Lore/Crunch-wise how do Pulse Rifles compare to the likes of Bolters, Hotshot-lasguns and other base infantry weapons?

Rape at long distances

they are, some books also have them shooting 3 "round" burst or even full auto

I prefer carbines. Easy to carry them around inside a vehicle and in the streets.

It turns little metal balls into plasma then launches them at people.

the core idea of the design is solid, but GW has been shitting up the tau more and more since their inception. 80% of their suits and vehicles look fucking retarded.

It's cool, but I feel like it's too long for an army that prizes mobility and mechanised warfare.

It provides a pretty unique role and supplement for all their heavy mechs. If your standard troop is almost like a designated marksman, they'd absolutely rape from afar while the mechs tear shit up, in close range.

Since nobody went into much depth:

Compared to actual legion-based Boltweapons and Hotshot Lasguns they're not massively more powerful, but do hit a notable bit harder. That being said their relatively slow rate of fire and general morphology ensures they're pretty much stuck being dedicated marksman weapons instead of designed for assault. Fantastic when you have a long range difference or entrenched position, drastically worse than a Boltgun in practicality once you hit close assault ranges.

Consider that a heavy stubber is a .50 caliber machine gun, and the pulse rifle has more stopping power and penetrative capability than that, and it's suddenly really fucking scary.

Its stopping power is nothing short of scary, but that still leaves you with the issues of morphology and decently low rate of fire. Once you get into a close-assault firefight, where even one or two direct hits on the right spots can kill or cripple, something more akin to the Bolter would be preferrable.

In the end, a Pulse Rifle, by modern definitions, is a really nasty sniper rifle. Extremely good at what it does, but not an optimal choice for assault or close engagements.

I would more put it down as a 'battle rifle' (not super accurate terminology) over a sniper rifle, due to apperantly being nimble enough to shoot accuractly on the move. I suspect the gyrostabaliser (the circle on the front) aids quite a bit with that.

But no, for close range firefights it's gonna be awful.

I mean, sure it's awful at close quarters, but the Tau as a whole are awful at close quarters. If they absolutely need to do CQC, then they'll call upon the Kroot and Gue'vesa. Otherwise, they just retreat until the enemy is a comfortable distance away.

What. Bolters in lore are vastly stronger than pulse rifles. Marines for the most part will actually shrug off pulse rifle shots, whereas with bolters those things tend to be one shot one kills.

In the Codexes they make of a point of saying that Pulse Rifles are stronger.

It doesn't though. Pulse Rifles are penetrators that don't have much kinetic impact. They don't knock you over, they bore a hole through you if they're able to penetrate your armor.

Bolters aren't one-shot kills against Marines by any means, you also have to consider that Marines themselves are incredibly deadly and accurate, and likely know where to aim against Power Armour. Tau, on the other hand, are capable of killing Marines with Pulse Rifles, but the general effect described is the pulses raking across the thicker plates.

That being said, the actual difference between proper Space Marine Bolters and Pulse Rifles in raw power isn't too huge, though Human Bolters are completely outclassed.

Pulse rifles are canon much better than any basic weaponry that IG/nids/eldar can bring to the table.

Bolters are fucking weird, because spess muhreens tend to powercreep/get nerfed to match the plot. You can bet your ass if it's some lone marines' last stand, bolters are instakilling rape cannons - in a big pitched battle with lots of big guns going around, they might as well be launching paintballs

Man, I love the Tau cause they got the future aesthetic with non-retarded tactics going on.

But I also really love the Kriegers too.

What do Veeky Forums? Why no Tau Kriegers?

>Eldar

Debatable, the Pulse Rifle is vastly better in terms of actual force but Shuriken weapons are both much better at penetrating armour and have a much, much higher rate of fire. The Pulse Rifle is thus only better at long range in practical terms, quickly losing advantage the closer you get.

Remember, if 'how hard it hits and how hard it kills things' was the primary deciding factor of a weapon's quality, we wouldn't be going around with M16's.

And the codices are typically bullshit that claim obviously false stuff like the Chaos Gods being motherfucking omnipotent when they get their asses whooped on a regular basis. Plus their basic mechanism for damage it's pretty obvious that bolters are a fuckload more lethal. A bolt is either a supersonic or hypersonic 19mm shell with enough explosive force that one shot can send a 1 tonne object (space marine) flying backwards ten feet upon detonation. The amount of energy contained within those shells is fucking insane, it's basically a 30mm Chaingun with way better penetration.

Pulse Rifles meanwhile focus on punching holes through stuff, but don't have much in the way of explosive force. A bolt has an explosive shockwave where it can cause organ rupture within a meter, so poorly armored infantry standing right next to the impact site might die as well. The Pulse Rifle meanwhile is purely directed energy and has no real splash like an Imperial plasma gun.

It's basically a better version of the Hotshot, but uses plasma instead of heat.

>Fio Se'Phi'Roth

I wouldn't say so given that seemingly ever god damn marine in the Horus Heresy get shot by a bolter and then falls over dead. I haven't read one yet where combat didn't instantly result in marines piling up.

When the fuck do Chaos gods get their ass whooped? I haven't read much 40k stuff since 4th ed

>Bolters knocking back Marines 10ft

Completely over the average. Boltguns usually don't kill Space Marines on hits to the thicker plates of Power Armour and the concept of it being hypersonic is only found within a few scare sources rather than the average. Meanwhile the Pulse Rifle's shots likely are at hypervelocity since they're technically railguns and the amount of force they impose compared to ammunition mass is ridiculous.

>are both much better at penetrating armour
Shurikens are like the single shittiest weapon for penetrating armor besides the lasgun in 40k. Shurikens are meant for turning massed light infantry into chunky salsa. A very tiny disc around one molecule thick with fuck-all for mass isn't going to be penetrating much armor at all, and unsurprisingly they don't. Opening up against a marine with a shuriken launcher typically results in most just looking like pincushions with discs sticking out of the plate with one unlucky guy who took one to the neck.

Shuriken weapons are good for one thing and one thing only, dumping thousands and thousands of rounds into a crowd of Orks and telling greenskin superior biology to go fuck itself while it's reduced to sushi. Which isn't to say that's a bad thing, Orks are the most common enemy after all.

But I'd much rather have a bolter, pulse rifle, or gaus flayer.

Practically every story by Dan Abnett has bolters sending people fucking flying (even as much as six meters once), and pulse rifles don't have force. They're plasma, they burn through shit and pop out the other side while the guy shot realizes a couple seconds later that his heart was vaporized. You don't bring a pulse rifle to kill Tyranids.

I recall reading an account where a pulse round punched through a tank and sucked the crew through the quarter-sized exit hole.

Penetrating armour was probably the wrong phrase, but rather the amount of ammunition is so high it's probably going to be hitting the softer spots between your plates eventually, which against Astartes won't do much, especially from the front where you're all covered up. Against Carapace though? There's going to be more than a few ripping through that synthcloth between the ceramite/armaplas plates.

That being said, I concede to your point.

>and sucked the crew through the quarter-sized exit hole.
Wat

People I remember, but not marines or anything in heavy armor.

How can something that launches matter not have force? It's not light. A ball of plasma is still a ball of matter equivalent to what went in.

youtube.com/watch?v=dvrQciFL0ig

No, that was a hammerhead's railgun. It created a vacuum behind itself because of how fast it was going.

That was actually a rail gun round from a Tau tank

You have seen Shurikens on the tabletop recently? AP 2 on a roll to wound of 6.

That was the railgun on a Hammerhead.

Even plasma has force at hypervelocity, considering it has mass. 'Burning through shit' isn't really a scientifically accurate concept for a smaller bolt of ionized matter either.

No, it'll be losing matter as long as it exists because plasma is not a solid, it's a gas. And I don't recall pulse rifles ever even being described by GW as turning solid ammunition into plasma, that's fan fiction the image posted above.

40k plasma weapon technology is nothing short of spacemagic, the bolts don't really dissipate before hitting their target nor have we ever heard of longer ranges really changing the impact of the weapon until it goes out of its self-containment range as a projectile. It's not unreasonable to suggest a Pulse Rifle hits with a decent amount of force if the pulse is fired at a high enough velocity.

are breacher squads any good?

Their equipment is nothing short of horrifying for close-range troops but the general biology of the Fire Caste (which summed up is even worse than Humans for soldiers, especially at close ranges) keeps their casualty rates really, really high in-canon.

>Shurikens are like the single shittiest weapon for penetrating armor besides the lasgun in 40k.

They're better than bolters you dumb shit.

AP2 on a 6. They do better at penetrating armour than both bolters and pulse rifles. A squad of dire avengers or even guardians can potentially turn a good number of marines to confetti in the shooting phase.

Plasma is generally considered a separate form of matter to gas. It doesn't follow all the same rules.

Considering that the pulse rifles were developed because the Tau were getting their asses kicked to the curb by orcs I'm pretty sure penetrative capability was less important than pure tissue damage and stopping power. (6th Codex).

The bolter is probably closer to an automatic grenade launcher, say the MK 19. And the pulse rifle has a better chance of stopping an orc than that.

You have the "super penatrative" but shitty stopping power in Hellguns, which are pretty useless against orcs since just putting tiny holes in them won't really slow them down.

ah so blueberry flavored spore mines/Repentias

>Marines for the most part will actually shrug off pulse rifle shots
that's because they have power armour, not because pulse rifles are weak

Anyways what bolters have over pulse rifles is their versatility. Not only are they rugged and capable in any situation, you can also use all those wonderful special shells. Going up against kraken penetrator rounds is pretty scary when your dudes don't have power armour and no longer outrange the shooters.

That was really fucking cool. Funny though how the ricochet hit the camera man

>Remember, if 'how hard it hits and how hard it kills things' was the primary deciding factor of a weapon's quality, we wouldn't be going around with M16's.
And if it wasn't important at all, troops in Iraq wouldn't have been breaking out the m14

>I mean, sure it's awful at close quarters, but the Tau as a whole are awful at close quarters. If they absolutely need to do CQC, then they'll call upon the Kroot and Gue'vesa.

The have breachers as well specialised troopers that are specifically trained and equiped to do close range gun fights

Man breachers were such a mistake. Dunno why they couldn't just give the guns to vespid.

To be fair, though, such individuals are said to have a really high casualty rate compared to the rest of the Tau forces, especially Breachers. The Fire Caste just aren't biologically cut out for close-range combat, which is one of the main reasons why Tau spamming range is a thing in the first place.

I like the idea of breachers, gonna need someone with shotguns clearing out bunkers and space stations from pesky humans. The addition of the area shield drone is quite a neat idea.

Kroot will always stop to each stuff, so they are prolly gonna get distracted, and the Vespids aren't really suitable for cramped quarters due to size and I'm not sure how long reach the strain leader's helmet has.

Marines should just start hoarding Tau weaponry. Ultras with pulse rifles would be bonkers.

demiurge tunnlgard when?

Is that pic related supposed to be Tau or Imperial Guard?

Nah, the Astartes-pattern Boltgun is pretty much straight-up better for what the Marines do, with the design focused a lot more around versatility, especially with different kinds of ammunition. Meanwhile Pulse Rifles only hit a decent, but not ridiculous amount harder.

Scouts with Pulse Rifles, on the other hand, would likely see somewhat improved effectiveness except against heavily armoured targets, where Kraken rounds would outperform the Rifle.

>aesthetic standpoint

This Tau just look and feel the part, wish their was more Tau in the video games

Bolters are nothing like a MK 19, calcs easily put bolters as having 1 megajoule or more of kinetic energy, and that's just the impact as a slug and not counting the following up explosive. MK 19 grenades definitely cannot penetrate eight inches of super steel alloys like bolters can.

Not so much weaker. I believe it was the blood gorgons novel that had CSM's stating that the tau where difficult to fight purely because pulse rifles

Far weaker, Pulse Rifles struggle to penetrate Power Armour while proper legion-sized plasma weapons are used to drop Terminators.

Pulse Rifles fire micro-bursts of plasma, not a fist-sized bolt. Still, they're much more reliable, longer ranged and have a drastically higher ammo count.

Plasma Guns are over two million degrees Fahrenheit and have enough energy density that even if a plasma bolt fired by an Imperial gun misses you, it will still boil your flesh off and/or set you on fire. A plasma pistol is capable of vaporizing a one tonne marine, power armor and all.

There's this video of this crab being sucked into this pipe on the ocean bed through this tiny but incredibly pressurized hole.

I would imagine it would be something like that

What about dark eldar

Their dark lances and splinter weapons are pretty fucking crazy

Yes they are. Dark Lances are one of, if not the most, powerful infantry portable weapons in the whole setting.

I'm perfectly okay with Eldar of all things having the more advanced weapons.

Same with Necrons.

Tachyon Arrows still seem absolutely ridiculous.

>A plasma pistol is capable of vaporizing a one tonne marine, power armor and all.

A melta gun yes, plasma pistol/gun not really. There is a reason plasma doesn't instant death marines.

>The Librarian’s eyes went wide. There was a crater in his breastplate as large as a man’s palm, its edges still molten.
Plasma pistol point blank, Fallen Angels.

Seems like a good comparison, hell, pulse weapon dmg has been misstaken for being caused by plasma weapons by knowledgable characters in the fluff.

Those are one-offs, though, not a primary weapon.

I'd put in for the Skitarii Ranger's Galvantic Rifles. They have the same range as a Pulse Rifle, but trade that extra power for increased armor penetration. Discounting the benefits of greater BS on the side of the Skitarii, they'd wreck an equivalent squad of Fire Warriors simply because they can make their armor saves against the Tau's fire while the Tau can't.

Of course, Tau have a better chance against armored targets because they come out with a higher chance of dealing wounds, and can even scratch the paint off AV11 until it dies. But Skitarii can pack lightning guns for Haywire for that job, while Fire Warriors just have EMP grenades, so have to get in closer where they suck.

i love the cyberpunk feel of tau

but all those fucking giant robots are stupid so i barely have any

also kroot suck. i want my space chickens to fuck up dudes in cc

>Human Bolters are completely outclassed.
Human bolters are identical in power

>And the codices are typically bullshit that claim obviously false stuff like the Chaos Gods being motherfucking omnipotent when they get their asses whooped on a regular basis.

No, they don't.

And the Chaos Gods never got their asses whooped by anyone.

>inb4 HH

The lore shows that they meant for Horus aka the "Sacrificed King" to lose. Also the Emperor can never face the Chaos Gods directly unless he want5s to die.

How practical would it be to field a tau army with no battlesuits? I personally don't mind them, but I'm curious.

Railguns as the main battle rifle when? It's funny how quickly they fixed all the issues from prototype to mass-production in a matter of years.

>30" S6 FP1 Rapid Fire

If the Tau survive, mostly intact, for the next 200 years, how good are their odds of survival?

Wow. That's a lot of shots per magazine. How often do the power cartridges have to be replaced because magazine size is sounding like it is determined by that.

Someone is watching their backs from the shadows, so I say that pretty good.

Logically they would have way too good of a chance and that's why they're a fucking shit heap of a faction.

They would rule the galaxy since the Imperium would have collapsed by that time, the Necrons destroyed themselves in their infighting, and the Tyranids fleets were obliterated by the fighting during the End Times.

A power catridge should have enough energy for 50 shots. Unless I'm misremembering shit badly.

They will end up creating a machine god.

They will be nommed by bigger Tyranid fleet

Okay, so what's the minimum time, in your view, that the Tau would need to survive for the time being to be able to stand a chance against the bigger threats in the universe.

They can already stand against the bigger threats in the galaxy. They are a galactic superpower according to the fluff.

Now that infantry can take missile pod drones/turrets? Fairly.

Melta piranhas, some tanks, a core of fire warriors/pathfinders.. you'd at least be viable in a casual setting.

Wait, really? I feel like I keep getting told how they're just one small crusade from being wiped out.

In 50 years they will double the number of planets.

How about you read ze recent fluff? The kauyon and mont'ka books.

And yet the Chaos Gods are specifically described as fleeing Horus' body in a fearful panic when Horus struck him down. That lore you cite also means nothing- it's the word of a fucking daemon. We have zero reason to take a DAEMON'S word over an omnipresent narrator from the old Horus Heresy fluff.

Nope, not yet. Although I did hear they got their own Titan class battlesuit, so I guess they really are becoming a threat.

Nill. Chaos will end up destroying everything just like in the End of Times. Either that or the Imperium dusts off one of its STC's its got laying around and kills everything.