Weaponry and Capabilities

[Nabterayl]

And for that, I think you seriously underestimate the power of the lasgun or the durability of flak armor. Flak armor is actually quite advanced, providing quit a bit of protection and then even MORE against blasts and shrapnel-- it's especially designed to protect against small arms,shrapnel, proximity blasts, etc. Just because armor is heavy enough to require an exoskeleton does not make it superior-- it just makes it heavy. The lasgun is a very deadly weapon, which never jams, has self-replenishing ammunition, and can kill any normal human in a single shot with ease, or any other common member of any race in 40k (even Marines, Necrons, and Orks can be taken down with a single shot, despite their superior anatomies)

Right, which makes it ... as powerful as an assault rifle, but more reliable. I don't think I've ever seen lasguns depicted as anything other than that.

Flak Armor, which is wildly superior to anything modern society can even concieve of putting on standard infantry just looks rather pathetic in the tabletop game.

Wait wait wait, source that for me. In what sense is flak armor wildly superior to anything modern society can even conceive of putting on standard infantry?

Bolters are equivalent, if not actually superior, to modern anti-tank weaponry, and carapace armor is able to block it-- that is, carapace armor is able to block what we today would consider anti-tank weaponry.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on bolters being the equivalent to modern anti-tank weaponry. Are you talking about man-portable ATGMs?

Autocannons are better than any modern tank's main cannon

Source?

Furthermore I would also argue that the comparison to Sisters is still incorrect. The lowest, most inexperienced and unskilled Sisters are equivalent, using your own comparison, to the best of the best of the Terran Marines.

I'm perfectly willing to move the conversation out of Sororitas territory, since that gets into weirdness that has no StarCraft equivalent.

The technological scale of 40K is anchored, for me, by a couple of things. One is the lasgun-autogun equivalency. Autoguns are consistently depicted with capabilities and mechanisms equivalent to (and in some cases, inferior to) modern assault rifles, and lasguns are consistently depicted as having equivalent lethality. There's obviously some wiggle room in there, since "modern assault rifles" describes a range of lethalities, but I haven't read anything to suggest that a lasgun is materially more lethal than what we use today. That is, of course, quite lethal indeed, but the fact that a lasgun can stop a rampaging space marine or ork with a single shot says more to me about the realities of wounding mechanisms than it does about the over-the-top firepower of a las bolt.

Another anchor for me is the Earthshaker cannon, which we know is a 132mm weapon with an effective range of 15 kilometers. That is, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M109_Paladin]as you know[/url], not impressive at all. And yet this is a front-line weapon for the Imperial Guard. While it's true that we don't have any hard data (that I know of) about the explosive yield of an Earthshaker's shell, the specifications we do have are distinctly substandard by comparison to equivalent first-world hardware.

Back to StarCraft ...

The point that I'm making is that the destructive scale of StarCraft is not, as I understand the fluff, very different from the destructive scale of 40K. Yes, it takes an upgraded marine six bursts to put down an upgraded zergling, but we should take that with the same grain of salt we take the fact that a space marine needs 2.25 bursts to put down a naked human being. Fluff-wise, StarCraft has its own autogun equivalents, which are definitely depicted as being seriously inferior in firepower to a marine's coil rifle, and which are definitely depicted as being essentially impotent against marine power armor. That is, I submit, the essential relationship of the autogun (and thus the lasgun) to 40K power armor as well.

[Melissia]

On the flak armor...

The source on flak armor is Dark Heresy-- it's comprised of layers of ablative and impact-absorbent material, designed to provie good protection against small arms and very good protection against shrapnel and blasts. And before you ask, I do believe Dark Heresy is, roughly speaking, Canon-- it's endorsed by Games Workshop and indeed Games Workshop's own writers contributed to it and its supplements (most notable Andy Hoare). The Improved Outer Tactical Vest used by the US Army (one of the most-- if not the most-- technologically advanced modern armies, despite how much people might want to bash it) weighs 35 pounds (just the vest, protecting only the front chest and abdomen), while a full set of Guard Flak Armor-- protecting all areas of the body, including the back, arms, legs, head, shoulders, etc-- weighs roughly 24 pounds.

So, even if you're going to argue that the Flak Armor provides equivalent protection (which I don't agree with, but we really don't have ballistics for the Flak Armor in order to argue either way), it provides full body protection while weighing less than just the front chest and abdomen protection the body armor the US Military provides. I'd say that very clearly makes it superior.

[Nabterayl]

That's a fair point; I'll certainly concede that it's incredibly light for what it does.

[Melissia]

If tabletop wanted to be true to the fluff, Guard would get a 5+ save against normal attacks, and a 4+ save against blast templates (but not flamer templates), as Guard Flak Armor is equivalent to light carapace armor when it comes to protection against blasts and shrapnel. But I think this wouldn't ever be put in place simply because of balance and complexity issues.

[Paul]

I've argued this with my friends; you just opened a can of worms.

The inferior 132mm shell with a range of only 15 kilometers is slightly less powerful than. . .

the plasma annihilator on a Titan, save for blast radius: both ignore infantry armor, one is Str 10, the other is Str. 9.

How can it be that a gun, inferior to modern arms, can fire a shell with such intense explosive yields as to be able to mimic the force and heat of a plasma (i.e. star-material, in my interpretation) blast from the largest war machine known to mankind?

40k is deeply flawed. My favorite part is where the rear armor on a leman russ is equivalent to a log cabin. It's in the buildings section: log cabins are Armor 10.

My ancient, 1939-manufacture Tokarev TT-33 can knock out a Leman Russ in the butt. 40,000 years later. So can a boltgun:

Therefore, in terms of pure strength, my TT-33 7.62 x 25mm pistol is as strong as the main weapon issued to Space Marines firing mass-reactive explosive .75 cal. rounds.

40k is deeply flawed.

[Melissia]

I don't take the building section in TT 40k seriously. Neither should you :P

[Paul]

I don't take the building section in TT 40k seriously. Neither should you :P

I think they're useful for armour comparisons.

[Melissia]

I don't.... keep in mind that the other comparisons that have been made. The lasgun and autogun are roughly equivalent, and the autogun, as poitned out by Nab in the above posts, is stated to be roughly equivalent or at least comparable (superior in some areas, inferior in others) to modern assault rifles.* These weapons cannot even hope to penetrate the rear armor of a Leman Russ. The building section, I think, is just poorly thought through.


*In Dark Heresy terms, the standard, generic autogun has the same damage, same semi-auto rate of fire as the lasgun. The Lasgun has more 30 shots per laspack (the autogun appears to have a fifteen round doublestacked magazine), and is longer ranged, while the autogun is 0.5 kg lighter and has a fully automatic mode the lasgun doesn't.

[Rafe_131]

I'd say an autocannon is more in line with a modern round ranging anywhere from the .50 cal up to a 20mm chain gun. Those rounds, like the autocannon of 40k, is not designed to defeat the heavy armor found on Main Battle Tanks, but light to medium armor more akin to "thin skin" transports and APCs.

So, no. I'd say an autocannon is not better than a modern 120mm main gun found on many of todays tanks in any way other than cyclic rate and ease of transport.

Just my opinion

[Paul]

I don't.... keep in mind that the other comparisons that have been made. The lasgun and autogun are roughly equivalent, and the autogun, as poitned out by Nab in the above posts, is stated to be roughly equivalent or at least comparable (superior in some areas, inferior in others) to modern assault rifles.* These weapons cannot even hope to penetrate the rear armor of a Leman Russ. The building section, I think, is just poorly thought through.


*In Dark Heresy terms, the standard, generic autogun has the same damage, same semi-auto rate of fire as the lasgun. The Lasgun has more 30 shots per laspack (the autogun appears to have a fifteen round doublestacked magazine), and is longer ranged, while the autogun is 0.5 kg lighter and has a fully automatic mode the lasgun doesn't.

Poorly thought out or otherwise, the Building section in 40K is canon as far as I am concerned. A boltgun can glance a Log Cabin. A lasgun, cannot.

So, if a Lasgun is indeed comparable to a high-powered assault rifle, then...


40K has some DAMN strong logs.