Yes, my bad. I misread what you said. You're right, technically, the velocity would be higher after the bolt left the barrel. However, in this case, I doubt the range allows the impact velocity for the projectile to have increased very much beyond its muzzle velocity - with the woman virtually on top of him, he's got to be practically shoving that gun into her guts. I can't really begin to guess at the parameters involved (except that the KE would be transferred into the woman on impact, and the bolt would simply be accelerating her mass, and the resultant KE/velocity would be substantially lower.)Imperial Overlord wrote: No, I mean exactly that. It will continue to accelerate as it leaves the muzzle of the gun so at close range its velocity will be higher. It will continue to accelerate past that but there will be factors like gravity, atmospheric density and so on acting on the bolt. So its velocity will probably be higher at close range (relevant for the example of a close range shot) than the muzzle velocity, even higher at mid range and decline at long range, depending on enviromental conditions. Unless you see an error in any of this.
Note that in my original statement I was not assuming that the velocity came from the propulsion element - I was assuming the momentum came from the gun itself. As I noted, at that close a range, a thrust stream from the bolt would be..problematic at best (equal and opposite reaction and all that.. not healthy and certainly something difficult to fail to notice!) It becomes more plausible with the "grgavitic motors" Necronlord described (somewhat) but even then not much so. As I said, this weapon would be abnormally powerful from what I've seen/heard of from a bolt gun, and the effects described would imply some questionable abilities (multi km/multi-mile weapon ranges, substnatial destructive effects independent of the bolt's explosive element as well as overpenetration hazards, etc.) I don';t know how long bolter shells accelerate for, but even assuming a 2-3 second timeframe (an effective accel of around 200-300 gees), you'd need many kilometers or miles in which to allow the bolt to "accelerate up" to that velocity, and its trajectory would be extremely stable over that distance due to hits hypersonic velocity.
As I noted, at the very least this makes it an exceptional or unusual kind of b olt gun or boltgun ammo, rather than a standard one. (perhaps smething designed to take on Chaos entities of the large variety with.)
