics, but things like a battle cannon only having a 1000m range.

>those were always used for special purposes

Yeah, so use them in those situations. What's the problem? They're Deathwatch, for fuck's sake, they got the resources. Give them good bolter rounds to begin with and then a whole host of specialist rounds that let them deal with whole host of problems. There, you just makes bolters versatile weapons for all situations and the dudes toting heavy weapons still have their uses, but can't do everything.

Or why even limit anything? GW doesn't care if your DWs don't have anything but frag and assault cannons, why should FFG, other than some forced "muh vision of 40k!"

>Give them good bolter rounds to begin with and then a whole host of specialist rounds that let them deal with whole host of problems.
this is exactly what they did.
They just scaled up the damage of the standard bolter round for the game.

I don't see how having it be a special bolter round vs a special bolter is somehow that much better for saving the fluff. Plus you know that someone would try to say they got the astartes arounds for their normal bolter and use them in non-astartes scale games unless they had the bolter be different.

>Or why even limit anything? GW doesn't care if your DWs don't have anything but frag and assault cannons, why should FFG, other than some forced "muh vision of 40k!"
have a beer and calm down.
They wanted bolters to be used because they are iconic, it's a perfectly reasonable concept.
Having a small thing just for the RPGs for balance and scaling issues is not worth getting upset about.

>Marines are only seven feet tall. They're big, but not THAT big.
No. There is no biological cap on how high a marine get and it depends on the person's genes. Average space marine height is 7'7", with individuals being as short as just 6'6" (some Napoleon from the HH) or as tall as 9'2". (Black Dragons, Pollux). Many however are eight feet tall.

>It also less than a kilometer once you translate it.

Assuming everything on the board is suppose to be in scale.

I've played games where it flat out says in the rulebook that ranges are representative and escalate the further out you go. So 0-6" is less than 6-12". A squad with light arms could fire somewhat effectively to 6", representing at tops a few hundred meters. A heavy machine gun or a light autocannon firing to 12" isn't actually firing twice as far as the small arms, but can be a mile away. 18" can be 3 miles away, etc.

And no, humans can't fire marine boltguns. In fluff Space Marine boltguns weigh so much that some people can't even lift them, and just firing them would collapse their entire shoulder. This is either due to much bigger calibers than what's standard for human bolters, or far more propellant. Which is more likely, because many space marine bolters fire hypersonic rounds.

bolters are better thought of as rocket assisted rather than gyrojets.

yeah, but GW games it's more like "the scaling is based on whibbly wobbly scalely whalely stuff", and should be taken as very broad strokes and not any sort of progression that works according to a system.

Which is basically what was being said.

>I don't see how having it be a special bolter round vs a special bolter is somehow that much better for saving the fluff.

Because Marines having access to superior quality munitions is more in line with the fluff than Marines using Heavy Bolter sized bolters as their standard armament.

>you know that someone would try to say they got the astartes arounds for their normal bolter and use them in non-astartes scale games unless they had the bolter be different

Make them extremely rare finds and limited to individual cartridges for non-DW. Also, highly illegal, though at times the party could get gifted one as an award.

Or, you know, seeing that Bolters are not just big modern guns, but have a whole host of electronics and shit inside of them, make such bolts unable to be fired except from an authorized gun.

>They wanted bolters to be used because they are iconic, it's a perfectly reasonable concept.

Seeing the ridiculous builds and weapons you could use in other games, I don't see why they had to get so restrictive with the DW. If players want to pursue an iconic DW force or not is up to them.

Do cite your sources, I'm sure you got that one FFG snippet just waiting to be posted.

>Average space marine height is 7'7"
No. The average marine height (IN FULL ARMOR) is 7' flat. Maybe 7'6" if they ditched the wide-ass stance.

>In fluff Space Marine boltguns weigh so much that some people can't even lift them
normal people can pick up and fire AUTOCANNONS without assistance

>I don't see why they had to get so restrictive with the DW.
what do you even mean by this.
You can use other guns, they just wanted bolters to also be a good option.

They did fuck up a fair bit with how much they buffed the bolters power. But that's a balancing fuckup, not an attempt to 'be restrictive'.

>suspensor harnesses
Lifting an autocannon with the assistance of a fucking antigravity gizmo is not an achievement.

>No. The average marine height (IN FULL ARMOR) is 7' flat. Maybe 7'6" if they ditched the wide-ass stance.
Nope. The Regimental Standard says space marines are 7'7", and I've averaged all instances across all 40k instances of marine height, it comes out to be 7'6". Then we have numerous mentions in the fluff of them being well over seven feet tall. GW posting a graph years and years ago doesn't mean shit, even the Black Library height chart was bigger than seven feet.

But regardless, there is no standardized height in space marines because the gene-seed depends upon the height of the neophyte/his genes. It's how you get freaks like the Black Dragons.

If you fuck with the balance to push people towards a certain thing, it does become a bit restrictive. Yeah, sure, you can not take bolter, if you want to suck.

Pictured, no space marine bolters.

>The Regimental Standard says space marines are 7'7"

>***We realise that most Guardsmen’s shoulders only come up to a Space Marine’s elbow.

This for example means that, assuming a Guardsmen of average human male height, results in a 7'7" tall space marine.

Shootas should be whatever strength and AP the ork shooting them THINKS they should be.

>Make them extremely rare finds and limited to individual cartridges for non-DW. Also, highly illegal, though at times the party could get gifted one as an award

FFG have done that already.
One of the dark heresy supplements has a black market gun thats rigged too shoot astartes rounds for their massive damage. But they're hard to find and it only loads 3 at a time.

And look how happy that one guy is that he only has to fire a heavy bolter.

Point being? That chart was made over a decade ago and doesn't even match up with GW's own fluff. Canonicity is questionable as well as it doesn't appear in published material either, such as a book or codex.

>wide-ass stance

You don't gain much out of that.

That chart was used last year or the year before that. And it's mounted on the HQ wall with the title "are you as tall as a space marine" or something similar.

Besides, if you read official GW fluff, you'd know Space Marines are 3m tall.

You're looking at it backwards. It's not that miniature burrowing rocket-propelled grenades should have a higher AP, it's that everything that has a higher AP is *that much more powerful* than a miniature burrowing rocket-propelled grenade.

it does line up with GWs fluff, GW has only ever given 7ft figures for the height of marines. 8ft+ marines have only existed in fanfluff or the occasional exceptionally tall marine like those Black Dragon Mutants who are 9 ft.

Correct. They are heavy bolters.

They have a much higher weight while firring the same size or larger round at a MUCH higher rate of fire.

That bit of fluff clearly states that the average space marine is *not* three meters tall.

That one specific space marine was three meters tall, and he "towered over" his fellow marines.

but there is a difference of intent that pretty damn important.
If they meant of bolters to be good enough to be considered an option, but fucked up and made them too good, the intent was not for restriction.

Normal human troopers need to tripod-mount heavy bolters, autocannons, and I believe heavy stubbers.
It's only beefcakes like Try Again Bragg who can fire them "from the hip," and, as his name suggests, accuracy takes a nosedive.

If you do the changes based on the notion that bolters need to be more central, because Marines, and end up fucking the balance, you weren't doing a good job and you wanting to push this vision of the game where people would use bolters more, is the reason it happened. If you hadn't fucked the pooch, there would have not been that issue.

I'll post some quotes too. From Seventh Retribution.

>He was enormous, his head brushing the ceiling of the brig more than two and a half metres above the floor.

From Blood Gorgons

>“Where Sargaul reached almost two hundred and fifty centimetres tall in bare feet, Barsabbas was short for a Traitor Marine, topping out at two metres thirty in plated height.”

See

GW's fluff has them everywhere form fucking 6'6" to 9'. Black Library is just Games Workshop, the only difference is that it is their publishing arm. There is no such thing as canon tiers in 40k and that "fan fluff" is officially and marketed material by GW. And-

Is GW as well.

given that if they'd no changes the bolter wouldn't have been been a reasonable choice at all, you'd still get the same issue of 'restriction' just going the other way.

Fucking it up did result in the issue, but doing nothing also would have resulted in the issue. So the attempt and intent was not the cause, it was the execution of that intent.

Heavy Bolters =/= Space Marine Heavy Bolters

Fine but you are the best of the best and therefore show that in your new base cost of 30pts per marine

that's just one guy, who is unique because he's so strangely huge

>the stronger soldiers
>from a suspensor harness
the quote fits his description more.

So you're saying a heavy bolter or autocannon has less recoil and weighs less than a marine bolter?

I think I'd be down for a 2W Sternguard Vet with IC for 30 points, maybe tack on BS5.

Exactly:
Beefcakes, not normal troopers, and certainly not "normal humans."
And some of those models, if they have stats that are usable in the current editions, probably have BS 2

where was it being said that an exceptionally strong soldier with a suspensor harness couldn't use a space marine bolter like a heavy weapon?

Necromunda heavies are not described as exceptional beefcakes. They're strong, sure, but also technically able, since they have to be good to maintain those guns. Harker, despite being S4, is just said to be a strong dudes.

>from a suspensor harness

It says some regiments use them. The Cadian who picked up the autocannon along with its tripod and fired it on the move did not have a suspensor harness.

Whole point is that people able to pick up a heavy bolter and fire it from the hip are not some one in a million special super-human marvels. Yet according to the Marine caliber bolter crowd even they couldn't deal with the recoil and weight of a Marine bolter.

Considering space marines load their bolters with hypersonic ammo, definitely.

Right next to where it says a soldier without a suspensor harness and serious muscles cannot fire a marine bolter even from a tripod.

>Considering space marines load their bolters with hypersonic ammo, definitely.

[citation needed]

>Praese-Sword Brother Gulvein ran into the dining chamber, his sword buzzing with leashed lightning and a battle hymn on his lips. Six of the Chapter's elite were behind him. To Jushol's psychic senses, (Navigator) their ornate armour seemed to blaze with light as they marched in step into the room, blasting orks off their feet with shots from their bolt pistols. Mass reactives thudded into ork flesh at hypersonic velocities, detonating deep inside to tear chunks from their bodies. Incredibly, the orks did not all fall. Their robust frames contained the explosions, and some fought on, sporting wounds from weapons that would have smeared a man across the walls.

>Yet according to the Marine caliber bolter crowd even they couldn't deal with the recoil and weight of a Marine bolter.
the extreme examples of them say that.
There is a range, from
"humans can use them, but they're to heavy to use like a rifle or carbine"
Or even "FFG did it to make Space Marines feel more powerful, and they even gave rules for how a normal human can use SM bolt rounds with a modified bolter".

Not saying there aren't stupid levels that argument can be taken too, but just saying "space marine bolters are bigger and have more recoil than those used by normal men" doesn't mean your going to that level of stupid.

>The legionary does not move. His finger tenses upon the trigger of his bolt pistol. A single twitch and the firing pin will strike the primer. The charge will ram the warhead down the pistol barrel and out into the still air between the muzzle and my skull. An instant later its secondary charge will fire. By the time it hits my skull it will be travelling at over a thousand metres per second. An instant after it has punched into my brain, it will detonate, scattering blood, bone and shrapnel into the air.
-Child of Night

>Only Mingzhou kept some measure of reason in her head. ‘He’s over twenty-five hundred metres away,’ she assured them. ‘Someone with the best lasrifle on Castellax couldn’t pick off a target from that range. We have to get out of here before he can close the distance.’
As she spoke, Algol raised his arm, the graceless bulk of a bolter clenched in his fist. Without pause or hesitation, the Space Marine fired. From the other side of the tractor, Deacon screamed and fell, his chest ripped to splinters by the bolter’s explosive shell.
*skip*
The slaves hiding in the cargo bed rose and tried to run. As each tried to leap clear, he was picked off in mid-air by a shot from Algol’s bolter, their mangled bodies flying across the tunnel.
-Siege of Castellax

And at which point does it say those rounds are limited to only Marines?

What GW REALLY means when they say a bolter can "only be wielded by the superhuman might of an Astartes", they mean that regular guys aren't going to bother trying to use a weapon whose pistol grip is wider than their entire handspan.

veteran sergeants should have an additional wound, and have better stats

Shit, everyone's veteran sergeants (aside from maybe exarchs) should get a bit of a buff. Maybe people would actually take them.

Newton's Third Law. These hypersonic rounds don't seem to be fired sonically or subsonically with the initial kicker charge, meaning these bolters are firing .75 caliber slugs at Mach 5 minimum, which will do bad things to your body if you try to shoulder that shit and it doesn't have the weight to take the impact. Bolters would need magical recoil absorption so you could shoulder it.

How big do you think Marine hands are?

exarchs don't need it.
When we (yes I play eldar) got it, I assumed it was part of a shift to making sergants better for everyone moving forward.
instead it's been massively inconsistent, with some getting the 2W, and some not, with no rhyme or reason.

No, that's ridiculous. Frankly if we're going to be editing stats, we should just make marines a truly fluffy and beginner army. Give space marines ridiculous stats, 2 wounds, increased toughness, etc, at the cost of only having a handful in a space marine "army" in your typical 2000pt game, making you vulnerable to being swarmed.

>thinking real world physics applies
>after posting
It's 40k, and the authors have no sense of scale and work entirely on rule of cool.

Pretty big.

Don't look that big compared to the dudes around him.

Yeah, I like it on Nobs, Exarchs and Skits. I just wish they put it on everyone's squad leaders.

Give sarge a reason to buy that power fist.

.75 caliber musket ball of pure lead is, from what I can find, 598 grains or about 39 g (I rounded this up for you). Of course it's not a bolt shaped, but lead is heavier than most explosives and rocket fuel, as well as casings they'd probably use in constructing the bolt. But if you can find a more accurate representation of the weight, do share. I don't know how much over 1000 m/s it was, but lets say it's 1000 m/s for clarity (Mach 5, by the way, is 1 701.45 m/s).

Now, as we all know how to calculate kinetic energy, I'll just skip the boring bits and go right to the solution: 19,500 joules. That's in the ballpark of a .50 BMG.

...

Bolts are made out of depleted uranium/deutrium whatever the hell it's called now. They should weigh a lot more than musket balls.