Scooby Doo
Well-known member
Yeah but Lascannons are more powerful than Phasers.
And Hotshots/Hellguns are a lot stronger than regular las guns.
Ceramite is very resistant not immune
Starfleet Ground Troops vs 40k Space Marines
- Thread starter The Original Sixth
- Start date
And Hotshots/Hellguns are a lot stronger than regular las guns.
Ceramite is very resistant not immune
I had actually. Lasers are great, but one drawback is that they have no resting mass, so penetration power is basically non-existent. Lasers basically have to burn or melt their way through a material. That's where the concept of ablative armor comes in; the top layer of armor easily vaporizes and the steam reduces the effectiveness of the incoming beam. I had also considered it very likely that Space Marine was either highly resistant to heat or even the very paint itself had ablative qualities.
I recently just watched Angels of Death. Very miniseries. The most impressive feat I saw was what looks to be a Chimera being utilized by genestealers. It had what I suspect is a multi-laser. In one scene, the multilaser takes several shots in the direction of one of the Death Angels. It misses, but hits the stone road, fracturing it with every shot (lots of shots, hard to count admittedly). The angle makes it difficult to determine just how much of the material was fractured, but it looks to be about half a cubic meter. Split it between six shots and each would have an output of roughly 26.5 kilojoules. Shortly after that scene, the Chimera takes aim at another Battle Brother, but he's moved aside by the Battle Sergeant, who takes one of the shots to the chest. Amazingly, the laser blast neither kills him or even severally damages his armor; it barely leaves a burn. The only thing the shot manages to do is cause the sergeant to stagger and he blanks out for several seconds, though part of that is because he's starting to feel the Black Rage take over.
Overall, that's some pretty hefty resistance to such a weapon. Now, how does that stack up with a phaser? Not entirely certain. Phasers aren't lasers; they fire subatomic particles at near light speeds, so they do have resting mass (even if it's small) and therefore carry some degree of kinetic energy. However, ablative armor has been known to be effective on their starships and it's plausible that's the design intent behind ground troop armor, as seen with the leather-like material worn by the Cardassians and the Klingons, as well as Federation Troops. I can go into further-depth analysis later, but not now.
As for how the phaser would interact? I expect that a Space Marine would probably be safe from settings 1-7. Setting 8 is a different matter, as that's around 106 KJ; roughly four times stronger than the multi-laser the battle sergeant took to the chest. Even if it didn't instant-kill him, chances are that it would be a mortal wound. It would most assuredly penetrate his armor and I expect once the phaser beam hits the organic flesh, it would begin to spread out in a traditional vaporization effect (though it would lack that full power after needing to penetrate the armor), so it wouldn't just burn one spot or punch through; it would most probably vaporize or cook the Space Marine's organs, which would be more than enough to kill him. A blow to a limb might not be lethal though, since the damage would be primarily contained in that region. It would still cost him the limb though.
The real interest for the miniseries was how effective the Space Marines were. They're not the Jedi or DBZ characters some posters here want to portray them as, but they're certainly very experienced and very good (not to mention quick) shooters. So I'd actually lower Starfleet's chances of winning here based on that, most certainly in the first scenario. The second scenario is actually a bit more even since Starfleet can basically fire a tactical nuke at them and contrary to what others have insisted, there's no real way for them to avoid it. A close-range detonation would kill them and a medium-proximity blast would certainly leave them staggered and confused. In a direct infantry battle, especially at more moderate ranges? The Space Marines would probably take it, but with heavy losses.
As an aside, the ship combat was also an interesting aspect of the miniseries. All space combat sort of suffers from the "Star Trek" style in most western sci-fi depictions. Ships move and fight in ways that would not be all that different to what you'd see in later Star Trek episodes and series. This was no real exception; combat ranges are within spitting distance; ships fly around like giant aircraft, and so forth. The real interesting part was the forward bombardment cannon on the Sword of Baal hitting the orbital tower's base. Obviously very powerful, but not where lots of fanboys like to put it.
Far more in line with what we see in Battlefleet Gothic and Rogue Trader; weapons generally limited to the terawatt and (probably) gigawatt range.
It probably depends on the individual lascannon, but a Federation phaser's SEM is at around 900 KWs. That's more than enough energy to blast through Space Marine armor and could probably take out most armored transports with sustained fire.