40k ammunition capacity

[Myu]

Just how many rounds can a lasgun, boltgun or heavy boltergo through before they run out? How much can a character human/ammo crate hold before they run out?

I'm curious because in a few weeks I'm planning on making a simple turret defense game with custom characters+turrets vs a swarm of nids using the 40 rules.

However I have no idea how many shots a heavy bolter/bolt gun fires when they shoot a burst or how much they can hold.

[gendoikari87]

Just how many rounds can a lasgun, boltgun or heavy boltergo through before they run out? How much can a character human/ammo crate hold before they run out?

I'm curious because in a few weeks I'm planning on making a simple turret defense game with custom characters+turrets vs a swarm of nids using the 40 rules.

However I have no idea how many shots a heavy bolter/bolt gun fires when they shoot a burst or how much they can hold.

read the imperial armour books, each pattern differs a bit but for the basic I think it was about 30 per charge pack.

[MaltonNecromancer]

According to the various RPGs (Dark Heresy, Deathwatch, et al.) it depends on the make and ammo pack size. Lasguns get between 50-100 shots before reload (generally much less if a hotshot variant, unless equipped with the storm trooper battery pack), and bolters have about 30-40.

Heavy Bolter's got about 30, unless it's got the Devastator ammo backpack, in which case it's around 200. If we're talking IG HW team, you're talking 200 rounds easily. If you're talking about something like a Tarantula or gun emplacement, it could be even more.

Basically, a fully-kitted up standard IG trooper with about 5 clips could easily have 250 shots. With Marines, you're looking closer to 100 or so.

Lasguns get loads of shots. Because they need them, obviously.

[Wildcard]

In the Black Library books (if you count artistic interpretation as a fluff) it is stated that you can set the strenght of the shot in a lasgun (tabletop wise i am not sure if its really strenght or AP value, probably both, most likely AP..), in a manner that a shot that is described to "Blast right through power armors helmet" has around 10-15 shots in a clip, where a shot suited for killing i.ex normal humans / cultists (with no real body armor of any kind) can hold fifty(ish) charges.

Now, since we are talking about energy (battery) packs, the climate (hot / cold) affects the efficiensy of the pack.
- Colder it gets, less charges it generally has.
- Hotter it get (to a point) more efficient the load.

If you are running a scenario where ammo counts, and you have lasguns (and to a point lascannons) present, this is something you could find usefull in a way of interesting spice:

And it has been stated in many sources (novel-books and i believe in some books containing rules aswell) that you can "emergency recharge the pack" by exposeing it to heat to quickly give it some charge-level, yet at the same time radically shortening its over-all life span (so great for last stand- type of situations, but sucks in a prolonged trench warfare)

gameplay wise, something like a "gets hot" test, if successfull you gain 4+D6 shots (or the amount of your liking). On the first charge, it gets hot on a roll of 1, then on the next time its gets hot on a roll of 1 or 2 etc..

[Denzark]

As mentioned before, would depend on the pattern. But also, the ammo source - ie magazine, box, or belt for bolt type weapons.

A rough current British Infantry scaling would be 6 mags of 30 rnds per soldier (rifleman), with a bandolier of 150 on clips to be put into empty magazines during a lull. Machine gunners would carry belts or boxes dependant on weapon, with riflemen all carrying spare rounds for the gunners, or possibly spare mortar bombs.

Poor old Platoon Sergeant would carry a 10% reserve for the whole platoon.

Also, I don't know if it helps but doesn't a standard issue US Colonial Marine Corps automated sentry gun hold 999 rounds to start with?

[Wildeybeast]

I'm not sure how relevant it is to what you are planning, but it might be worth bearing in mind the sources of spare ammo. SM are front line, rapid insertion forces who will generally run out of ammo fairly shortly, and then discard their heavy weapon in favour of bolter or combat knife. IG are designed for more static engagments, particularly HW teams (as normal humans they struggle to run round with heavy bolters) and as such are likely to have a much greater supply of ammo as they aren't limited to what they can physically carry. They may also have ammo runners, bringing supplies from the rear to the front lines (depending on how organised the warzone is).

[Emerald Rose Widow]

Now, since we are talking about energy (battery) packs, the climate (hot / cold) affects the efficiensy of the pack.
- Colder it gets, less charges it generally has.
- Hotter it get (to a point) more efficient the load.

If you are running a scenario where ammo counts, and you have lasguns (and to a point lascannons) present, this is something you could find usefull in a way of interesting spice:


I thought batteries get less efficient the hotter they get, sure the electrons are more excited and put out more actual power, but they don't last as long that way. I could be wrong, but I just wanted to state that and verify. I know to increase the longevity of my batteries, it works to put them in the freezer, and there is no noticable difference in the power output, but they do last longer.

Again, just asking, was curious.

[DarkLink]

In the case of a lasgun, AP and strength would be pretty much directly proportional. Since it is a pure beam of energy, when it hits a target it burns through whatever it hits. If there's enough energy to punch through the armor, it burns whatever's under it. If not, the armor stops it.

With physical projectiles there's a bit more of a discrepancy. A long narrow hard high velocity projectile will penetrate more armor than a stubby, soft and slow projectile of equal kinetic energy. And the size of the wound will vary, too, as the hard narrow projectile will punch a relatively neat, clean hole while the wide soft projectile will tear a bigger, ragged hole. A significant amount of military firearms design is how to appropriately compromise between these two extremes and get a maximum lethality out of armor penetrating ammo.

Speaking generally, any str 10 shot should be AP2, while any str 3 shot probably shouldn't have an AP at all. There might not be a perfect correlation between str and ap, but raw energy is still the primary determinate of both wound size and penetration.




I'll also point out that when an infantryman expects to see combat, they pack as much ammo as they can unless they have a good reason not to. Even the absurd amount of weight they have to carry in the form of body armor and other secondary equipment doesn't stop them from carrying as much ammo as they can. I'd expect Guardsmen and Space Marines to do the same.


I know to increase the longevity of my batteries, it works to put them in the freezer, and there is no noticable difference in the power output, but they do last longer.


It increases the longevity because cold saps energy from the system, slowing down the chemical reaction the produces electricity. Even when not hooked up to anything, the battery will still slowly discharge, the cold just makes it discharge even more slowly.

[Wildcard]

What i meant with the temperature of a battery was that the amount of Volts you can pull from the battery depends on its temperature (its discharge efficiensy etc.)



- Colder it gets, less charges it generally has.
- Hotter it get (to a point) more efficient the load.


My original post had two different variables tho, first was numeric total of the shots, and second was the power of shots, so they weren't comparable.

So, let me try again :)
- Colder it gets, more shots lasguns have, yet with notably reduced strenght (due to the fact that the battery cannot supply the normal amount of volts for the shot)
- Hotter it gets, less shots lasguns have, although with notably increased strenght, (hence the name "HotShot Lasguns i guess? :) ), because the battery can provide more voltage for each shot.

Please be free to correct any discrepancies again :)

[DarkLink]

I'm not an electrical engineer, so I'm not an expert on batteries, but as far as I know cold is mainly beneficial purely for storage. You have the same amount of energy stored at a given point in time whether it's hot or cold, and so hot is better because you can get more efficiency out of it. But when you're not using the battery, it will drain more quickly if it's hot, so you want to store it cold.

[Wildcard]

@Darklink: That is correct. The best way to store energy (in which humanity is yet to succeed in a grand scale) is to use superconductivity to store the energy. This way there is no loss of energy in any way.

There is the problem today tho, that we do not posses materials and knowledge to get a materia into superconductive state other than to freeze it near absolute zero (0K / -273,15 Celsius or so), and this requires huge amount of resources to accomplish.. Ofc you can dip a small battery into liquid hydrogen, so it is relatively easy on a small scale, but to store the energy for a household, or even a city is a whole different matter.

Link for the interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity