>>65028560
>but are bolters realistic?
Yes they are, look up the gyrojet IRL

>would they be as good at penetrating armor as the tabletop game suggests

IIRC they are only AP1 on the tabletop, but I guess self-propelled explosive .75 rounds would work well against most light/medium armors

>>65028616
You could probably fit a shaped charge in one using super special 40th millennium magitech

>>65028616
Yo what the fuck, this is bloody neat. Through the cost per bullet, damn, shame they're so expensive.

>>65028560
i the most unrealistic part of them is the tiny magazine most have, everything else techicaly exists if not combined together, gyrojets exist, explosive armor piercing ammo exists, .75 cal is just shy of 20mm so that definitely exists

>>65028616
>Cased bullet, that has a rocket motor innit, that has AP capabilities that then explodes inside the target
There is a reason hellguns are better

>>65028701
Wait, what's a hellgun? You mean IRL?

>>65028638
Eventually unless someone makes a fresh batch then there won't be any rounds available to shoot. Gyrojet ammo does go bad.

>>65028707
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Hot-Shot_Lasgun

>>65028709
Ammunition can go bad? That sounds horrible. I heard that the first M-16s to be sent to Vietnam were half-baked with non-uncorroding barrels and all. The jungle did them dirty in weeks.
It does fit the Imperium's theme of being extremely inefficient when it's about Space Marines.

>>65028714
Oh. So it's not the recon lasrifle I get in Darktides, it's another, even bigger one.

>>65028560
Not really. The have all the disadvantages of both rocket-type (i.e. gyrojet) and a traditional gun, while at the same time there's zero reason to think they're actually any better at penetrating anything.

>>but but but anon they have BOTH a rocket and gunpowder, doesn't that make them better
Four aces is better than two aces and two kings. Pick whichever propellant is better (rocket vs. gunpowder) and use 100% of that.

Gyrojets did exist, but they were also a huge failure. You absolutely could build a "bolter", it just wouldn't be any better than the alternatives.

>>65028560
It depends what you mean by realistic. Something that functions like a bolter could be made, but there's nothing special about the design compared to a regular firearm, certainly nothing to justify the way they're depicted in the more recent lore stuff.

Very roughly, they're basically a pretty bog standard 20 guage or 12 guage (depending on model/lore) shotgun that operates normally but happens to fire a gyrojet slug. I calculated it all properly at one point based on dimensions, pictures etc in source books and lore, and they're ok, but not amazing.

>>65028731
>>65028737
So basically they're only good in Warhammer because of space magic, okay.
Still bloody good that it exists IRL. And I'm very amused to hear that gyrojets can go bad very quickly.

>>65028731
>You absolutely could build a "bolter", it just wouldn't be any better than the alternatives.
It's to do a high-ish velocity 15-20mm cartridge without needing a barrel long enough to burn all the powder or action strong enough to take the all the pressure (or a shooter strong enough to take the recoil) while also having muzzle energy high enough to wound at point blank (so no pure gyrojet).

I do not advocate 40k or any of its nulore as anything but fanwank, but the concept isn't as self defeating as you say. It's not great, not awful, just OK, like I said at >>65028737.

>>65028747
>Still bloody good that it exists IRL
It doesn't. If you put a gyrojet to someone's head and pulled the trigger, all you would do is make them very angry. They don't develop enough velocity to kill until they've travelled a fair distance. They were also incredibly inaccurate and unreliable, in addition to the ammo spoiling like the other anon mentioned.

Bolters aren't really gyrojets, they're a hybrid between a gyrojet and a normal gun, something that's never existed. They operate like a normal gun (sans rifling, so a shotgun) but the bullet they fire is a gyrojet.

>>65028780
Yeah but they're COOL

>>65028801
I completely agree (about gyrojets).

>>65028812
I mean, I would love to do a campaign, or even a video game that's about surviving Catachan with just your lasrifle and a knife, because I love the lore behind lasrifles, that they can be charged with any kind of energy, even body heat, but bolters are just satisfying to see.

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If your average SF guy was an 8 foot tall, 700 pound steroid addled cyborg, would we see something like, say, .50BMG assault rifles?

>>65028780
>>hybrid rocket gun has never existed
Depending on your definition of "normal gun", rocket assisted projectiles are a thing, although they are restricted to artillery sized guns IRL.

A bolter is essentially what you get if you scale rocket assisted projectile technology down to the size of a tube launched grenade, and then use that to make a barely man portable low velocity autocannon with a passable effective range.

>>65028616
Throughout most of 40k history boltguns were AP5 (as in ignores 5+ or worse armour saves, doesn't affect 4+ or better).

>>65028717

Yeah, less like the scout lasgun and more like the helbore lasgun from that same game.

Also, the scab gunners have volley lasguns.

>>65028630
>You could probably fit a shaped charge in one using super special 40th millennium magitech

You could do that with todays tech, we have had HEAT munitions since the second world war, i would be willing to bet without a doubt that some Barret engineer could put a shape charge in a 20mm projectile.

>>65028893
The Hellbore lasgun? The one that charges very strong shots?
Are you telling me that a hellgun fires these kind of shots constantly? When do I get one?

One weapons system comes to mind immediately, but it's classified.

Try again next week Ivan.

>>65028903
There are probably some bombs that feature some small engine to better penetrate bunkers or whatever.

>>65028560
>want big bullet to go fast
>want to shoot rapid aimed shots in semi-auto
>don't want the bullet going too slow out the end of barrel

It's not ridiculous for something which is supposed to be used by elite troops who have the skill to make sure their expensive ammo actually hits the target. Honestly a lasgun is more unrealistically portrayed since there is no reason for a real laser weapon to be shaped like a 30cal rifle from 1900 and act the way it does. You want a hypervelocity round so you stick a rocket on it. But don't want to slow your rate of fire, have huge recoil(Gdubs forgets this constantly because recoil is cool to them), or have a slow ass bullet coming out the barrel like gyrojet which had and open barrel which only guided the round, so you slap a small pistol sized charge on the back to get the bullet out of the gun before the rocket motor fires.

It would work and is based on real principles unlike almost any other infantry weapon in 40k besides stubbers(guns) and autos(caseless ammo guns). It would be retardedly expensive, if you ever played Dark Heresy you have a choice between ammo and eating for a month. And it would very specific utility, being overkill for most targets and underpowered for most armor. Basically the Inkunzi PAW.
https://vocaroo.com/147gSvgdJlgj

>>65028560
They'd suck ass. Bolters are t even all that great at defeating armor in setting, people just like to exaggerate because 40k fans are fucking weird about everything being the STRONGEST EVER.

>>65028840
This is actually a really though provoking point. The average man, being 5'9" 165lbs by 3rd world shithole standards. Most arms manufactures make guns that are so small they cant be comfortably handled by anyone with big hands, or long arms, so if everyone is SF was a mega meathead, weapons design would change.

Guys don't even have to be 700lbs, even 300lbs average would dramatically change weapons design for clandestine usage.

>>65028923
>there is no reason for a real laser weapon to be shaped like a 30cal rifle from 1900 and act the way it does
Wait, what do you mean? That a laser weapon would behave more like it does in Helldivers? Like, shooting one continuous beam, instead of shooting a blast at the speed of light?

>>65028928
Don't mention to one of the emperors cock polishers that humanity was 10X more advanced 25k years ago, that's heresy.

>>65028933
There is a reason that zero military laser weapons IRL are pulse, and they are all continuous. Styropyro did a great demo of this and the reasoning behind it.

>>65028928
>>65028937
Are you okay? Did a 40k fan touch you inappropriately? Is that why you're hurt?

>>65028933
Its more that it wouldn't need a long barrel on it which does nothing, the laser might be vaguely rifle/crossbow shaped so a human can hold it steady but whether it emits a pulse or continuous beam it doesn't need to look like a moistnugget the way the standard lasguns do.

>>65028940
Isn't it because lasers lose heat way too quickly to be reliable? That's a shame, the laser weapons in Warhammer are honestly the best, I bet any army nowaday would pay pure gold for a weapon that is easy to maintain and basically requires no ammunition.

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>>65028950
Oooh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.
More like this, then?

>>65028937
>make a statement of fact which is widely known and continuously repeated by every semi-literate faggot in-setting
Nigger are sure you understand why this setting became popular among nerds and why they hate GDubs? Besides price gouging.

>>65028957
Cookie bowcasters are a mix between plasma and projectile weapons

>>65028969
I mean in appearance, not in function.

>>65028937

My understanding is that they use the mystification of tech to be able to justify why lasguns can look like the way they do, why efficiency and effectiveness takena backseat to symbolism and mysticism.

>>65028952
Its basically because the pulse frequencies that pulse lasers operate at is so incredibly breif, that even though they reach temps comparable to the suns core, it only lasts for a fraction of a nanosecond.

>>65028958
Just write the mechanicus a blank check and get back to the good ol days.

>>65028996
So the lasrifle are unrealistic, but that kind of cracking shot that we see kinda are?

>>65028982
Yeah exactly, i wish they made more battle rifles with modern aesthetics, the OO Hcar comes to mind. Why someone hasn't made a 13lbs naked modern G3 is beyond me.

>>65028999
Yeah, what would be more realistic is a continuous laser set to cycle in quarter second intervals every time the weapon is fired, however it would also 100% blind every person who even looked at the rifle or the target while it was being fired.

>>65029002
Wouldn't it be a good reason for the long barrel? To hide the emitting light? Well, the landing blast would still blind people, sadly.

>>65029006
Doesn't really work like that, the entire beam would still be a blinding hazard. Thats why i think Lasguns would make more sense as a superheated plasma, rather than a "laser"

>>65028760
>while also having muzzle energy high enough to wound at point blank
That's really where the design falls apart. A large-caliber projectile that's full of rocket fuel is very heavy. If you want that to exit the muzzle fast enough to be a meaningful threat to something lightly armored at point-blank range you're talking about cartoon levels of recoil.

>>65029072
Hence why only superhumans wearing power armor can effectively wield them freehand.

>>65029023
Why so? Aren't laser pointers invisible unless they hit some dust in the way?

>>65029123
At those power levels required to do the damage that is seen in game, the laser would be so powerful it would literally atomize the air molecules and any dust in its way, once again, check out Styropyro's video on the laser tattoo removal machine. He explains it better than i ever could.

>>65028905
>When do I get one?
That's heavy stormtrooper type equipment, they're generally fed from a backpack-mounted fuel cell thingy.

>>65028731
Wouldn't the gyrojet design be pretty beneficial when fighting in space/water as the rounds would continously accelerate? They are space marines after all and the bolters were designed to fight in every enviroment possible.

>>65029143
Alright, will do. I'm curious now.

>>65029144
Gotta become more than a ground agent to get one, then. What a shame, the Imperial Guard has all kind of fun toys, but to use them, I either play Darktides, or try to mod Arma 3.

>>65029151
>in space?
Not really, regular bullets would reach stupid velocities anyways
>in water?
Not really, proper underwater projectiles are more like long darts.

>>65028560
>are bolters realistic?
No.
>would they be as good at penetrating armor as the tabletop game suggests?
Also no.

You're missing the important question OP.
>Are bolters almost perfectly designed for the ridiculous levels of 'over the top' and 'so far past the line it can't remember what the line looked like anymore' that 40k is built for?
Yes.

>>65029785
Not what I asked. If you want to be an obnoxious know-it-all, reddit is that way.

>>65029851
>asks retarded question
>demands retarded answers
>gets butthurt for retarded reasons
Reddit's over there m8.

>>65028941
He is right

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Ha, here come the Discord group.
You lads need a better hobby.

>>65028828
>I love the lore behind lasrifles, that they can be charged with any kind of energy, even body heat
Lasrifles, by virtue of this lore, are less than lethal weapons. In the original lore, they were barely a step up from a flashlight, and it was only the massed fire of guardsman that was threatening. This interpretation is more accurate than the later SpaceBattles power-fantasy-escalation wank. You can calculate the energy that goes into a battery from charging it from an external power source, then divide it by the number of shots and model that power output as a laser, and doing that for a lasrifle you get a laser that would penetrate at most a few mm per shot, and would mildly sting to be shot by.

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People claiming that a bolter wouldn't be effective at penetrating armor seem to not know that it's not simply a slug, but instead a miniaturized APHE warhead, with specialty ammo available that allow you to switch to something with even further AP properties with just a change of mags. If we ignore the usage of real world names and realize that it was a bunch of retarded no-gunz brits trying to come up with shit in the era before the internet, for the same reason the Land Raider is canonically armored like a WWII tank at best, and look at what they were conceptually trying convey, they'd very much be a major threat to light armor and certainly anything wearable.

>>65028560
The standard bolt's APHE is very poorly designed. It can definitely be designed better, chiefly by throwing away the entire design of the standard bolt. The AP core is basically slug-shaped and has terrible sectional density, making it unoptimal for armor penetration. HEDP makes more sense for something that you want to be armor piercing and explosive. Sure, it can be claimed that the behind-armor effect won't be as large, but that's only true for a specific range of armor coverage (has to be full body coverage otherwise you can just detonate on impact) and armor strength. Against more armored targets a shaped charge will succeed in penetrating armor that the poorly-designed AP core of a bolt can't deal with. While against lightly armored targets you will have more explosive available. Not to mention a shaped charge going through someone's body has significant behind-armor effects anyway.

>>65029072
>while also having muzzle energy high enough to wound at point blank
The design falls apart because of that, but there's a bigger problem (that's also compounded by the excessively heavy projectile). From an engineering perspective, you're going to want to engineer the bolter so that muzzle velocity is the maximum velocity (there is no point in going any higher after all, it's already lethal), and the rocket propulsion is there to maintain that velocity. Since muzzle velocity is already lethal enough, then adding the expense of rocket propulsion just doesn't make sense. Velocity doesn't drop off quickly enough to justify a second stage. It's not like as if bolters are artillery pieces shooting something 20 miles away to the point you will get an appreciable drop in velocity. Just add slightly more muzzle velocity instead, it's not even a significant increase in recoil and you result in a much simpler and efficient bullet. Instead of adding all that extra propellant to the bullet, take that mass and use it on a buffer tube system to soften the recoil instead.

>>65030328
>not simply a slug, but instead a miniaturized APHE warhead
A slug would be more penetrative than 40k APHE, because it wouldn't give over volume to HE and so would have higher sectional density. The designs are otherwise like.

>>65030458
>there is no point in going any higher after all, it's already lethal
Lethality isn't digital. Being able to kill an unprotected target at point blank but a protected target further from the muzzle is not equivalent to only being able to kill unprotected targets at all ranges.

It's an engineering tradeoff. You want a 20mm gun and you want it to have enough velocity for light armor penetration (ie you don't want mum to say that we already have a 20mm gun at home but it's actually just a 12g shotgun), but you don't want the weight and length of a regular 20mm gun, you want recoil to be manageable and you still need it to have some lethality at point blank. The answer is to accept the tradeoff that you only do some of you acceleration inside the gun with powder to get it to the marginal lethality threshold and do the rest outside of the gun.

It's not self defeating like you want to pretend. There's a conceivable reason for it to be a valid engineering tradeoff, assuming you can swallow the idea of needing a 15-20mm bullet in the first place (since that's what constrains the velocity, and thus AP, you can generate before meeting the recoil/gun size/weight limits).

>>65029109
>Design a projectile to reduce recoil
>It produces more recoil than a solid bullet would
Hmmm...

>>65030582
You're speaking nonsense. You want it to be most lethal at point-blank, that's not negotiable. Both from the standpoint of real-life and in-universe. Designing a bolter to be less lethal at point-blank goes against everything it stands for, and how it's used. You can say that's how a bolter is, and I would agree, but all you'll be doing is admitting it's a terribly designed weapon.

>>65028717
>Ammunition can go bad?
Yep.

>That sounds horrible.
It is.

>I heard that the first M-16s to be sent to Vietnam were half-baked with non-uncorroding barrels and all. The jungle did them dirty in weeks.
Not exactly. The .223 Remington (5.56x45 in .mil service) and the AR-15 (M16 in .mil service) were designed around each other and the "advisors" in Vietnam and the ARVN troops they were working with loved them. When the AR-15 began being issued generally, issues started popping up for two main reasons. The first reason, and the less important, is that there wasn't proper training on how to clean the guns or proper issuing of cleaning supplies. The second, and much more important reason, is that the powder in the ammunition was changed. You see, smokeless powder is manufactured in one of two different ways. You have extruded powders, which are produced by basically putting the wet powder through a press to get small sticks, and ball powder which is manufactured by basically putting a bunch of chemicals into a vat and stirring them until they form tiny little droplets. The time to manufacture a batch of extruded powder is two weeks while the time to manufacture a batch of ball powder is less than two days, plus ball powders are more stable in storage, safer to manufacture and are generally just better hands-down than extruded powders for large-scale manufacture. The .223 Remington was designed around an extruded propellant, but the volume of ammunition that the government needed was so huge that extruded powders were just too slow to manufacture; there was some testing and some bureaucratic and business fuckery and eventually procured .223 ended up being loaded with a ball powder that worked fine in larger-caliber rifles but caused issues in the M16.

tl;dr the M16 was fine but government and business shenanigans led to the ammo getting messed up

Here, have some autism.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230204110350/https://looserounds.com/556timeline/

>>65028560
>would they be as good at penetrating armor as the tabletop game suggests?
I thought bolters sucked at penetrating armor on the tabletop

>>65030605
You're the one speaking nonsense lol, because you're treating nu-lore descriptions of "what bolters stand for, and how they're used" as something worth acknowledging the existence of rather than as toilet paper with words written on it for people with the maturity and mental capacity of small boys.

>>65030605
>>65030649
Like, Jesus Fucking Christ can you even imagine writing the words:
>Designing a bolter to...
>... goes against everything it stands for, and how it's used.
unironically?

Everything it stands for? Are you going to start tearing up and sing a national anthem? Recite the imperial creed? How it's used? Are you going to start regailing me with tales from whatever fanfic-tier Black Library drivel was last released that describes Space Marines as nothing short of homoerotic military-themed superheroes as evidence of the proper doctrinal function of a bolter?

God, talking to anyone associated with 40k without them immediately self parodying in the cringiest way is fucking impossible.

>>65030649
Yeah I'll take one for the team and bite. What on Earth are you talking about?

>>65030154
Why is there a discord circlejerk/raid group for literally everything? It's everything that makes r*ddit gay turned up to a million.

>>65030675
In the grimdark future of 2026, Games Workshop has written so much low quality pulp genre fiction mythologising and increasing the perceived power of pretend Space Soldiers that people on the internet will tell you that the weapon they carry "stands for something" and then tell you that the engineering tradeoffs of that weapon go against that.

Now, specifically, in OG lore, bolters weren't particularly special or effective. They were just big, dumb, unweildy, semi-gyrojet guns. But at that point Space Marines didn't do flips or put pic rails on stuff either, and Space Marines also weren't particularly special or super effective - they were the best humanity could muster, but that was nothing particularly special.

>>65030154
>>65030698
The real question is, can these people do a better fucking job so that I don't have to put in the work to bully these nerds myself?

>>65030704
Yeah, got it, you're just mad because you put forward the incredibly stupid argument that being weaker at short range is a good thing and then got put down for it.

>>65030605
>You want it to be most lethal at point-blank, that's not negotiable. Both from the standpoint of real-life and in-universe

In universe, point-blank is handled by chainswords, combat knives, power swords, and other melee weapons wielded by the genetic mutants wearing portable APCs, as well as non-point blank but closer range being the job of dedicated specialist weapons with meltaguns and flamers.

>but that's stupid
Yea, well, 40k operates largely on rule of cool but is also mostly internally consistent with it's own stupid caveats if you accept that melee weapons are viable.

>>65028560
It’d be a great way to sling lots of little grenades very fast at the enemy, but it’d be bad in real life due to the size and weight of the ammunition. A normal human isn’t carrying more than three magazines for it at a time, and humanoid robotics are superior to power armor until Skynet actually happens.

>>65030813
>In universe, point-blank is handled by ...
and pistols. They've even returned the rule that allows you to shoot pistols in close combat in recent editions.

Also point blank doesn't mean actual melee, just close-range. You're on /k/, shouldn't you know this? Not to mention for most of the setting's history, a tactical marine wouldn't even have a chainsword available and would have to make do with a combat knife. The most dangerous enemies are going to be close up too. After all, if you want to shoot something far away, just get the Imperial Guard to fire artillery at it. A space marine's typical experience also covers close-range fighting far more often than long range fighting. They're elite troops meant for assaulting space ships, urban areas, and bunkers where their qualitative superiority abilities matter, not for trading long range fire in open space (although they can do that too of course). It makes much more sense for a bolter to be designed to be more powerful close-up.

>but that's stupid
Well I'm glad you agree. Stop getting mad and making excuses just because someone called the bolter stupid. It's literally what OP was asking for.

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>>65031033
>Also point blank doesn't mean actual melee, just close-range. You're on /k/, shouldn't you know this?
>After all, if you want to shoot something far away, just get the Imperial Guard to fire artillery at it

Also, for at least back when I was playing the game, marines in melee and bolters had equivalent strength, and melee weapons outside of powerfists, and derivatives like chainfists, didn't change the strength but simply provided more attacks or armor penetration. The point of the bolter is to allow the marines to expand their lethal range by allowing them to reach out and touch people, while anything that's close enough that the relatively slow acceleration of the gyrojet round would be an issue still has to contend with the explosive payload of the bolt shell itself, as well as the murder machine perfectly capable of punching through steel walls. Marines have already won, against most foes, if they're getting to CQC where their numeric disadvantage is less of an issue and they can leverage their individual strength, quite literally in this case, while bolters provide them with an option for dealing with threats that either outclass marines in melee or are too difficult to pin down long enough to close the distance.

>>65031062
Okay, but are you aware that point blank doesn't mean actual melee, just close-range? Because despite having quoted it your entire reply seems to lack a complete awareness of that simple fact. Also there's big difference between being able to stab something and shoot something from 25 yards away. And more importantly, Marines are far more likely to be shooting at close range than long range.

Also, what point are you trying to make here? You talk all this shit but why?

>>65031080
And you're aware that there distances between point blank and artillery, if you even have it on station when you're doing a drop pod insert deep behind enemy lines to snipe a HVT, which is Marine's primary MO, right? Marines are capable of sprinting at 50ish MPH, so 25 yards is more then close enough for them to close the distance for melee if they chose.

Meanwhile, you're hung up on bolters making a small sacrifice in lethality at that range, where you somehow need a target who's tough enough that the HE charge in the shell isn't enough firepower but a couple extra hundred FPS is, in exchange for much greater lethality at the ranges where Marines are likely to be using their firearms by providing a flatter shooting projectile as well as general range extension.

You're the one who's coming into the thread, acting as though everyone else is retarded for not bowing their heads and accepting your divine wisdom as gospel, and then throwing a shitfit when people call you retarded for saying retarded things. If you don't want to engage within the constraints and premise of the universe, you're welcome to close the thread. This is 4chan, no one will be able to know you've been in here being a raging dumbass the next time you post.

>>65030734
>the incredibly stupid argument that being weaker at short range is a good thing
Are you willfully retarded? The argument was that being weaker at short range is a necessary engineering tradeoff to build something that fires 20mm from what is essentially a subcarbine 12" barrel in the form factor of a blown up machine pistol with an action that can cycle and still be able to penetrate armor at any range. The only solution that satisfies all the silly constraints on the design is to sacrifice as much muzzle velocity as needed to get in under the barrel length and action weight constraints, and then to meet the armor penetration constraints with acceleration outside the barrel. Your valid solution space is then everything under that muzzle velocity and you have the option to make something that penetrates less armored targets at point blank (a hybrid gyrojet/gun with mv high enough to penetrate unprotected targets at point blank) or something that can't penetrate anything at all point blank (pure gyrojet).

Your """solution""", optimising for maximum propulsive efficiency over longest distance with base bleed or RAP for a low and constant velocity projectile, does not meet the constraints since it can't penetrate any protected target, and is, in practice, actually just a useless concept for a gun.

Your other """solution""", which is just an unpowered bullet to maximise MV, also doesn't meet the constraints, because either you've literally just made a low pressure 12g shotgun that can't penetrate (if you stay inside the barrel and action constraints) or you've made some kind of manually operated wristbreaker with an interrupted screw that flashbangs the whole world with unburned powder every shot and still gets shitful MV.

>>65031110
I see, you're claiming the bolter is meant to just not work at close range. Yeah, you're retarded. But I'll just carry on arguing instead of just calling you retarded and moving on. I'm just curious to see how you respond.

- Bolters are used by more than just space marines. Bolt pistols especially are used by a lot of unaugmented humans.
- Do you think the change in 3rd edition where close combat weapons gives an extra attack makes sense if a bolt pistol doesn't work at close range?
- They retconned bolters to have the so-called "kicker-charge" specifically to make bolters work at close range. Now I'm not going to pretend that original bolters, as described, would had worked at close range. But that wasn't clearly wasn't the intention even if it was funny.
-Space marines are consistently shown in every single media, from core rulebooks and codexes, to books and computer games, to be firing their bolters at close range, even melee range, and having them fully working and penetrating armor.
-Earlier you repeatedly admitted bolters are stupid and now you've shifted goalposts and gone from "okay bolters being bad at short range is stupid but it's 40K" to "bolters aren't stupid, it makes perfect sense to be bad at short range"

>>65031179
>you're claiming the bolter is meant to just not work at close range
>you somehow need a target who's tough enough that the HE charge in the shell isn't enough firepower but a couple extra hundred FPS is

C'mon, anon. I already told you that you can slink away and no one will know that you have brain damage until the next time you post something this retarded.

>>65031182
No argument to these reasonable points? I accept your concession.

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>>65031186
>no, you have to engage all of my points while I refuse to engage yours
>why aren't you treating me like I'm arguing in good faith!

>>65030612
Why make extruded powder then if ball is so much better?

>>65030255
No. Even in the og 1987 lore they are described as being able to sever a limb with a shot.

>>65031266
You will have no difficulty referencing this.

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>>65031199
the ball propellant burnt dirtier and had a higher and later peak pressure, which dumped a lot more energy into the cycling of the action and caused it to run faster and more violently, which produced failures to feed, case head separations, bolt breakage, hammer follow, etc.

burn rate is a function of surface area. only surface can burn, and as propellant burns away, its surface area available to burn changes accordingly. not sure how much the geometry of the propellant mattered vs its composition in this case, just remembered i had this picture and thought it was neat.

>>65031578
Lasguns are explicitly described as causing small explosions at the point of impact, as the pulse of light superheats the material and causes it to suddenly ablate away, violently vaporizing. 3rd edition core rulebook, page 61. And a common sense reading of the rules would tell you that a lasgun must be about as dangerous as an assault rifle or battle rifle, since both lasguns and autoguns are strength 3 weapons.

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>>65030612
This contradicts a book I read that claimed that the AR-15 WAS shit, and it would corrode quickly, but the army refused to admit malfunctions and blamed soldiers instead for not taking proper care of their weapons.


>that captcha
I NEVER VISITED /int/ HOW WOULD I KNOW

>>65031658
But Anon, he said that this was "spacebattle" wankery, so clearly he's right and you're wrong.

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>>65031676
And now the fool will learn that 40kbabs are the community most willing to argue the most inane points brought up in a throwaway text from 1990 for hours on end. Or at least in the top 5.

>>65028940
>Styropyro
That boy ain't right.

>>65028969
>Cookie

>>65028941
Space Marine powerwanking tourists who own one (1) badly painted mini from visiting their local hobby store painting classes once and then never touching the actual hobby ever again are the bane of the 40k community
t. 40k fan

>>65031700
So... literally everyone on /tg/? 40k fans are hardly different from World of Darkness or DnD fans.

>>65031659
The captcha is the new april fools thing, it doesn't even work.

>>65031658
Page 61 of that rulebook, which uses only the words "small explosion" is entirely consistent with vaporising 1-2mm of the struck surface in a tiny area, dealing only superficial damage, which is what the actual maths of the amount of energy in a powerpack based on how it can be charged supports.

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>>65031793
you should probably kill yourself dude

>>65031658
>>65031801
He's right though. I'm not him BTW. No really I'm not. Interpreting a "small explosion" to mean "severing limbs" is pretty wild. I will agree though, a lasgun is only meant to be about as dangerous as an assault rifle or battle rifle. The blowing away limbs thing is usually used by fanwank to mean that the lasgun is at least as powerful as 50 cal.

>>65031199
>Why make extruded powder then if ball is so much better?
Just because ball is more efficient to manufacture doesn't mean it's "better"; extruded powders have characteristics that ball powders don't and vice versa.

>>65031659
>This contradicts a book I read that claimed that the AR-15 WAS shit,
If you were a SOF doing SOF things in 1962 with hand-picked batches of ammo and you knew how to take care of your weapon, the AR-15 was the best infantry rifle on the planet by a comfortable margin. If you were a stoned grunt in 1966 going on patrol with ammo that literally broke your rifle when you used it and you heard somewhere that your rifle is "self-cleaning" so you don't clean your rifle as often as you should then you're honestly better off looting an AK and using that.

>and it would corrode quickly,
Corrosion wasn't the problem, it was broken parts and fouling.

>but the army refused to admit malfunctions and blamed soldiers instead for not taking proper care of their weapons.
Yeah, they did that.

>>65031801
I accept your concession. I wouldn't to detain you from your Horus Heresy bolter-wank a moment longer.

>>65031811
he says only superficial damage, you say he's right, superficial like an assault rilfe. i say he should kill himself for doing real world physics with the fluff of a tabletop game and you should kill yourself for not knowing what agreement means. i will allow you the dignity of choosing which gigachad i should be portrayed as.

>>65028560
They are posible to make and yes they would be probably good at penetrating armor Being a 75caliber but the cons are they are werry expensive to make plus who would use them when other weapons are good enough for the curent Job any way so why bother

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What about chainswords?

>>65032145
They'd instantly stop and get clogged.

>>65031722
He really isn't. Had some video a while ago that he had to stop making videos because he was going to the doctor too much. He thought he had testosterone deficiency because he's 33 and still looks 18, but it turns out his test levels are literally off the scale, which, combined with his looking 18, means something is going fucky wucky in his endocrine system. Idk if he's done a medical update since.

>>65034030
>he's 33
Holy crackers really

>>65032813
Not sure about the smaller ones but the two handers, otherwise known ad eviscerators have rudimentary disruption field generators(the thing power weapons use to cut through pretty much anything)that presumably aid in keeping them running no matter what you hit with it.

>>65034234
Testosterone is an almost literal fountain of youth, provided it doesn't give you prostate cancer.

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of course they are, in fact they're not comical enough

>>65028560
>are bolters realistic?
definitely doable
>would they be as good at penetrating armor as the tabletop game suggests?
A 7.62 round made of HE would deliver energy more in the ballpark of .50 BMG, a .75 inch round with a HEAT warhead could punch through something like 5 inches of armor, depending on the design. They'd be a lot better than the tabletop stats suggest.
>>65028630
There are 40mm HEDP rounds, .75 of an inch is somewhere in the ballpark of half that diameter. It's definitely doable.
>>65028940
I thought there were designs being worked on that used pulsed lasers to create a channel of ionized air to the target and then dumped a fuckload of electricity through the channel.

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>>65034482
>definitely doable
Gyrojet was manufacturing small-scale bolters with rocket-propelled projectiles 60 years ago. So yeah, definitely doable

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>>65028937
>tries to be a smugly smartass: instantly steps on his own dick
Nice. It quite literally is heresy in the lore. Midwit.

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>>65034870
IIRC bolters have a kicker charge and an HE warhead, so they're not exactly analogous.

This is clearly a pic of tacgnol but the jannies are heretics and faggots, so I'm going to try saying it's longcat.

>>65031793
Except those same powerpacks, when dumping all their energy at once as improvised explosives, go off with the force of a krak grenade which is like a solid pound of TNT.

>>65034974
It's explosive filled but not really an HE shell, more like APHE

>>65035184
The energy you get from a battery exploding is not the same as energy it can repeatedly provide as a battery. The inputs are not the same and the outputs are not the same.

>>65034482
>I thought there were designs being worked on that used pulsed lasers to create a channel of ionized air to the target and then dumped a fuckload of electricity through the channel.
That's the lightening gun from Unreal. Idk if it's a real concept that's been worked on.

>>65034482
>a .75 inch round with a HEAT warhead could punch through something like 5 inches of armor, depending on the design
No it wouldn't. You'd have to use a tremendously slow bullet and even then you couldn't get enough standoff to achieve what you're claiming here.

>>65034482
>I thought there were designs being worked on that used pulsed lasers to create a channel of ionized air to the target and then dumped a fuckload of electricity through the channel.
>>65035284
https://youtu.be/Nkv3cYC8E18?si=9ud2dY8a_Drqe6Bv
View the electrolaser segment, he even brings up 40k

>>65035284
Unreal TOURNAMENT 2003, please.

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>>65035226
So bolters fire ~20mm APHE? I just realized that spess mehrenes are roughly analogous to a Wiesel in terms of firepower and protection.
>>65035284
>>65035775
I first read about the concept in Popular Science (or maybe it was Popular Mechanics or Scientific American, I can't remember, I read it in a waiting room) in the 2000s. So I know that at least the sort of people who wrote for Popular Science thought it was possible.
>>65035287
I'll admit that the words "depending on the design" were doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

>>65036612
Is .75caliber 22mm? They generally fire two types of rouds, both explosive. Mass reactive for lightly armored targets, and time delay for heavily atmored. Some chapters(and the desthwatch)have other more specialized rounds(kraken rounds for use against tyranids). You are right about SMs being big boys and as such having big guns, they lug around things that most non catachan humans would designate crew served weapons.

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>>65034974
The guy carrying this thread already answered the question of a kicker charge. That tech is already available in multiple forms of artillery and scaling it isn't a problem if the demand for it were there. I'm sorry your epicfail attempt didn't work out like you had hoped.

>>65030589
In lore, Bolters were supposed to be phased out for space scifi magic "Volkite" weapons which would just boil you instantly using a heat ray. This all changed due to the Horus Heresy.

>>65038652
You have it backwards, the legions were equipped with volkites at first, then switched to bolters because those were easier to manufacture.

>>65036612
>in terms of firepower...
Yes
>...and protection
No. Their armor is really dam good

>>65036612
>So bolters fire ~20mm APHE?
Not really. On the tabletop bolters are comparable in performance to a .50 cal, you need a heavy bolter to get anywhere close to the performance of the lower end of autocannon performance.

For reference, bolters are Strength 4, Armor Pen 0, Damage 1. Heavy stubbers (M2 Browning in space) are also S4 Ap0 D1, just with more shots

Small autocannons are S7 Ap-1 D2, large autocannons are S9 Ap-1 D3

Heavy bolters are S5 Ap-1 D2

>>65035228
That is true of current batteries, but Imperial power packs are archaeotech using god knows what on the inside. The simple fact remains that a lasgun's at standard power is good for about 40 shots on a charge, and that taking one center mass will kill a man stone dead.

>>65038778
Tabletop representations have always made major concessions to balance instead of accuracy, hence the Movie Marine splat that was in an old White Dwarf that the joke was they were trying to more accurately represent Marines as they're presented in the fluff. A better place to look then the tabletop game would be how bolters and lasguns are presented in the TTRPGs like Deathwatch and Rogue Trader.

>>65038815
I don't think you can derive any specifics from tabletop stats, but you can make qualitative statements.

For example, a 5" move terminator is slower than a 6" move space marine. Is he exactly 17% slower? Probably not, but it wouldn't have that statline difference if it wasn't significant.

A Knight Castellan volcano lance is weaker than a volcano cannon, but stronger than any other lascannon in the setting. A C'tan shard is impossibly resilient to all weapons. Khorne berzerkers will rip and tear anything you get them into melee with to shreds. And so on and so on

Based on this I don't think it's unreasonable to say that a bolter is comparable to a .50 cal and a heavy bolter is slightly weaker than an IFV's autocannon

>>65038879
>A C'tan shard is impossibly resilient to all weapons.

When you consider what they actually are(a cthulhuesque energy being that can eat stars shoved into a living metal body)it's not that surprising that they are as tough as they are.

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>>65038879
Given that in tabletop terms, a squad of 10 space marines is roughly equivalent in points to 20 imperial guardsmen, yet in almost every piece of lore, those guardsmen would be lucky to be a match for a single marine if they don't have a plas or melta, I don't think looking at them for any sort of real world indication is realistic. Here's the old statline for the movie marine's weapons, though you'll have to translate them to modern stats since this was during... 4th edition, I think? Back before AP weapons degraded armor saves and instead were a binary "you get a save or don't" system, at least. Tabletop stats also are quite dumb because you have gauss weapons, which are noted to instantly and consistently dissolve massive chunks of whatever they hit also being represented with the same statline as a bolter, just with 6s having AP1 and autoglancing vehiciles, or at least once again back when I played heavily.

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>>65028560
We have the Barrett Precision Grenadier System so I'd say, yes.

>>65038900
You know what, fair enough. You're right

>>65038900
I always assumed that tabletop figures were perfectly trained and equipped to deal with whatever came their ways. Space Marines usually have the element of awe or at least surprise, but in the tabletop, aka on a battlefield, they'd lose a lot of their strength.
Kinda like Rambo in the movie can cause a lot of damage, but put him with a gun on a flat terrain in front of 50 blokes with rifles and he'd get shot before he can even say "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch" or "Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein".

But yeah, it's mostly a cope to explain why Space Marines in Helsreach or Astartes can solo entire squads but struggle in the tabletop to not get raped by everyone.

>>65038905
Every discussion on this thing instantly gets detailed by hordes of faggot screaming "FUR DA EMPRAH XDDD" and "IS THAT A BOLTER LAWL"

>>65039056
Why do you talk about yourself in the third person?

>>65028937
But this is a well known fact, which is why scraps of ancient tech like incomplete STC print-outs or armor made thousands of years ago are considered technological marvels.

>>65039380
That's never been disputed, what they imperial cult says is that humans were spiritually backwards as they worshipped scientific progress and nothing else. They aren't exactly wrong either, ad DAoT humanity were nearly wiped out by a race of intelligent machines that they built, and then treated as slaves.

>>65038905
The XM25 and the new Northrop-Colt thing are in that vein too.

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>>65028717
>Oh. So it's not the recon lasrifle I get in Darktides, it's another, even bigger one.
They're actually in game, scab gunners use them

>>65028731
>>65028737
I thought the point of bolters was that by using a rocket motor they eliminate most of the recoil that would come from .75 (human sized bolter) or 1.0 caliber (marine sized bolter) rounds while maintaining good velocity at longer ranges
Also, in-universe they were created to kill orks which is a use case that doesn't exist irl but would justify using explosive ammo against infantry

>>65028560
Sure, they're gyrojet launchers with armor piercing, explosive rounds.

It's less that we can't make those (What a bolter does and what AFV chain guns like the Bushmaster do aren't that different) but more that we aren't fighting orks, tyranids, etc so they're completely overkill in an anti-infantry role

It'd be like having a gigantic m4 chambered in .50, there's no real use for it

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>>65028560
If you ignore the rocket propelled aspect of it, we have APHE guns of around the same caliber. They're just mounted and have long barrels.

>>65040475
Dafuck is that?
Is every bullet seriously that big?

>>65040456
They're not solely gyrojets, having a powder charge to give them initial velocity before the gyrojet kicks in to level the flight path and add some energy.

>>65040477
That's a M242 Bushmaster mounted on the side of a warship, but it's most famously known for being the main gun on Bradley AFVs.

>>65040480
I'm sorry, my /k/ culture stopped at muskets.

>>65040456
>in-universe they were created to kill orks
I haven't heard this one before, is that supposed to be their original pre-Imperium invention or about their adoption by the Imperials? They're definitely not an Imperial invention, planets like Caliban already had them when the Great Crusade arrived and so on.

>>65040496
pre-Imperial, when humanity first ran into orks

>>65040496
>is that supposed to be their original pre-Imperium invention
>planets like Caliban already had them when the Great Crusade arrived and so on.
Yes, exactly. They're the OG Monster Hunter gun for humans.

Space Marines didn't even use them originally, instead favoring volkite weaponry until the Great Crusade really got going and bolters proved to be far more practical than martian death rays.

>>65040443
I have 60% damage resist from these guys. Otherwise they tear me into shreks.

>>65040573
It's one of the best curio traits and is never a bad idea on any class, especially because it works on reapers too

>>65040477
That is what is commonly referred to as an autocannon.

>>65040583
And also because I completely lack that talent that everyone else seem to have when they notice gunners taking position, even in the middle of a crowd.

>>65040567
Judging by the new hastarii units coming down the pipe for the tabletop, the Martians really love them some death rays. New boys have eradication beams and neutron fusils as their main weapon, and a little predator shoulder mount that accommodates either a gun that shoots lightning, or white phosphorous, for enemies that get too close for their big guns.

>>65040602
They're kinda tall and have three green lights on their helmets instead of just two, but generally you'll hear them shooting as your first heads up

>>65040636
I guess I need to stop listening to music while playing then.

>>65040650
Or play arbites and send your reusable cruise missile at them. Mine is named Scrambles.

>>65041194
Last time we had a Arbites in our party, he had to spend the entire game explaining he wasn't ICE, wasn't a republican, and asked the two other players to leave him some ammo.

>>65028560
Bump

>>65043627
Why?

>>65044404
Because warhams has cool weapons.?

>>65038900
It should also be remembered that in lore the typical space marines engagement doesn't involve fair fights. Early lore was much more calm about space marine's capabilities, and said they'll do badly in the open. They're not supposed to sit there tanking lasgun hits, they're supposed to engage in ship boarding actions, or do a huge orbital drop onto a HQ. Obviously tabletop stats aren't purely comparative, but they are meant to be an indicator and it's a reasonable assumption that a bolter really is meant to be about as powerful as a heavy stubber.

>>65045171
This tracks, seeing as if you play guard, bolters of the heavy variety are one of your options for your heavy weapon squads. The others being heavy stubbers, lascannons, and I think some manner of mortar, and a heavy flamethrower for kriegers.

>>65045292
I fucking love mortars.

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>>65028560
>are bolters realistic?
we already had those irl. they were meh. the ammo was too expensive to produce and we aren't exactly shooting at orks

>>65048037
I mean, we have Manchester United fans, these are tougher than orks.

>>65048077
The very idea that any of us should be able to recognize those words is offensive to /k/ and you should remove yourself.

>>65049545
He's referring to the fact that orks were based on English soccer hooligans.

>>65040017
>nearly wiped out by a race of intelligent machines that they built, and then treated as slaves
Fortunately we in real life would never be so stupid

>>65038815
While the Tabletop RPGs make Astartes more resistant to WW1 machine gun fire, it also makes the shitty by modern standards autogun the almost exact equivalent of the Lasgun, just like in the wargame.
Space Marines aren't immune to heavy stubbers in many of the books, yes I know there's a book where a standard astartes is totally immune to a heavy autocannon but if that was accurate they wouldn't put them on fucking terminators and dreadnoughts.

The setting has a great deal of disagreement over the resistance of Space marines to lasgun fire, with some sources claiming a space marine can basically just stand there doing nothing while twenty guardsmen empty their batteries on him and others having it as more like he can take ten or twenty shots before being injured.

>>65049564
I know what he's referring to, I told him not to be gay about it.

Armies by Aesthetic:
>Adeptus Mechanicus
>Imperial Guard
>Orks
>Genestealer Cults
>Necrons
>Imperial Agents
>Tyranids without guns
>Sisters of Battle
>Harlequins
>Adeptus Custodes
>Space Marines
>Leagues of Votann
>Imperial Knights
>Chaos Knights
>Drukhari
>Tau
>Chaos Daemons
>Chaos Space Marines
>Tyranids with guns
>Eldar

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>>65028560
>but are bolters realistic?
All of the principles behind them are sound but the design of a Godwyn pattern is pretty silly.
The tabletop suggests they're good at piercing man portable protection up to light carapace, which is a ceramite/armorplas combination, the space magic version of ceramic/uhmwpe. They're diamantine tipped which again is space magic, but probably means they're a barrier blind round similar to M855A1. But remember these are anywhere from .6 to .75 cal rockets.
>>65028616
They're AP nil in rending, AP4 in 7e and before style AP. Which means they beat everything that's not power armor.

>>65049668
>>65028888
Ah my bad I was misremembering, they're AP5. Which means they pierce basically the flak armor that a standard guardsman has but not much more.

>>65049632
>homophobia
>on 4chan of all places
Do you not know where you are?

>>65049575
Of course not, we just outright delete them for having wrong opinions.

>>65028560
No they are not

>>65049628
In general, codexes >>> black library for primary sources. And in the former a chaos space marine says that charging a line of 100 lasguns is extremely dangerous, because one bolt WILL eventually find a joint or especially an eye-hole.

>>65048037
>Muzzle flipping a couple of degrees upwards before the rocket even leaves the chamber
Yikes

>>65034446
Look straight out of metro series

>>65034446
disgusting

>>65028840
Longmarine is long.

>>65049675
They changed AP rules in 8th, so AP is an armor modifier instead of the older rules where it represented what armor it ignores.

>>65049545
DE SPORTSBALL AM I RIGHT???? WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT KICKING BALL AROUND FIELD?
go back

>>65028560
>but are bolters realistic?
No. Too heavy and IRL they would have a ridiculously low magazine capacity. Gyrojets could be brought back from the grave and made into really effective ammunition, but Bolters are just unrealistic as Dune's lasguns randomly triggering nuclear explosions.

>>65028560
A bolter is just an exaggerated gyrojet.
Doubtless, GW would pretend it was their idea if anyone used gyrojets in fiction.

>>65060598
It's kinda wacky how they ripped off Simon Bisley and Kevin Oneil's entire art style from Nemesis the Warlock and get heaped with praise for it.

>>65060817
The sheer amount of stuff GW managed to crib from other creators, all while clutching “their” work like a miser is jarring.

>>65062773
The skaven are their only real unique creation, which is how they escaped the copyrightening and retain their original name.

>>65062780
No, Fritz Leiber's Swords of Lankhmar. There's an underground city of were-rats rules by a council of 13.

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>>65028560
>run a Dark Age of Technology project for 5,000 years to create the ultimate super soldier
>arm them with assault rifles that fire grenades

>said super soldier gets cored out like a little bitch by a baseline human wielding a hellgun
I'm terribly sorry, but the Emperor protects.

>>65062877
To be fair, lasguns are dark age tech as well, or at least the batteries are.

>>65063199
Nobody really talks about it, but Imperial ''las'' tech is insane. From planet-shattering lances to a handy little side arm that performs the same role as a cartridge pistol but you reload a mag by slotting it into a recharge bay.

>>65031801
Does anyone have that pic of one of these mouse pads but its abbie shapiro?

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>>65063257

>>65062877
Lmao I killed a Nightbringer the other day by spiking rolls with my Kasrkin.

The Emperor protects indeed.

>>65063241
>but you reload a mag by slotting it into a recharge bay.

You don't even need to do that, you can recharge them by leaving them in direct sunlight, or throwing them in a fire(this method is frowned upon by tech priests as it will degrade the battery over time).

>>65028709
I always thought the gyrojet concept was a good one but not for handguns. Give me a rifle and the size of it would probably fix a lot of the issues.

>>65064333
But why though? What problem does a gyrojet in any form factor solve that conventional firearms don't? Gyrojet ammo doesn't stop being painfully difficult to manufacture compared to bullets just because you shove it into a rifle.

>>65031762
at least if you find someone who actually plays WoD in the wild they're more likely to shrug about any argued point and say 'its whatever the storyteller needs it to be'. you just have to find one of the twenty people who actually play.

>>65028780
>If you put a gyrojet to someone's head and pulled the trigger, all you would do is make them very angry.
IIRC some guy tried to kill himself with a volcanic pistol and they found the round didn't make it past the skin.

>>65064899
it can carry a comparatively very heavy payload very far very fast
imagine if you could pump guided 20mm HE/FRAG out to a mile or so. imagine every fireteam having one of those

>>65062877
Hellguns are super deadly, no idea why, apart from the Bolter basically a sticked to SMs image, they all should just use upsize Hellguns instead of Bolters.

>>65034446
Paint it red, makes more DAKKA

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>>65028560

"Obiwan Sherlock Cluseau is described in First Edition (aka Rogue Trader) as an exposer of psychic misdeeds and genetic deviance, who is well-equipped to a ludicrous degree and having an eccentric sense of style “like most inquisitors.” His name is an obvious combination of the characters Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sherlock Holmes, and Inspector Jacques Clousseau, to describe his character as a fusion of all three."

WH40K was created by people, who stole any idea they could, combined them in the dumbest most unintelligent way possible, and then wore sock, sandals, naruto headbands and a fedora.

The bolter design would make sense, if WH40K had the worldbuilding to make it make sense. They did it in Dune, they did it in Stargate, and if they had a brain they would have done it in WH40K, which they did not do. What they did instead is masturbate to the idea of having sex with space elves, being the only licensed distributers of DnD in the UK.

In the real world, they're completely farsical. You need cross sectional density, and velocity, and a 5.56 with a tungsten core has that covered. If you want to go ooky-spooky shit make the 5.56 really hot, and scrape enough Ozmium together to form a bullet. That will destroy anything worn by a grunt or even groomed navy grunt.

The gyrojet style rocket would be interesting suppressed with the gigantic new bullet, similar in concept to what the new Resident Evil was showcasing in the revolver. That's a real sidearm called the RSh-12, and it uses a 12.7×55mm STs-130 (PT) bullet, which is a new-ish family specifically designed to be compensate for velocity with mass. Now this doesn't penetrate armour well, maybe part of the design is to simply transfer enough kinetic energy to a target that even a non-penetration causes injury purely through blunt force trauma. But a potential suppressed super-heavy bullet might have the advantage of starting off slow and sub-sonic, and then maybe going super sonic near the target.

they probably could be made but they don’t do the job of anything better and cheaper

>>65067916
If we can miniaturize the processors enough, gyrojets could fire fin-stabilized, guided microjets, with small, explosive warheads essentially creating the “smart gun”.

>>65065297
Who are you quoting,

>>65065297
Early 40k lore was a tongue in cheek parody of other sci-fi and grimdark media in general. It didn't start taking itself seriously or trying to make any real sense until significantly later, and virtually everything from the RT era was retconned into oblivion years ago. They've done a lot on more recent years to justify things like bolters.

Something I think I may need to explain, judging by your post, is that bolters aren't simply gyrojets. They're more like a "small" caliber grenade launcher with the addition of a gyrojet-style sustainer motor. The idea in lore is that they're intended for fighting things that are both hard to penetrate and very hard to inflict lethal injuries on, like Orks and Tyranids. The combo of regular charge and rocket sustainer ensures enough velocity to penetrate tough exteriors (and without the size and punishing recoil of a .50BMG round or whatever), and then once inside they explode, doing far more damage than a regular AP round would. Like modern grenade launchers they're also supposed to have a wide variety of specialty ammo for niche situations.

There's also a secondary, separate justification for normal humans that use them, in many cases it's simply a "shock and awe" thing. Commissars use them because exploding somebody's head puts fear into soldiers in a way a simple lasgun or autogun (normal gun to us) shot wouldn't. Gangers use them because they're big, loud, distinctive, and intimidating. It's the equivalent of somebody in the modern world carrying a Desert Eagle or .44 mag revolver. Human-size bolters are also typically sidearms and might be carried because they allow the user to carry a bunch of "just in case" specialty shells as a backup in case they run into something their primary weapon isn't effective against.

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>>65072520
Definitely did not take themselves serious.

>>65038689
Nope. They were initially equipped with Bolters, which were set to be replaced with Volkite, but Volkite is finnicky enough that you can't just bolt it together in some hive sweatshop, you need a real forge world the size of Mars or Ryza with dedicated techpriests supervising every manufacturing floor, so they never managed to make enough of them to equip every Space Marine before the Heresy kicked off and put an end to the project for good.

>>65028560
bump.

>>65072642
If the bolter is so good because it's "simple", why not take out the dual charge system and the timed fuse, which would reduce it's cost and maintenance probably by 9/10ths with no downside.

>>65076209
don't