How fast is Tau railgun?

[Shroom Man 777]

I think I heard NecronLord, or was it Connor MacLeod, say that the Imperium had more Stormtroopers with Hellguns than the Tau had Firewarriors with pulse rifles.

[Ryan Thunder]

Based on every bit of the fluff I've seen this is transparent nonsense, unless we restrict ourselves to "Khornate berserkers and Blood Angels" as the defining set of all Marines. So I'd say it doesn't really affect my argument. Nor my point that a Tau Fire Warrior routinely carries an infantry rifle that, on tabletop, outguns a Space Marine bolter normally described as "too heavy for a normal human to lift."

I'm not seeing how your point is relevant. So they have a more powerful gun. We know that Space Marines will still slaughter them effortlessly regardless due to their drastically superior reflexes and general combat skills.

Is it upsetting that they might not be superior to everything in every conceivable way even if they're still an unstoppable pain in the ass, or something?

[Black Admiral]

The Gray Knights in Killing Ground also launched a straightfoward frontal attack against the Chaos medicae complex.

Um, just hitting this one specifically - what else were they supposed to do? It's not like there was much room for anything other than a direct assault, in both time and practical terms.

Also, isn't it the Heavy Bolter that earns that description?

No, a Soul Drinker boltpistol is described as being big and heavy enough that it takes both hands for a normal human to lift and fire it.

[NecronLord]

Jesus Christ, man, are you illiterate? Did I say they just stood there waiting to get shot? No. I said they go wading into fire as though they think their power armour makes them indestructible. It's like their basic assumption when planning things is that they've activated God Mode. Instead of being competent and using their durability to enhance their survivability, they waste it as a crutch to let them do sloppy shit that would just get them killed if they were anything else.

Firstly, you characterise a space marine advance as "power weapon in hand" - this is an inaccurate depiction, the average marine does not possess such an item. Maybe one in ten does, at best. Possibly more like one in thirty or so. To focus on their holding melee weapons while being shot at is to imply they do not have or use guns. To create a false impression in order to make them look dumb.

Second, if they are 'god mode' then they do not need complex tactics, and it would waste time and effort to employ them. For example, it is not stupid for a Culture combat drone to charge directly at a Space Marine fotress monastery with full garrison, because the marines literally cannot hurt it no matter how hard they try. You can have one or the other - they're dumb for not using more modern tactics - or - they're stupidly overpowered. If they're sufficiently overpowered that they do not need complex tactics to defeat most opponents, then it would be wasteful for them to employ complex tactics upon most opponents.


-----

For the record, SM weapons aren't too heavy for an unaugmented human to lift, merely that ordinary humans cannot safely weild them. Unaugmented humans (chapter retainers) lift and carry them all the time.

Why do Tau need to compare with special forces so rare that there isn't even one soldier per planet?

Space Marines should be compared to battle suits.

Because the Tau are ostensibly an elite army, there is no question that the Fire Warrior is superior to (most) guardsmen. Of course it's possible that in absolute terms there are more space marines, I recall the Vior'la sept, a major Fire Caste recruitment area having a total population of ten million (including children, earth caste, etc)... though I expect there's closer to a few tens of millions of Firewarriors in the Tau Empire.

On the one hand they don't have to arm a galaxy full of soldiers like the Imperium does; on the other, they don't have a galaxy full of factories to make the weapons with. I'd say it cancels out, leaving us with the conclusion that the Tau have to have some kind of an edge to mass-produce pulse rifles when the Imperium doesn't even come close to mass-producing, say, hellguns.

It is obvious that the Tau's general tech base is superior to the Imperium's, I don't know how anyone could argue otherwise. The Imperium has toys the Tau have not discovered and not invented, such as the teleporter or conversion beamer, but this is because Dark (Golden!) Age of Technology would shred the Tau, and these are little more than relics produced in limited numbers.

[IvanTih]

I've always wondered how would humanity exist in 40k without that Age of Strife technlogical downer.

[Simon_Jester]

I think I heard NecronLord, or was it Connor MacLeod, say that the Imperium had more Stormtroopers with Hellguns than the Tau had Firewarriors with pulse rifles.

That may well be true, but there's a huge question of relative industrial scale: Hellgun/hotshot weapon production represents a tiny fraction of total Imperial output, whereas effectively all Tau small arms production is pulse-rifle grade.

The Imperium is, as always, diverse in technological capability. But as far as infantry small arms go, I really don't see any reason why there's a problem with just flat-out saying that the Tau have an edge: their average is considerably superior to the Imperial average, even if it isn't superior to the Imperium's best.

I'm not seeing how your point is relevant. So they have a more powerful gun. We know that Space Marines will still slaughter them effortlessly regardless due to their drastically superior reflexes and general combat skills.

Is it upsetting that they might not be superior to everything in every conceivable way even if they're still an unstoppable pain in the ass, or something?

What I'm getting at is that the Tau ability to mass-produce infantry weapons that pack firepower comparable to a Marine bolter on-tabletop in a much smaller package indicates that they do in fact have a technological lead in that area. That's really my only opinion on the subject.

If that's objectionable because "Dammit the Tau shouldn't have better gear than the Imperial average-to-good materiel!" then fine. But since I don't care whether the Tau have higher technology than the Imperium or not, I don't consider it to be upsetting or a problem.

It seems to me that their superior infantry rifles don't exist because they "don't fight wars of attrition" and therefore spend massive amounts of money crafting extremely well-made weapons for each soldier, while being at the same level of quality. That would require Tau per-soldier investment to be comparable to what is spent on Space Marines, and they couldn't afford that.

I think it's because the average Tau rifle factory honestly produces a better rifle, pound for pound and dollar for dollar, than any but the very best Imperial rifle factories.

It is obvious that the Tau's general tech base is superior to the Imperium's, I don't know how anyone could argue otherwise. The Imperium has toys the Tau have not discovered and not invented, such as the teleporter or conversion beamer, but this is because Dark (Golden!) Age of Technology would shred the Tau, and these are little more than relics produced in limited numbers.

I am totally on board with this statement.

[Talk738kno]

Uh guys, why are you still talking about mechanics being the fluff? We already know fluffwise pulse rifles are only a little better then lasguns....

[Ryan Thunder]

[...]

I think it's because the average Tau rifle factory honestly produces a better rifle, pound for pound and dollar for dollar, than any but the very best Imperial rifle factories.

Oh. Well it seems we're in violent agreement, then.

[NecronLord]

I've always wondered how would humanity exist in 40k without that Age of Strife technlogical downer.

You can get something of an impression from the novel Demon World, which features the Human Warship Slaughtersong, a functioning Dark Age warship. It's sapient, though subservient (It's unclear if the name is original - though I like to imagine it is, in a Culture-esque ship-naming way) has drone fighters, and internal gravitic systems able to pluck a sword, fire it through the corridors at supersonic speed, and slow it to safely deposit in a man's hand before a space marine's weapon can be raised and fired. It does the same with a complete suit of armour, drawing it from the armoury and fastening it around its owner in under a second, as well. It has powerful drone fighters, and various other features.

And of course, they had the formidable Iron Men (Gaunt's Ghosts), and their titan Castigator-class Humanoid Seige Platform (Dark Adeptus) was sapient and superior to the Imperator, though it's unclear what the original model was capable of, as the only one we've seen was chaos-corrupted. They had the technology to upload a human mind and preserve the warp-soul in the machine that mind was uploaded to.

There's some items of their man-portable technology featured in the Rogue Trader RPG too.

They were very, very sophisticated. More on Slaughtersong to come, possibly.

Of course, there's a full STC archive out there, so all this can, in-universe, be recovered, one day. Not so grimdark now is it?

[NecronLord]

More on Slaughtersong:
Spoiler

She's big, it's not clear how big but she is 'bigger by far' than the largest ship the Word Bearers have capable of planetary landing. She is described thus 'A massive, curved hull was underslung with powerful engines - gaping particle scoops projected past the prow and led to flared engine exhausts. Clusters of sensor arrays stabbed forward. Sleek windows covered the segmented hull, covering the ship in pinpoints of light [...] There was a name stencilled in enormous letters along the spaceship's hull. The name was Slaughtersong.' 'Slaughtersong was not old in the way that the Multus was old. It was bright and clean, with lumostrips picking out the polished chrome surfaces, every curved wall smooth and unblemished. The floor was of bright silver mesh and the walls of mirror-bright metal. [...] Slaughtersong was so old, it looked new.' She's double hulled, with the space between filled with maintenance tunnels and access-ways leading to her sensor arrays and weapons. Her bridge is deep inside, and 'was an armoured sphere several hundred metres across, in which hovered circular platforms lit brightly from within. Instrumentation appeared as ghostly lines of light in the air, traced out by hidden holoprojectors and scanners fed through to broad flat screens that hung everywhere and followed at a command.' There is a central platform. She's capable of showing live images of two people walking on a planet 'several days' sublight journey by IOM ship away. That said, this is in the Maelstrom so that may not be normal, certainly light travels faster within the eye of terror, to allow ships to travel faster, the old Futurama solution. She's capable of projecting the view outside onto the walls of her bridge, so that one seems to be standing in open space. Her power is derived from 'the endless galleries of the neoplasma generators [note that the squats had a form of these, but the IoM failed to replicate them... though the squat version may actually be an improvement] where gigantic cylindrical turbines hung suspended between a web of gantries' her hold contained seventy original fighter craft 'huge chromed raptors with delta-swept wings and bundles of particle projectors jutting from the fuselage. There were seventy of these craft lined up neatly in the hold, lit by the stark floodlights of high up in the ceiling, waiting to be launched at the will of the ship's master' - bombs and landing gear are also mentioned. The ship can give its commander neural command of these, allowing them to be operated remotely, though they do have cockpits. They have reaction thrusters of some kind, and combustible fuel. Its machine spirit (later called a 'spirit-core' is 'like an arena ringed by towering grey-black memory stacks as tall as buildings, each with a faint ripple of light playing across the surface. The wide circular arena of dark glassy stone was full of wispy lights, forming complex shapes and swirling patterns that broke up and reformed at the speed of the Slaughtersong's thoughts. The ship was all but sentient [she displays seeming sapience later, saying that she wasn't lonely with a demon world to watch], a companion as much as a vessel, a counsellor and sounding board as well as a weapon.' Later it destroys a word bearers warship in a single shot 'a weapon had emerged from the side of Slaughtersong's hull, immense and shining, from which was leaping a solid beam of blue-white light. [...] The searing beam cut off. In its place, a silent explosion of multicoloured flame bloomed against the darkness.' The large Word Bearer's ship is totally destroyed, various secondary explosions.

I can't imagine any of the extant factions in 40K would be a threat to Dark Age humans; I expect they'd be too tough for Dark Eldar, and too advanced for 'nids. The Necrons may pose a threat, but less so than they do to the Imperium.

I wonder if the age of strife actually caused the terminal decline of the Eldar, giving them five thousand years with what seems to be their only rival gone, leaving them in absolute, corrupting power...

[Stark]

And you read that without laughing out loud? Maybe 40k stuff needs to be rated by 'author fiat' or something...

[NecronLord]

And you read that without laughing out loud? Maybe 40k stuff needs to be rated by 'author fiat' or something...

40K is in no small part comedy. If it makes you laugh, it's doing its job.

Yes, it's wanktastic, but the point of the story is its wankery.

[Lancer]

[...]

I think it's because the average Tau rifle factory honestly produces a better rifle, pound for pound and dollar for dollar, than any but the very best Imperial rifle factories.

Oh. Well it seems we're in violent agreement, then.

Pound for pound, yes. Definitely not dollar for dollar. The entire point of the lasgun is that it can be crafted by a backwater woodsman with a template using locally available parts (or a hive-ganger with a box of scraps in a ferrocrete cavern) in addition to being stamped out en masse by a group of menials slaving away in some manufactorium. The lasgun is basically the Kalashnikov of the 40k-verse.

[PainRack]

Um, just hitting this one specifically - what else were they supposed to do? It's not like there was much room for anything other than a direct assault, in both time and practical terms.

I'm not saying what they did was wrong for that scenario.

No, a Soul Drinker boltpistol is described as being big and heavy enough that it takes both hands for a normal human to lift and fire it.

Newsflash. Some of the heavier handguns we now have already merit that description.

[PainRack]

I can't imagine any of the extant factions in 40K would be a threat to Dark Age humans; I expect they'd be too tough for Dark Eldar, and too advanced for 'nids. The Necrons may pose a threat, but less so than they do to the Imperium.

I wonder if the age of strife actually caused the terminal decline of the Eldar, giving them five thousand years with what seems to be their only rival gone, leaving them in absolute, corrupting power...

The Eldar themselves are crippled technologically, probably more severely than the humans. Unlike them, they lost access to every major manufacturing capability apart from that sequestered upon the Craftworlds and the Exodites level of sophistry in their society was a colonial backwater.

[IvanTih]

Wall of Text.

About the mind upload,there is a Proteus Protocol(It's heretical!) thing in one of the Dark Heresy books.

[Lancer]

No, a Soul Drinker boltpistol is described as being big and heavy enough that it takes both hands for a normal human to lift and fire it.

Newsflash. Some of the heavier handguns we now have already merit that description.

The key component here is that it took both hands just for a baseline human to lift it. Even the heavier handguns we have can be carried in one hand even if you need both to fire them with any degree of accuracy.

[SAMAS]

Also, isn't it the Heavy Bolter that earns that description?

No, a Soul Drinker boltpistol is described as being big and heavy enough that it takes both hands for a normal human to lift and fire it.

*cough*ImperialGuard*cough*

[Lord Relvenous]

Also, isn't it the Heavy Bolter that earns that description?

No, a Soul Drinker boltpistol is described as being big and heavy enough that it takes both hands for a normal human to lift and fire it.

*cough*ImperialGuard*cough*

Astartes bolt weapons are a much larger scale than bolt weapons intended for unaugmented use. The fact that humans use bolt pistols of a kind does not mean that an Astartes side weapon is such a scale that a regular human would be able to reliably fire it as a pistol weapon. It'd be used much more like a rifle. For instance, here is a mock up (by an artist hired by GW) done for the Ultramarines movie:



Again, that is a bolt pistol, not a bolter.

[Stark]

Man, does anything about bolt weapon design make sense? If they're ubber explosive rockets why does the reciever need so much strength? Why are there giant chunky useless irons? What's up with the muzzle compared to the magazine?

I mean I get that GW is too stupid to make bolt weapons with stocks, but honestly. I await reams of stupid fluff talking about how the huge gun is full of NANO SPIRIT SPRINGS or something.

[Purple]

As far as I recall, the bolt weapons have a starting charge like a normal gun plus a rocket engine to keep it flying faster and farther. So it's like a freaking anti tank rifle with HE shells.

Also, much of the design will probably be unnecessary or just there for the extra padding to bash stuff with. This is 40k, a world where main battle tanks come with sponson laser beams.


And yes, Astartes sized bolt weapons are not the same as human sized ones. Just like tank canons are not the same as battleship canons.

[Bottlestein]

Man, does anything about bolt weapon design make sense? If they're ubber explosive rockets why does the reciever need so much strength? Why are there giant chunky useless irons? What's up with the muzzle compared to the magazine?

I mean I get that GW is too stupid to make bolt weapons with stocks, but honestly. I await reams of stupid fluff talking about how the huge gun is full of NANO SPIRIT SPRINGS or something.

I always liked to think that the "decor" on the bolter was actual metal stamping during the manufacture process - so every time a different marine chapter needs replacements they have to change all the dye-setting tools and metal extruders all along their assembly lines

In the grim darkness of the far future - fuck Mikhail Kalashnikov

[Vendetta]

Man, does anything about bolt weapon design make sense?

Nope. Games Workshop revel in silliness. And skulls.

Why are there giant chunky useless irons?

Can't cast a to-scale iron sight on a 28mm pewter mini?

[Stark]

It's like they took the body of a early 20th century machinegun, made the muzzle huge (for some reason), put a magazine on it that must hold a whole three bullets and decided 'this is what a pistol looks like'. This iron sights being more than a centimeter wide is just absurd, but it turns out that trying to justify 80s art as 'for serious' is daft.

Maybe the whole rear of the reciever contains a set of cleaning tools large enough to be used by Spess Marhrins?

[SAMAS]

No, a Soul Drinker boltpistol is described as being big and heavy enough that it takes both hands for a normal human to lift and fire it.

*cough*ImperialGuard*cough*

Astartes bolt weapons are a much larger scale than bolt weapons intended for unaugmented use. The fact that humans use bolt pistols of a kind does not mean that an Astartes side weapon is such a scale that a regular human would be able to reliably fire it as a pistol weapon. It'd be used much more like a rifle. For instance, here is a mock up (by an artist hired by GW) done for the Ultramarines movie:

Again, that is a bolt pistol, not a bolter.

Again, that's a Space Marine Bolt pistol, specifically designed for a much larger person to use.

The fact that both Bolters and Bolt Pistols exist in normal human scales shows that Bolt weapons are not too heavy for a human to use. As Painrack was pointing out, only the Heavy Bolter is too big for a normal human to use.