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[Silverthrone]

"The Handwavium?"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2YQJsbbWNA

"The Handwavium is what gives a character his power. It's a convenience field, created by all fictional things, it surrounds us, it penetrates us, it keeps the galaxy an interesting place."

[Neonivek]

Your thinking of narratium

As for 40k... It KIND OF goes by the same premise of "Believe is power"

If everyone in the imperial believed that a bathtub had the power of the emperor it would become the most powerful bathtub by default.

[pisskop]

Lets get everyone to believe that: "with powerbar 5000 I can lose 25 pounds in just 7 days, the natural way"

[Grim Portent]

Random question: why, thematically, would markerlights be regarded as a heavy weapon?
They're literally a barrel attatchment.

Same reason a burst cannon is an assault weapon

On a similar note, what do people think the mechanism of injury/kill is for pulse weapons? They're supposed to be plasma, but I've never really understood how a Plasma Rifle can have Str6 AP2 while a Pulse rifle has Str5AP5 and longer range. And I feel like I've seen some sources/previous editions say otherwise regarding what they fire but I could be misremembering which part they were contradicting. Maybe the round thing at the end. Lexicanum says it's a gyro-stabiliser but I could swear it was described as a magnetic device that kept the plasma pulse coherent until impact or something.


Honestly half the time Pulse weapons seem to fire pure Handwavium rounds, given the way the title is slapped on everything.

And I'm still waiting for my goddamn Rail Gatling

Pulse weapons are supposed to fire teeny tiny micropulses of plasma, probably a blast the size of a golf ball or smaller, which they make out of small metal slugs heated inside the gun's mechanisms.

The more potent true plasma weapons fire blasts roughly comparable in size to a human head. For obvious reasons this poses a greater problem from an engineering standpoint but is also more dangerous to anything hit by it. True plasma also usually uses Hydrogen gas (or similar chemicals when necessary) rather than metallic substances.

Both 'pulse' and plasma weapons use magnetic fields to maintain the projectiles coherency and allow it to have any range at all rather than dissipating near instantly. The field itself dissipates over distance and the projectile loses energy and gradually evaporates, limiting their maximum range.

[TempAcc]

Lets get the orks to believe the undertaker exists in 40k and have him be one of the missing primarchs so he can go around tombstoning daemons and eldar.

[Neonivek]

Lets get everyone to believe that: "with powerbar 5000 I can lose 25 pounds in just 7 days, the natural way"

As silly as that sounds... Yes that is how it works.

[Rolepgeek]

Random question: why, thematically, would markerlights be regarded as a heavy weapon?
They're literally a barrel attatchment.

Same reason a burst cannon is an assault weapon

On a similar note, what do people think the mechanism of injury/kill is for pulse weapons? They're supposed to be plasma, but I've never really understood how a Plasma Rifle can have Str6 AP2 while a Pulse rifle has Str5AP5 and longer range. And I feel like I've seen some sources/previous editions say otherwise regarding what they fire but I could be misremembering which part they were contradicting. Maybe the round thing at the end. Lexicanum says it's a gyro-stabiliser but I could swear it was described as a magnetic device that kept the plasma pulse coherent until impact or something.


Honestly half the time Pulse weapons seem to fire pure Handwavium rounds, given the way the title is slapped on everything.

And I'm still waiting for my goddamn Rail Gatling

Pulse weapons are supposed to fire teeny tiny micropulses of plasma, probably a blast the size of a golf ball or smaller, which they make out of small metal slugs heated inside the gun's mechanisms.

The more potent true plasma weapons fire blasts roughly comparable in size to a human head. For obvious reasons this poses a greater problem from an engineering standpoint but is also more dangerous to anything hit by it. True plasma also usually uses Hydrogen gas (or similar chemicals when necessary) rather than metallic substances.

Both 'pulse' and plasma weapons use magnetic fields to maintain the projectiles coherency and allow it to have any range at all rather than dissipating near instantly. The field itself dissipates over distance and the projectile loses energy and gradually evaporates, limiting their maximum range.

That's about what I thought, minus the metal slugs, which I have yet to see mentioned anywhere.

But when you have things like Pulse Ordnance Multi-Drivers and Pulse Submunition Rifles and Pulse Bombs, it loses all meaning.


Tangent: I think a successful Warhammer 40k horror-ish game would need to be at least partially Bioshock style in a Space Hulk, starting with a ship that gets stuck in one during Warp Transit. Possibly two 'simultaneous' stories, one of a Sanctioned Psyker on board, who has to navigate the dangerous Warp Phenomena and try to distinguish reality from the psychic overlay/vision that's infitltrating and corrupting her perceptions, and one of a Stormtrooper assigned to her, following some time after, and taking a much more violent  route to get through the hazards. Though, of course, the perils of a Space Hulk are often far too dangerous to simply fight through, even for the greatest of the Emperor's men. Terminators regularly fall during clearing missions, after all. Some cunning is required to make it through.

I think the differences in the Chaos God's minions would make for interesting differences in how it affects you. While Slaanesh can't really do the temptation thing since the player is genre savvy, the fumes can always mess with your perceptions, and body horror/that flashing thing some horror games do between happy/attractive and terrifying is certainly possible. Tzeentch would have a lot of confusion and playing with expectations/hopes, Nurgle can always do the typical corruption/decay and feeling of losing oneself, Khorne is sheer physical violence and gore. If Space Marines end up boarding the ship at some point, well, they have no reason to believe you are anything but corrupted beyond all hope of repentance, and would not have the time to spare to protect you anyway, so...they're about as dangerous as anything else, though they might be your only ticket off. The Orks and Tyranids present a very familiar threat, though one that should not be underestimated, and, of course, there's the heretics, Chaos Marines, corrupted shipmen, and all those various souls driven mad by the journey.

Bad end is almost certainly Daemonhost. Sad End is almost certainly psyker being killed right before becoming Daemonhost, followed by Stormtrooper committing suicide. Good End is probably escape aboard Space Marine vessel and begin penitence to cleanse self of the corruption encountered on board. Neutral end is probably psyker putting a bunch of stuff into magic stasis forever? I dunno.

[Grim Portent]

But when you have things like Pulse Ordnance Multi-Drivers and Pulse Submunition Rifles and Pulse Bombs, it loses all meaning.

The Ordnance Multi Drivers are meant to fire a mixture of normal explosives and pulse bursts, and Submunitions fire tiny pulse weapons that fire lots of little blasts in an area on impact, sort of like a plasma shrapnel blast or cluster bomb. The Pulse Bomb is essentially a form of plasma cannon.

[Rolepgeek]

...I don't believe that's true. At least based on the descriptions I've seen. POMDs use 'pulsed induction fields' to propel munitions, rather than actual pulse shots. Pulse Submunition Rifles fire small bursts of plasma, not small weapons.

In fact, even the different Wikis, the Warhammer and the Lexicanum, disagree as to the nature of the circular device at the end of a pulse rifle. One says it's a recoil stabiliser. The other essentially says it's a gyroscope, and while both of those are involved in stability, I have a feeling it's not the same type of stability.

But also, it seems like 'pulsed induction fields' is the basis for the name. But when it's described as 'pulse energy' in the Pulse Bomb generator, it makes me wonder if that's not just what someone tacked on in one of the wikis to try and have consistency regardless of source material.

Mostly, though, if they're both plasma, it's odd to me that there's such a huge drop in penetration ability for such a small drop in strength, and actually in increase in range, between Pulse and Plasma Rifles.

[KingofstarrySkies]

Well, goodbye Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Only War, Black Crusade, Deathwatch, Fantasy Roleplaying... Fantasy Flight and GW are breaking up.

Hrmh. I wonder if GW will give the rights to 40k RPGs to someone else now. Get the books while you can, this ship is goin' down.

RIP.

[Tack]

Plasma rifles, (I think) are actually reverse-engineered off imperial plasmaguns.
They just actually care about their operators so they dropped the heating issues for a marginal drop in strength.

... Which you probably already know.

Point being, they could be completely different principles?

[Rolepgeek]

If they both fire plasma and use magnetic fields to keep it coherent, I don't see why that would be the case.

Though as far as I know they are not reverse engineered, just not cranked up to that extra level, although it doesn't matter too much either way.

Okay, so, yeah, here we go, I've found at least one of the fuckin' contradiction things. Says here that "Pulse Weapons make use of micro-pulsed induction fields to propel a particle across a distance. The particle reacts by breaking down after being exposed to the effect of the field to create a plasma pulse as it leaves the barrel, thus allowing for lethal bursts of plasma to be fired over astonishing ranges. Whilst Plasma Weapons technology is used by many of the advanced intelligent races of the Milky Way Galaxy, despite its unstable nature, the Tau favour this form of the technology, which foregoes a degree of stopping power for the increased safety of the operator."

Meanwhile, says here that "On firing, a ferromagnetic, solid slug is chambered from the magazine and turned into plasma by electromagnetic induction, as it would be relatively easy to alternate the coil current at frequencies sufficient enough to heat the coil to an extreme temperature while keeping it in the chamber. The solenoid is then charged fully, propelling the newly produced plasma out of the gun at an extreme velocity while keeping it cohesive. Though this electromagnetic field continues to keep the plasma together until impact, residual plasma is expelled from the barrel to produce the weapon's considerable muzzle flash. Maintenance of the field is also aided by a bolt-like apparatus, which increases the field strength and therefore the range."

Notice that last part, too. Literally on the same page it also says that "At the front of the weapon are the weapon's two muzzles, just behind which is a circular apparatus that looks like a large bolt head that serves as a recoil stabiliser."

Meanwhile on Lexicanum, "The small circular device near the end of the barrel[3] - Gun Stabiliser[7] - is a housing for a gyroscope that is part of an aim-stabilization system that allows the rifle to remain steady on target and angled for optimal firing at distance, regardless of factors like shaking hands.[3]"

I guess what I've learned here today is that the Imperium still has no fucking clue how Pulse Rifles work. Which means neither do we. Emperor damnit, and Mon'tau take you. D:<

[Grim Portent]

I tend to think of it as a pulse round is to a plasma bolt what a lasbolt is to a lascannon blast. Different magnitudes of energy are involved in order to simplify maintenance, ammunition requirements and the training involved.

Or compare a lasgun to a hellgun, or a conventional bolter to a kraken bolter. It's not uncommon for the same projectile type to be very different in power and penetration.

The different fluff for pulse is probably from different iterations of the Tau codex and the RPGs.

[Tack]

I'm just having trouble imagining why any sort of plasma is AP5.

[Grim Portent]

I'm just having trouble imagining why any sort of plasma is AP5.

The projectile dissipates too fast on impact to burn through anything heavier than flak armour.