Mobile Infantry (novel) versus 40K Space Marines

[Connor MacLeod]

Or for crying out loud. Is the "SPACE MARINES CAN RESIST ANTI TANK WEAPONS" crowd even fucking listening? I do not fucking believe I have to explain this. Auto cannons are not electromagnetic weapons by nature. They MAY be ETC or related, but this is HIGHLY unlikely to be common (It would be hard enough justifying it for battle cannon.) They use cased propellants much like battle cannon do (showin in Imperial ARmour and various other sources) and their calibres vary dramatically (up to and including 40mm anti tank guns and sizes up to and approachng tank guns. Hell autoGUNS use cased ammo as often as not. Using projectile weapons of that nature imposes certain limitations by virtue of two factors - momentum imparted and in the maximum possible muzzle velocities (which while under certain circumstances - EG ETC guns - could be increased, are incremental and not exponential increases. More on that later.)

Let's assume the 'auto cannon" in the "Nightbringer" example is 30mm. For shits and giggles, we'll assume an ETC gun like performance (something on the order of 2 km/s) and a 300 gram DU shell. At the speed and velocity mentioned, each shell will carry something like 600 kj of KE and 600 kg*m/s of momentum. Your average Space Marine might get knocked around a bit, but ususally masses half a ton or so (Deathwathc RPG) so we're not to far off in terms of knocking him about (although 600 kg*m/s is, in my opinion, pushing it). Something of a WW2 era armour piercing anti tank round? 800-1000 m/s and say 7-10 kg shell (Ex: the HVAP ammunition) would pack 7000-8000 kg*m/s worth of momentum and 3-4 MJ of energy or so (at least) nevermind something more APDS or better. That sort of lethality would be knocking Marines off their feet if they were taking such impacts - have we ever seen this performance form heavy bolters or autocannon? I haven't seen it.

Oh, and nightbringer? Let's look at the instance:

Heavy autocannon fire sprayed the roof of the building, churning up its pebbled
surface and shredding human flesh. The men who had been awaiting rescue in the
flyers were the first to die, ripped apart in seconds by the heavy calibre, armour
piercing shells.
..

Learchus sprinted forward, diving to the ground to gather the girl in his arms and
rolling on top of her as the ornithopters shells ripped towards her. He supported his
weight on his elbows so as not to crush the girl and felt the powerful impacts hammer
into his back plate. He offered a short prayer of thanks to his armour for standing
firm against the traitorous fire.

Note the bolded part - it does not sound much as if this guy is getting rocked around violently by the levle of momentum I'm tlaking about - he seems fairly immobile in fact, which indicates my earlier assessment was generous. But regardless it is quite obvious he is taking nothing like a MJ range autocannon hit - such would need more of a half a kilo to a kilo shell at the aforementioned 2 kps and would packthousands of kg*m/s - enough to be severely knocking the marine around - something we have NEVER to my knowledge seen, much less the KE/momentum of something ACTUALLY of a reliable anti-tank grade.

Insofar as specific Space Marine resistances go in other sources, the armor has been penetrated by bolt guns (Common throughout the Horus Heresy novels or pretty much any novel or source where Marine fights marine) It has been penetrated by heavy bolters (Let the galaxy Burn short story featuring dark angels has a heavy bolter that repeatedly penetrates Dark Angel armour and ruthlessly kills those wearing it.) Iron Hands has a Iron Hands Devastator using a krak missile (anti tank warhead) to not just penetrate Space Marine armor, but blow the fucking marine APART.

So again rather than this inanely retarded insistance that "FUTURE AUTOMATICALLY MEANS BETTER!" and other such retarded resistances, why don't you actually provide the evidence (quotes, numbers etc.) demonstrating a fucking Space Marine can stand up to a fucking anti-tank weapon - the point which is relevant to the fucking discussion. If I have to ask again I'm going straight to Edi on this.

[Connor MacLeod]

Oh, and just to reinforce the point: This is ALSO from Nightbringer:

Autocannon fire
sprayed a group of Space Marines from Sergeant Elerna’s squad. Four went down;
only two got back up.
One of the survivors had lost his right arm, but continued upwards, picking up his
pistol with his remaining hand and firing as he ran.
“Spread out, don’t bunch up!” yelled Uriel as the autocannon fired again.
Major Bextor punched the air as the autocannon cut a swathe through the
Ultramarines’ ranks. He fired over the parapet into the charging warriors.

Looks like autocannon of some kind can penetrate Space Marine armour.

[Purple]

Or for crying out loud. Is the "SPACE MARINES CAN RESIST ANTI TANK WEAPONS" crowd even fucking listening?

Firstly, I newer said they can take their anti tank weapons. But I did say that there is no reason to believe that their AT weapons are not stronger than ours.

They might well have developed some stronger explosives and such. And we have no idea what ceramite actually is other than it is used in their armor.

I do not fucking believe I have to explain this. Auto cannons are not electromagnetic weapons by nature.
They MAY be ETC or related, but this is HIGHLY unlikely to be common (It would be hard enough justifying it for battle cannon.)

No one has claimed this. Or at least I could not find any such claims. If my reading is at fault I apologize.

They use cased propellants much like battle cannon do (showin in Imperial ARmour and various other sources) and their calibres vary dramatically (up to and including 40mm anti tank guns and sizes up to and approachng tank guns. Hell autoGUNS use cased ammo as often as not. Using projectile weapons of that nature imposes certain limitations by virtue of two factors - momentum imparted and in the maximum possible muzzle velocities (which while under certain circumstances - EG ETC guns - could be increased, are incremental and not exponential increases. More on that later.)

So in plain English you are saying that canons of that nature have fixed limits above witch they can not be improved.
And that using stuff stronger explosives for the filling and propellant charge, stronger materials for a penetrator etc. will only yield small scale improvements rather than large ones? Alright, I am fallowing you so far. I think.

Let's assume the 'auto cannon" in the "Nightbringer" example is 30mm. For shits and giggles, we'll assume an ETC gun like performance (something on the order of 2 km/s) and a 300 gram DU shell.

Taking the assumption that the shells have no explosive charge and rely on kinetic energy alone. But what ever.

At the speed and velocity mentioned, each shell will carry something like 600 kj of KE and 600 kg*m/s of momentum. Your average Space Marine might get knocked around a bit, but ususally masses half a ton or so (Deathwathc RPG) so we're not to far off in terms of knocking him about (although 600 kg*m/s is, in my opinion, pushing it).

Something of a WW2 era armour piercing anti tank round? 800-1000 m/s and say 7-10 kg shell (Ex: the HVAP ammunition) would pack 7000-8000 kg*m/s worth of momentum and 3-4 MJ of energy or so (at least) nevermind something more APDS or better. That sort of lethality would be knocking Marines off their feet if they were taking such impacts - have we ever seen this performance form heavy bolters or autocannon? I haven't seen it.

From heavy bolters no, naturally.
But again, you are relying on the notion that the autocanon (40K) has no special warheads.
Thou considering the numbers you presented I am starting to lean toward this being an error of mine...

Note the bolded part - it does not sound much as if this guy is getting rocked around violently by the levle of momentum I'm tlaking about - he seems fairly immobile in fact, which indicates my earlier assessment was generous. But regardless it is quite obvious he is taking nothing like a MJ range autocannon hit - such would need more of a half a kilo to a kilo shell at the aforementioned 2 kps and would packthousands of kg*m/s - enough to be severely knocking the marine around - something we have NEVER to my knowledge seen, much less the KE/momentum of something ACTUALLY of a reliable anti-tank grade.

So you are saying that just because the shell did not have enough energy to throw the marine around...
I see your point.

You are saying that: You can estimate the Ek of a shell by it's inability to throw the marine around. And even thou it did not kill said marine in said instance other shells fired from similar weapons do manage to do so from time to time. So, taking the general range of the weapons in question you can than compare it to modern weapons and see some of them clearly superior.


Well I concede. I admit that I was wrong. But I did not expect the outcome honestly.
Thank you for enlightening me.

[Cykeisme]

Space Marine power armor certainly cannot hold up against direct hits from anti-tank weaponry.
Note that the autocannons that they are resistant against are NOT anti-tank weapons; 40k autocannons cannot defeat frontal MBT armour, and so even though SM power armor is resistant to these, they are not anti-tank weapons.

Anti-tank weapons in 40k include some that are much like those today.. large bore high-velocity tank cannons and missiles with armor piercing shaped-charge warheads. Both of these easily defeat power armor on a direct hit. They also have sci-fi stuff like lascannons and melta weapons, both of which are also capable of defeating power armor.
The issue is that most of these weapons are cumbersome, single-shot weapons that have difficulty hitting targets with either high acceleration (able to change directions quickly), able to take cover behind terrain, or a combination of both.


Anyway, back to the OP.
As Batman pointed out..

..because for now, the only hard information we have on them is 1) they carry manportable low single figure KT nukes on occasion and 2)-um, that's it. We don't know their armour resilience against anything quantifiable, we don't know their firepower. In fact, we don't even know what their kit looks like, all we know is that they can carry flamers (firepower and ammo load unknown), Y-racks with grenades (range, accuracy, ammo load and yield unknown), the aforementioned Nukezookas, that they can jump a couple dozen to a couple hundred meters (I'm a little hazy there so if anybody knows better feel free to correct) and that the suit weighs about 2,000 pounds. That's essentially it.

..we have virtually no way of assessing how fast, tough, accurate or hard-hitting the MI suits are.
It looks like we won't be able to figure out how tough they will be for the Space Marines to kill, or how effective their non-nuclear offensive capabilities will be against Space Marines.

Basically we might as well have a thread about the effectiveness of 2kt nuclear warheads on Space Marines.

[PainRack]

Anyway, back to the OP.
As Batman pointed out..

..because for now, the only hard information we have on them is 1) they carry manportable low single figure KT nukes on occasion and 2)-um, that's it. We don't know their armour resilience against anything quantifiable, we don't know their firepower. In fact, we don't even know what their kit looks like, all we know is that they can carry flamers (firepower and ammo load unknown), Y-racks with grenades (range, accuracy, ammo load and yield unknown), the aforementioned Nukezookas, that they can jump a couple dozen to a couple hundred meters (I'm a little hazy there so if anybody knows better feel free to correct) and that the suit weighs about 2,000 pounds. That's essentially it.

..we have virtually no way of assessing how fast, tough, accurate or hard-hitting the MI suits are.
It looks like we won't be able to figure out how tough they will be for the Space Marines to kill, or how effective their non-nuclear offensive capabilities will be against Space Marines.

Basically we might as well have a thread about the effectiveness of 2kt nuclear warheads on Space Marines.

Wasn't there blurbs about the MI weapons "vapourising" parts of the bug anatomy?

[Serafina]

Wasn't there blurbs about the MI weapons "vapourising" parts of the bug anatomy?

If so, that could be no more powerful than a 40K-lasgun, which also tend to do localized vaporization.