Warhammer Warhammer General discussion thread: Now with 100% more Space Marines

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
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GPMGs are typically capable of tripod or vehicle mounting. The original idea was to combine the WW1 heavy machine gun (rifle caliber, water cooled, tripod mounted, extremely cumbersome to move) the WW1 medium machine gun (), and the WW1 light machine gun ().

Obviously, in a modern military, the heavy bolter would be treated as a heavy machine gun (or autocannon, it's 25mm). In an IG context, I'd agree its a HMG. In a Space Marine force though, it's typically used and treated as a GPMG. That it can be carried by a single marine basically disqualifies it from being a HMG. In the context of Space Marine forces, what IRL is the heavy bolter used more like - the M240, or the M2 Browning? Unless your answer is the M2, then it's not a heavy machine gun.



I think you're overestimating how important shouldering is here. At least my understanding is that in a military context you don't want to be firing any rifle offhand if you can help it. If you can take a prone, kneeling, or braced firing position even with the M4, you're going to be doing that anyway, so you're not getting much out of shouldering. The more significant differences would be the lack of ammo compatability and the presumably increased comparative weight in a "just carrying the thing from place to place" context.

@Zachowon, what's your take on this part of the discussion?



Special Forces don't use SAWs as standard issue rifles. That's how the storm bolter is primarily used - standard issue to terminators and custodes. Auto bolt rifles are a good example of a SAW in 40k, but are a primaris weapon.



See, my thing here is that what's needed is just the extra heavy and special weapons, which they can for the most part get pretty easily. There's no additional training necessary, since tactical marines have already been scouts (and thus have time on stalker boltguns) and devastators and probably have decades of experience by this point. So they would field the extra weapons, since it's at most a couple hundred thousand extra thrones to expand the capabilities of a squad that is already worth probably well in excess of a million thrones per marine.

Missile launchers and heavy bolters aren't particularly rare or valuable weapons, at least, not much more so than Astartes bolters already are. The bigger sticking point might be the special weapons. Flamers are cheap (quite possibly cheaper than bolters), so it'd make sense for any tactical squad that wants them to requisition them. Stalker boltguns aren't going to be much harder to make or more expensive than regular bolters. Plasma and melta guns might be more difficult for marines to get their hands on, though, which is why I stipulated "subject to what is available to them," originally.
Well, there are VERY few weapons that the Spac marines can not carry. So really for them all would be a GMG.
Btw, most current use GMGs are Bipod mounted and can optionally be mounted on tripods.

I would say for the Space Marines the Heavy bolter is a HMG and the Assault cannon is a GMG.
 

Battlegrinder

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Obozny
In the context of Space Marine forces, what IRL is the heavy bolter used more like - the M240, or the M2 Browning? Unless your answer is the M2, then it's not a heavy machine gun.

I would say M2, because in addition to its man portable role, it's also the standard vehicle mounted gun, and we don't mount M240s nearly as often as we mount M2s.

It's like that one guy in the pacific theater that was running around with an M1919 that he'd rigged up to be man portable by a single operator. That didn't make the M1919 no longer a crew served weapon because one guy was using it differently.

Special Forces don't use SAWs as standard issue rifles. That's how the storm bolter is primarily used - standard issue to terminators and custodes. Auto bolt rifles are a good example of a SAW in 40k, but are a primaris weapon.

If storm bolters don't count before IRL, no one issues SAWs to whole sqauds, the auto bolt rifles don't count either because they're also distributed on a sqaudwide basis.

You're thinking too much of how the weapon is used and not what it does. SAWs fire roughly same munitions as infantry weapons, but far faster and at a far greater rate of fire, and have a much higher ammo capacity. So do storm bolters and auto bolt rifles.

This is also why the heavy bolter is a HMG, as it fits the main characteristics of that weapon better than a GMG.


I would say for the Space Marines the Heavy bolter is a HMG and the Assault cannon is a GMG.

Noooo. Assault cannons are exclusively vehicle and terminator mounted weapons, they're too big and too heavy for infantry to even carry, so thry can't be a GMG.
 

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
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I would say M2, because in addition to its man portable role, it's also the standard vehicle mounted gun, and we don't mount M240s nearly as often as we mount M2s.

It's like that one guy in the pacific theater that was running around with an M1919 that he'd rigged up to be man portable by a single operator. That didn't make the M1919 no longer a crew served weapon because one guy was using it differently.



If storm bolters don't count before IRL, no one issues SAWs to whole sqauds, the auto bolt rifles don't count either because they're also distributed on a sqaudwide basis.

You're thinking too much of how the weapon is used and not what it does. SAWs fire roughly same munitions as infantry weapons, but far faster and at a far greater rate of fire, and have a much higher ammo capacity. So do storm bolters and auto bolt rifles.

This is also why the heavy bolter is a HMG, as it fits the main characteristics of that weapon better than a GMG.




Noooo. Assault cannons are exclusively vehicle and terminator mounted weapons, they're too big and too heavy for infantry to even carry, so thry can't be a GMG.
So the Heavy bolter could be the M2, and the Autocannon would be like the 14.5 ZPU
 

LindyAF

Well-known member
The M240 was first adopted as a coaxial gun for a tank and was adopted as the standard vehicle machine gun. It’s also used on helicopters IIRC. Another example of GPMGs used with vehicles is that the Germans used the MG34 and MG42 for just about everything that they needed a machine gun for - squads, tanks, and aircraft.

The primaries weapons are weird ‘cause they arm the whole squad with the same weapon, which is very convenient on the tabletop but makes no sense in lore.

Well, there are VERY few weapons that the Spac marines can not carry. So really for them all would be a GMG.
Btw, most current use GMGs are Bipod mounted and can optionally be mounted on tripods.

Isn’t this pretty much how the heavy bolter is used by space marines? Space marines aren’t tripod mounting the heavy bolter.

I’d say that for space marines, the heavy bolter is like an M240, and the assault cannon is like the M2.
 

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
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The M240 was first adopted as a coaxial gun for a tank. It’s also used on helicopters. Another example of GPMGs used with vehicles is that the Germans used the MG34 and MG42 for just about everything that they needed a machine gun for - squads, tanks, and aircraft.

The primaries weapons are weird ‘cause they arm the whole squad with the same weapon, which is very convenient on the tabletop but makes no sense in lore.



Isn’t this pretty much how the heavy bolter is used by space marines? Space marines aren’t tripod mounting the heavy bolter.

I’d say that for space marines, the heavy bolter is like an M240, and the assault cannon is like the M2.
Nah, Heavy bolter is more M2 and the Autocannon is more 14.5
 

LindyAF

Well-known member
Nah, Heavy bolter is more M2 and the Autocannon is more 14.5

The assault cannon isn’t the auto cannon, do you mean the assault cannon or the auto cannon? What would the US equivalent of the 14.5 mm Russian heavy machine gun be?
 

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
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The assault cannon isn’t the auto cannon, do you mean the assault cannon or the auto cannon? What would the US equivalent of the 14.5 mm Russian heavy machine gun be?
I meant assault cannon. My bad.
We don't have one. We only have the M2 as our heaviest unless you go to the 20mm, 25mm weapons
 

Battlegrinder

Someday we will win, no matter what it takes.
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Obozny
It's weird loyalists marines don't have autocannons as a heavy weapon (or didn't before suppressors showed up). They had them in the heresy and the guard still has them, as does chaos, but for some reason the marines were like "nah, I'll pass, you guys have fun with those" and just stopped ever using them.
 

LindyAF

Well-known member
I meant assault cannon. My bad.
We don't have one. We only have the M2 as our heaviest unless you go to the 20mm, 25mm weapons

so looking into it, it looks like the 14.5 KPV machine gun was taken out of an infantry role altogether because it was too heavy, and is pretty much just used as an anti-aircraft gun. I’d say this is a pretty different role than the type of things we’re talking about in 40k.

Also on the question of whether the heavy bolter is a GMG or a HMG, the heavy bolter weight is pretty much equivalent to the M240 weight compared to the standard rifle equivalents. The astartes heavy bolter is 28 kg, which is about four times the weight of an astartes bolter, which is 7 kg. In comparison, the M240 is 10-12.5 kg, depending on variant, compared to the 3.5 kg M4.

Whereas the M2 browning is 38 kg without the mount and 58 kg with the tripod- that’s straight up just heavier than the heavy bolter is, leave alone even the “in comparison” part.
 

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
Founder
so looking into it, it looks like the 14.5 KPV machine gun was taken out of an infantry role altogether because it was too heavy, and is pretty much just used as an anti-aircraft gun. I’d say this is a pretty different role than the type of things we’re talking about in 40k.

Also on the question of whether the heavy bolter is a GMG or a HMG, the heavy bolter weight is pretty much equivalent to the M240 weight compared to the standard rifle equivalents. The astartes heavy bolter is 28 kg, which is about four times the weight of an astartes bolter, which is 7 kg. In comparison, the M240 is 10-12.5 kg, depending on variant, compared to the 3.5 kg M4.

Whereas the M2 browning is 38 kg without the mount and 58 kg with the tripod- that’s straight up just heavier than the heavy bolter is, leave alone even the “in comparison” part.
Use the guard for example.
Bplters are either downsized or given to big strong people.
Use a comparison with the guard over modern day
 

LindyAF

Well-known member
Use the guard for example.
Bplters are either downsized or given to big strong people.
Use a comparison with the guard over modern day

Okay, I agree that in the guard it’s an HMG. In the context of the space marines it’s a GPMG. That’s why I’ve been saying “in the space marines” in almost every post, and talking about a space marine tactical squad, rather than a guard squad.

When we’re talking about the role a weapon in 40k plays, how it’s actually used in universe is the relevant factor. That can mean that in different forces, the same gun takes on different roles, because there's such a physical disparity between forces that doesn't exist IRL. In the guard the heavy bolter is used like a HMG is - it's a tripod mounted, crew served gun. It's meant to be set up and not moved. It's not generally even tried to make work with a bipod, and it's probably a two man job to carry it while moving it.

In the space marines though, nobody bothers with the tripod and it's a single man gun (maybe with an assistant, but the assistant has their own bolter as well, unlike in a guard heavy weapons team, and isn't carrying the gun), and it's perfectly capable of being moved with a squad by one marine (although it's going to require using a bipod to be fired effectively). But it doesn't use the same bolts as bolters do, can't be shouldered, and weighs more compared to the bolter than a SAW does compared to an M4.

They still do, but I was referring to the infantry versions.

Might be at a sweat spot for "doesn't make sense" for non-primaris marines.
 
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Terthna

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So yeah; If The Emperor Had a Text-To-Speech Device is on indefinite hiatus, due to the potential threat of legal litigation on the part of Games Workshop, thanks to their new zero-tolerance policy regarding fan animations. The series may come back someday; either in its original form or, if GW never manage to pull their heads out of their sphincters, one purged of any and all direct references to GW's IP. As things stand though, I have no reason to care about Warhammer 40K anymore.
 

Marduk

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Their armor is pretty horrid actually. You need to remember that the IG is explicitly designed as a planetary expeditionary force. The local PDF is supposed to be the static garrison force, sufficient to handle the expected threat profile of a world. The IG is supposed to be the offensive and intervention force; deployed to take enemy held territory or defend territory under extreme threat.

What this means in practice is that the IG has to ship its armor between planets along with spare parts, ammo, fuel, and all of its other logistical needs. What that means is that IG armor should be designed to have the smallest logistics cost possible.

IG tanks should, given the IoM tech base, be all electric and using fusion for power. Use solar power to distill and then split water into hydrogen and oxygen, fuse the hydrogen for power, arm the standard tank with Las weapons and an EM rail gun. Take iron, either fusing up to it or extracted from the environment/sourced locally, shape it into rail gun rounds. Las weapons for anti-personnel work and for active defenses (shooting incoming rockets, mortars, and potentially even bolt rounds or lower flying aircraft out of the sky), the rail gun for heavier work. Ideally use a Las shot fired immediately before the rail gun to burn the atmosphere out of the way before the rail gun fires so that you can avoid air resistance. The sole logistics cost of such a tank becomes delivering the tank to the battlefield, everything else can easily be sourced locally and it is good enough for most IG needs.

IG artillery should be essentially the same, save using a more powerful railgun to deliver bigger and better shells. Anywhere with a breathable atmosphere should have all of the needed molecules in the air to turn into at least passable HE. Sure, you probably need an off world supply for more exotic ammunition but allowing organic local sourcing of your primary type of ammo is a huge reduction in logistical burden.
I don't think the Imperium has the technological base for that. Namely, they can't produce plasma reactors of the right scale to power tanks, and if they can, not nearly in the numbers sufficient to power even a tiny fraction of their tanks. Even most non-archeotech Astartes vehicles don't have those, even though rationally Astartes would be the higher priority users for those than IG. The smallest vehicles where plasma reactors appear as normal, i think, are Knights and heavy, long range, Navy grade starfighters like Fury. Which in turn would suggest that the vehicles to use those would have to be of similar size, and compete for industrial support with these mentioned vehicles - which are in turn known to be rather expensive, rare, and far more valuable on the battlefield than a simple Leman Russ, or even a Baneblade.

Also as far as logistical burden goes, spare parts, especially of kinds that need to be technologically advanced, even IRL are a far bigger logistical expense than consumables like fuel and ammunition. This goes double for the Imperium, where the production capacity for such parts is so insufficient that even the powerful and wealthy like Astartes chapters and Rogue Traders struggle to be sufficiently supplied with them already. Meanwhile, the average civilized world, of which there are many, may not be able to make plasma reactors, or even overhaul existing ones, but can make perfectly good promethium, multifuel engines, and battle cannon shells. Yeah, using those imposes additional logistical fleet costs, but Imperium does have transport ships with reasonable operation costs when considered per cargo mass/volume basis.
It's also worth noting that most of maintenance of basic IG vehicles is done by properly trained guardsmen, with one enginseer supervising them on higher organizational level, while such reliance on non-AdMech workers is unthinkable when it comes to a plasma reactor.

Then you have the lack of armory/forge/logistics ships at scale. One of the most common vessels in the IoM should be basically a mini-forge designed to produce everything that an IG army needs using locally sourced materials. Basically, one of these in system should be able to keep an IG army of, say, ten million fully equipped to standard for say a century using nothing but locally sourced materials that it can gather itself (i.e. asteroid mining, for example). The Imperium has the tech, they even build ships able to do just that occasionally, they just don't bother to do it at any kind of scale.
They can do it, and they have the ships (Goliath class factory ship). I guess its typical of the "too little, too late" problem, as these ships aren't considered very common, or very cheap, and this model (alongside with even more capable Ark Mechanicus) are mostly kept by AdMech for their own needs, and probably they whine about not having enough of them anyway.

And for planetary strike, take one of those armory ships, give it some rail guns, and have it mass produce proximity fuzed bolter rounds. Once an enemy battlefield or fortification is identified, just launch a few dozen million of those on a course calculated to deliver them to the needed grid square. Sure, it will do jack to shielded targets but most things aren't shielded and you can always just keep the iron rain crashing down around the shielded area for a few days/weeks/months/decades at a time. Counter battery fire on a void shield equipped vessel a few hundred thousand kilometers distant and constantly moving in random directions at variable accelerations is basically a pipe dream.

But then the IoM doesn't actually appear to have any dedicated planetary siege vessels. Its naval vessels are all primarily designed to engage one another in the void with any planetary strike missions either being very strategic (at a minimum removing an entire city) or requiring the vessel to be absurdly stupid (ah yes, we must bring the cruiser into atmosphere and park it in orbit over the battlefield for a full day before it can strike any of those puny ground-pounders with anything approaching precision). Take a cruiser sized hull and equip it to fire what are basically bolt rounds in the millions along with the needed computer support to handle relatively accurate targeting from trans-lunar orbit. Give it some kind of surveillance parasite craft that can be sent in ahead for mapping/targeting purposes, and then just unload on enemy grid squares. Drop a million bolter rounds into a square kilometer with them all fused appropriately and your problem is solved. Even a basic bolt round should be able to handle orbital re-entry, already has a rocket engine for terminal guidance, and can already be equipped with all of the needed fuses and payloads. Again, "That's a nice artillery park you got there, shame it just ceased to exist."
Between ship designs and RT mechanics, the closest thing to planetary siege vessels are Astartes vessels with bombardment cannons, which are noted for being precise enough to use for close battlefield support. Which makes some sense, as any significant enough planetary siege would be usually expected to have some number of Astartes vessels take part.
Even then, i think the Imperium is just simply underusing the orbital bombardment of normal vessels, or at least seems as such, because it doesn't make for much writing, and novel scenarios focus on situations when its not too feasible. Going by Rogue Trader books, an average vessel with average macrocannon battery can provide quite decent support on strategic scale, roughly equivalent to batteries of superheavy artillery with worse accuracy - but still perfectly sufficient to ruin a city, or decimate and rout a division no worse than a whole salvo of tactical nuclear weapons would.

Of course with average crew and targeting equipment, providing such support "danger close" to friendly units is not advised, better leave that to higher quality vessels, like aforementioned Astartes ships, or at least lance armed Navy ships with crack crews. For anything else, like an artillery park 30km from the frontline, i guess the writers are just too lazy to mention random IN escort taking potshots with its macrocannons, missing, accidentally hitting a random forest 20km away, trying again, evaporating a lake on the other side of the target, and finally catching half the division's dislocation area with the scatter on the third salvo.

Millions of bolts may be more of a overly expensive improvised weapon for this, as even normal bolts are noted to be somewhat expensive, nevermind guided bolts, which are rare and expensive enough that even high ranking Astartes can only sparingly use tiny bolter magazines worth of those.
 
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Zyobot

Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
This next one started as a passing thought, but grew into a potential story idea that I may (or may not) follow up on. It starts with Uday Hussein, who was Saddam's even more sadistic and deranged elder son, being corrupted by Chaos. Likely sometime before the invasion of Kuwait, as opposed to right after (so that he has time to assassinate his father and plot a coup).

An Iraqi Civil War soon breaks out, fought mainly between a Slaaneshi Uday and a Khornate Qusay, the latter having turned to the Blood God more out of desperation than anything else. Naturally, the fighting would soon spill into neighboring nations, drawing the entire Arab World into war with two merciless, demonically empowered nightmare-states that make Hitler and Stalin look like restrained, gentlemanly philosopher-kings. Not to mention global powers like the United States, which will rush to contain Chaotic influence, in addition to stopping the worst conflict since World War II from spiraling out of control. Which will ultimately be in vain, given Chaos's irrepressible tendency to crank things up to eleven, then break the dial by twisting it faster and faster and faster. In the grim darkness of the new millennium, there is only war.
 

PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
What about the Kamel brothers? Since Hussein was part of Iraq WMD program, maybe he gets corrupted by Nurgle. Also, what would Emps be doing to stop this incursion of warp parasitism into our reality?
 

Zyobot

Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
What about the Kamel brothers? Since Hussein was part of Iraq WMD program, maybe he gets corrupted by Nurgle. Also, what would Emps be doing to stop this incursion of warp parasitism into our reality?

Since this is before they detected, they’re likely corrupted by Chaos, too. It’d be fitting to have Hussein corrupted by Nurgle, though I’m not so sure about Saddam.

I may or may not have Big E around somewhere, but I’m disinclined to making him lead a huge campaign to crush Chaos once and for all. I want it remain around and a periodic problem well into the twenty-first century, even if it doesn’t swallow the Earth wholesale.
 

Zyobot

Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
A gem I unexpectedly stumbled across while searching for HMKids' latest music, after a long while of not listening to it much.

HMKids - Death of Horus - Cover ft. George Hoctor, Empath
 

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