Can an Imperial Guard wield a Bolter?

Yes, we saw many times
Which is more funny, we saw them wield them with one had, yet marines are mostly depicted wielding them with both hands, arent Astarters like dozen times stronger?

inquisitorial storm troopers can take bolters instead of hot-shot lasguns if I recall correctly

>Can an Imperial Guard wield a Bolter?
Don't IG officers have the option to take bolters and boltpistols if they want to?

Yeah, it's no problem.

>Wouldn't it rip their arm off?
Why? It's a gyrojet weapon. It shouldn't have that much recoil. And the (presumably ridiculous) weight of it should do a great deal to compensate for that as well.

Hell, there's even that one Catachan that carries a heavy bolter like a rifle.

Like many things in 40k, bolters can or can't be used by normal people depending on how the individual author feels at the time

>Like other Space Marine weaponry, Astartes boltguns are designed around their superhuman physique. The weight of each weapon would require most humans to use a supporting brace, with hand-grips larger than any normal human could manage. However, even if a normal human were to fire the boltgun, the resulting recoil would rip their arm from its socket.[10d] Normal humans found to be in possession of even a single Astartes bolt round, much less a boltgun, can expect a swift justice for their crimes.[10a]

Point being... there are many, many examples in the fluff of humans using bolters. /thread

The sisters of battle do, so why wouldn't guard?

The guard don't have ability-enhancing power armor?

Though as we've noted above the guard do in fact also use them.

Catachans didn't get the nickname "baby ogryns" from nowhere you know

Yeah, it's probably not easy

well, its more like a traditional bullet and casing, that also happens to be a gyrojet, so instead of slowing down it just speeds up and flys straight with no ballistic arc (until it is out of its tiny supply of fuel. then its back it arc)

not really, since it has a rocket to carry the bolt towards the target, it does not need much energy to shoot the bolt, so it probably has the same recoil of normal gun
as a guard player who gives bolters to his officers, yes they can, even if my guess they use a smaller pattern, as an astartes type of bolter would be a nightmare to carry around all day long

>It's a gyrojet weapon
technically not

bolters have an initital charge, which is presumably to cover the main downside of gyrojet weapons

Those citations are from dark heresy, which kinda just made that up wholesale.

Normal Humans

Astartes-scale bolters look like they weigh something to the order of 40kg so I'm sure that doesn't help, but the round is probably no less harsh than a 10ga shotgun. Get a stock with decent recoil compensation (like certain real-world automatic shotguns do) and you're probably not feeling most of that unless you unload the whole magazine in one go.

Still, it uses less shot than a traditional .75 bullet would by the simple merit that the rocket takes up more space than a bullet would in a similarly designed casing, which is shown in the diagram above ( ).

Given a 10ga shotgun's barrel is gonna be approximately .775", firing a solid slug from one is a pretty close approximation for how much kick this thing could have at best, and even then it should be scaled back to indicate the reduced propellant due to it only needing enough charge to accelerate it to the speed needed for the rocket to take over.

Oh, absolutely.

Bolt Gun = Hand-held Auto-Cannon.
basically.

Have you ever played dark heresy?
Normal acolytes are able to wield human sized bolters

Scratch that, don't commissars carry bolters?

Bolt pistols, but yes.

yes but barely.

the initial charge is just enough to get the round out of the barrel so the rocket can kick in, by that point the force is no longer exerted on the user. so the recoil wont be much of an issue

the real issue is that:
A: bolters are scaled to the size of an astartes, being that they are much bigger than normal humans, so a guardsman would have a really tough time handling it.

B: Bolter isnt just a gun, it has an assortment of technology in it that allows an Astartes to use it efficiently. The sight is cosmetic as the reticle is uploaded to the astartes helmet so he can see were it is pointing in real time. Mix that with the assorment of other sensors, weight of the rounds, and weight of all the cosmetics, and you have a really heavy gun. A 50 pound gun would mean nothing to a space marine, but to a guardsman it is impractical to use on the battlefield.

wrong, autocannon is a much bigger round

these are not equatable. While a 10 gauge is technically the same barrel size (or just about) you may not experience the same amount of recoil.

10 gauge slugs are typically ~1 and 3/4 oz in weight and have a muzzel exit velocity of about 390.144 m/s.KE = 1/2 (M * (V * V)) so KE of an average 10 gauge slug is about 3726.45 joules of energy, which is a good amount. However, it can be assumed that bolts are a lot heavier that slugs, massively so. Quickly we can see by this relationship that as the round weight increases so will the force increase in a linear relationship.

What about the human sized bolter

No, the cannons start at 20mm. At least that's the commonly accepted arbitrary starting point.

Huh, thinking about it, I can't recall the last time I saw a marine use a bolter with a stock - you can just see captain catachan over here is, but marines don't need it.

Human sized bolter is only FFG stuff from what I remember. Both humans and Astartes use Godwyn pattern bolters in the models so I assume canonically there is no difference.

is the gun caliber the same? you run into the same problem

Bolts are big rounds filled with dense materials and rocket propellants, and that propellant is only spent after it leaves the gun. Also all artists depictions of bolts that I have seen show the bullet itself being a lot bigger in comparison to the caseing than conventional munitions. Pic related is a 20mm round which is a little bigger than .75 cal, as you can see the bullet is a lot smaller in size compared to the caseing, bolts are not like this.

this is hypothetical since we do not have the exact weight characteristic of the bolt, but I would assume, given the fact that bolts are filled with all sorts of materials to promote armour penetration, are filled with explosives, and are filled with rocket propellent, they must be a lot heavier than conventional rounds, and therefore would produce a lot more force.

>user uses science and math explain his point rather than theory craft
>on /tg

thought I would never see the day.

That once again leads us to another problem, though. That's to assume we need to produce enough force to launch the projectile fast enough to travel at the speeds needed to cover dozens or even hundred of meters. That's a lot more force than "just enough to get the round clear of the barrel", as sited in the description of how bolt ammunition works.

how much is enough to leave the barrel? 50 m/s, 100m/s? 200m/s?

these are all incredibly slow in terms of ballistics

I once read that a space marine could fire his bolter from a mile away when an ork boy jumped out of a truck, and hit him before he hit the ground.

a bullet would need considerable speed throughout to accomplish this

Space Marines can also eat brains to absorb memories. So don't expect that much scientific accuracy.

>Needing the brain

An astartes pattern?

Once.

That's an extreme outlier.

Enough to leave the barrel would be about 50-100 m/s, but bolters are usually considered supersonic, which is about 350 m/s.

Obviously.

If you mean an Astartes Pattern bolter then most likely no.

Well considering how marines often are depicted firing their bolters at very close range, due to their nature as shock assault units, and that bolters are required to function at these very close ranges I think we can assume that the propellant charge is designed to do alot more then simply keeping the gyrojet in the air until ignition

so lets say 100 m/s

how much do you think a bolt weighs? the 20mm bullet in this pic weighs 130 grams and is a lot smaller than the caseing, and if we look at pic related, which is an average bolt, we can see that the bullet is actually bigger than the caseing. It has admamantium in it and depleted uranium, which are both really dense, and has an explosive charge.

it would be totally within the realm of possibility that this bolt, while being the same size as the 20mm package, is heavier than the 20mm, maybe even by so much as 200%.

so lets say that the bolt was 300 grams and leaves the barrel going 656 feet per second, which in terms of ballistics is really slow, airsoft guns can beat this, this still produces an initial energy of about ~7000 joules upon the user, which is 5162.935 foot pounds of energy.

there is no way a guardsman could be effective with a bolter, even on the lower end of the numbers

exactly, there is no way the bolt leaves the barrel only going 200 m/s

correction, mean to say 200m/s on the first line

>there is no way a guardsman could be effective with a bolter

And yet, we have definite examples of at least some being able to. Therefore, there's either something awry with your calculations or the setting doesn't bother with scientific consistency.

I think I know which one it is.

obviously the latter

but is there even examples of guardsman being effective with bolters and not just using them? there is a difference

Daily reminder that 30k era bolters come in .70, .60 and even in .50 calibers.

>Astartes Pattern

What's that? I mean, you see the same pattern bolters on IG and SM.

Are we even supposed to let loose on shit like bolters with hard science?

The same fictional universe that produced the bolter also produced semi-psychic fungus men and a magical hell dimension. Maybe scientific accuracy is not as important as a spectacular rule of cool here.

Just maybe.

no you dont, Marines and humans use very different sizes of bolters.

this isnt reflected in the TT at all, but then again what is?

Is it reflected in any of the Codexes or only in the FFG fluff?

only ever in fluff, the tabletop doesnt distinguish between it in any form.

But I am quite sure there are mentions of differances in various codices

Yes, Rogue Trader corebook, page 121, specifies the Locke- pattern requiem you can use in the game is a downscaled version of Astartes bolters.

So what is that Godwyn pattern bolter the Catachan officer is using, if not a Godwyn pattern bolter? What are the bolters on old IG models if not the same bolters found on Marines?

All the references to Marines having massive bolters compared to non-Marines I can find are in FFG books.

But what you're not accounting for how the recoil is dispersed. An all-at-once shock that is crippling could be harmless if it is spread out over 6 or 10x the time.

This is how modern grenade launchers can throw a ~150g projectile at ~75 m/s - they slow down the combustion. A internal recoil system in the gun can do the same thing.

.75 cal is 19.5mm. A 40mm grenade is twice the diameter = 8x the volume.

So even accounting for super-dense materials (since a bolt punches through armor by being hard and fast, not a shaped charge) it's probably closer to ammo from a modern human-portable 20mm x 42mm like the Denel PAWS.

If I remember, one of the lore books basically explains (and FFG ran with it) that the Astartes Bolters are chambered in .998 caliber Godwyn while the IG bolters carried by officers and commissars are in the .50 to .75 range so your wrists don't explode.

Well lesse, according to lexicanum the 4th edition marine dex refers to the Astartes Godwyn pattern.

That would be a good indicator, also something called an Index Astartes mentions how normal humans would have great difficulty managing the recoil of bolters from ”space marine forges”. Again implying that there is a seperation

>. A 40mm grenade is twice the diameter = 8x the volume.

irrelevant, grenades are not filled with depleted uranium and adamantium, which is what makes bolts heavy

in fact your graph betrays you, since if we looks at the ballistic range and muzzle velocity of that 40mm grenades, we can see that it only has a muzzle velocity of 76 m/s. The equation for kenetic energy is 1/2 mv^2, so the more you increase the velocity, the more the energy will increase EXPONENTIALLY. this is the key, which is why the grenade launcher in your picture, when fired at a perct 45 degree angle, can only travel 600m at most.

We have to assume that bolters have a much higher initial muzzle velocity due to the fact that space marines will use that at extremely close ranges, due to the fact that they will employ shock tactics. In fact, the bolt, including the case could be even heavier, since we were only accounting for the bullet in the previous calculations.

and even if we take into account that a bolter has a recoil system, that adds even more weight to the gun, making it even less effective for a human to use.

you cannot compare the bolt to this chart, since the grenade and bolt behave in totally separate ways.

>4th edition marine dex

Where, exactly?

>Index Astartes

You got a more precise quote or page number, Index Astartes isn't something you can just browse through quickly.

No such lore exists, see Also, FW gives Tigrus bolter's caliber as .60 and Phobos bolter's as .70.

wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Boltgun

Citations. Have fun

>19: Index Astartes III, pg. 58
>entire page is just about the history of the Land Raider

The words "lexicanum" and "wiki" should autoban anyone who tries to post them.

>marines don't need it.
Power armor is more than capable of compensating the weapon recoil, they don't need a stock unless they are in scout armor.

>stocks exist only to compensate for recoil

Yes but gimped, smaller caliber shitty ones only for veterans and command.
Munitorum by GW states that marine bolter kills or injures non augmented humans.

that could just be propoganda though to scare ig from not wasting bolts and using a holy bolter

see all of these anons posts

Thats an astartes boltgun. Im pretty sure there are several instances in the FFG RPGs where astartes have different gear than the humans, because they need to be bigger to fit their larger size. So an astartes boltgun is larger and more powerful, and a normal person couldnt possibly weild it as well as they could, but there are normal human sized ones in the books.

Sisters of battle use different smaller Deaz pattern bolters, and they have power armor, these models are old as fuck and don't represent modern lore.

ya but its smaller

whats your point?

>Munitorum by GW states that marine bolter kills or injures non augmented humans.

It also says plasma guns can only be reloaded by a techpriest with hours of chanting and careful operations, and volcano cannons are made with crystallized heretics.

Marine bolters don't equal guardsman bolters.

Both are true for 40k. Plasma weapons are rare and dangerous.

if im not mistaken, the conversation was if guardsman could use space marine bolters, not if they could use bolters period.

>Plasma weapons are rare

So why is it that they're found everywhere, from the favored weapon of mass infantry regiments to the scum of underhive gangs?

>dangerous.

user, so you know the logistics of needing a techpriest and hours of time to reload each plasma gun after its 10 round flask runs dry?

Yes but not an astartes supersized one, that would require powerarmor or cybernetics.

Someone post an inquisitorial bolter.
I'M GOING TO HAVE TO SHOOT YOU WITH MY GUN!
MY INQUISITORIAL GUN!

>So why is it that they're found everywhere
Its not. its rarer than bolt weapons.
>scum of underhive gangs?
You mean Necromunda which is known for producing high tech weapons?

Rare for 40k means that there are only billions of plasma weapons out there compared to the infinity bajillion lasguns.

Ah, and bolters are "only" 19mm

>Its not. its rarer than bolt weapons.

So explain to me why bolters are rare as fuck and limited to high ranking IG officers, while plasma guns are standard issue special weapons.

>known for producing high tech weapons?

Do provide a source, because all I can find says it's a massive industrial world, not that it's particularly high tech. I also don't see where it says it produced plasma weapons in such numbers that underhive gangs can get their hands on them in numbers. Mostly they seem to produce pretty mundane weapons, lasguns and such.

By that metric every gun that's not a lasgun is rare.

Here's a modern 20mm cannon for scale.

...

youtube.com/watch?v=eu87AxzBf3Y

What does semi-selective fire mean in this context?

It's somewhat selective, but not fully selective.

I didn't realize the whole front of the gun recoils back. I was looking at him firing it and thought "that looks weird."

>while plasma guns are standard issue special weapons.
Because they are dangerous and kill users, and specialized against armored targets.

>Do provide a source, because all I can find says it's a massive industrial world, not that it's particularly high tech.
It has crap ton of archeotech lying around in underhive, its also one of oldest and most populated hives.

Yes, there just aren't enough bolters to go around. So certain units can get the option but it will never be universal just because the resources don't exist.

>Because they are dangerous and kill users, and specialized against armored targets.

You forgot "rarer than bolters."

>It has crap ton of archeotech lying around in underhive,

So all the plasma guns gangers use are not actually made there, but salvaged from the depths of the underhive?

>its also one of oldest and most populated hives.

Which equates to loads of plasma guns... how?

>B: Bolter isnt just a gun, it has an assortment of technology in it that allows an Astartes to use it efficiently. The sight is cosmetic as the reticle is uploaded to the astartes helmet so he can see were it is pointing in real time. Mix that with the assorment of other sensors, weight of the rounds, and weight of all the cosmetics, and you have a really heavy gun. A 50 pound gun would mean nothing to a space marine, but to a guardsman it is impractical to use on the battlefield.

Don't guardsman helmets have this same sort of thing?

im pretty sure they dont

>You forgot "rarer than bolters."
Bolters are standard issue weapons for gangers but described as rare and expensive.
Plasma is special weapon reserved only for gang leaders and elite.

>So all the plasma guns gangers use are not actually made there, but salvaged from the depths of the underhive?
Ask GW.

>Which equates to loads of plasma guns... how?
It has much more cool stuff than some shitty Meridian from Sector Bumfuck.

Depends on the guardsman.
From an advanced industrial world, yeah probably.

From a deathworld, probably not

Now that I look it up, it only seems that stormtroopers have that sort of surveyor thing, at least on the tabletop.

It doesn't really seem too hard to mass-produce such a thing.

a lot of things are not hard to mass produce, but thats not how the 40k industrial complex works

the manufacturing just make whatever the STC tells them to make, they just set up and maintain the machines and feed it resources. most of the time they do not understand how the process even works, they are just given the stc and told go for it

this is a great article on the matter, read the part about why everything is so grimdark

1d4chan.org/wiki/Adeptus_Mechanicus#Why_Everything_is_so_Grimdark

>inb4 id4chan

just read it then bitch later

What FFG rules are you talking about? The bolters you use in the games that aren't Deathwatch allow you to shoot as well as any other weapon.

Deathwatch itself says that there's bolters for SMs, and bolters for humans. Bolters for humans are just big heavy guns, bolters for SMs wielded by humans count as one size bigger, i.e. a bolt pistol counts as a bolter rifle for a human

Though all the FFG books say the same thing: Astartes Bolters are just more sophisticated than non-Astartes bolters with ergonomics better suited for power armour, and use .75 caliber bolts.