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[Rolepgeek]

For record: Tau plasma rifles don't cause cancer

Also for record: There's more or less a reason Fire Warriors and Pathfinders don't get plasma rifles, and they're mostly mounted on battlesuits. It's not (just) tactical doctrine. Also also they're marginally weaker than Imperial plasma weapon equivalents, which mostly means they're less useful for vehicles and MCs, not sure if Imperium would mind which way, really.

So, question for those more familiar with exact official detail of lore, particularly Imperial Lore. Tau have lots of mass-produced high-scale equipment, better than standard Imperial Issue, though their prototype equipment usually isn't as good as Imperial Archeotech (saying Pulse Rifles are the Tau's most advanced equipment is like saying a hotshot lasgun is the Imperium's; rail rifles are fucking great, brah, even if they don't have fancier ways of killing their target than 'very large holes in body'). Is the reason the Tau are able to manufacture their quality gear in such quantities that they still have an understanding of science throughout their general population and knowledge isn't kept in hyper-vaults unless the Ethereals decree it? You can say that they don't have to equip as much, but an entire caste of their population is Fire Caste, and they almost all become military personnel, and they have neither forge worlds nor hive worlds with which to enact the whole 'megaproduction' thing.

Nanobots probably help too, don't know if Imperium allows them anymore.

[Loud Whispers]

Imperial plasma weapons usually only overheat when used too often or overcharged. Normal use of their lower settings doesn't usually cause explosions or excess coolant venting into your face. The Imperium just generally prefers damage over safety and orders their forces to use the guns on their higher settings, because guardsmen are cheap and plasma is usually used on high value targets like Meganobs or Chaos Terminators, so you need to make your shots count even if it risks the operator.

I don't think the Imperium in this case is prioritizing safety over damage, because although the guardsman holding the cannon is expendable, the cannon itself is not. Just a case of the Imperium's tech breaking down and having to make do with unreliable machine spirits and explosions

So, question for those more familiar with exact official detail of lore, particularly Imperial Lore. Tau have lots of mass-produced high-scale equipment, better than standard Imperial Issue, though their prototype equipment usually isn't as good as Imperial Archeotech (saying Pulse Rifles are the Tau's most advanced equipment is like saying a hotshot lasgun is the Imperium's; rail rifles are fucking great, brah, even if they don't have fancier ways of killing their target than 'very large holes in body'). Is the reason the Tau are able to manufacture their quality gear in such quantities that they still have an understanding of science throughout their general population and knowledge isn't kept in hyper-vaults unless the Ethereals decree it? You can say that they don't have to equip as much, but an entire caste of their population is Fire Caste, and they almost all become military personnel, and they have neither forge worlds nor hive worlds with which to enact the whole 'megaproduction' thing.

They don't have to equip as much, the entire Tau species is insignificant when compared to the logistical horror that is supplying the galactic plague of humankind. If you replace the lasgun, there is no way in hell you can standardize that without losing what could potentially be a noticeable number of guardsman and ammunition. Lasguns may be shit, but no matter what side of the galaxy you're on they are the ak47 of the milky way, there are plenty of spare bits and ammo to spare

Certain worlds, particularly mechanicus ones, are hyper-empirical even in the face of the reality-bending warp. But they're also usually ran by the mechanicus who either hoarde the good stuff or will turn you into a servitor for profaning machine spirits or embracing techno-heresy. That the Tau have no restrictions on AI or forbidden knowledge from their lack of MOI uprising or chaos viruses in their datalinks also helps things. Their scientists are also not completely insane, which helps I guess

Also incentive-wise, the Imperium has everything it needs to survive, with older-tech being the best shit ever. Rarely does anything new justify its cost compared to searching for something already made in the Imperium, whereas for the Tau necessity compels them to innovate or go extinct. I think the AI component is very very significant, just running off of lore from the last chancers series, particularly where they have one Imperial criminal whose crime was he "improved" Mechanicus tech and explored xeno-tech, relevantly, explored Tau xeno-tech. Ultimately gets electrocuted after trying to steal a tau battlesuit and the battlesuit recognizing he was a hostile, the Imperium is looking for reliability and replaceability over massed ranks of elite shock troopers (which are largely made obsolete by spehss mahrin anyways), or trying out new tech which could backfire spectacularly. Lasgun never backfires. Attrition warfare is their strength, if 40k was only attrition warfare the milky way would be more tank and guardsman than there are atoms in the universe

[Grim Portent]

Imperial plasma weapons usually only overheat when used too often or overcharged. Normal use of their lower settings doesn't usually cause explosions or excess coolant venting into your face. The Imperium just generally prefers damage over safety and orders their forces to use the guns on their higher settings, because guardsmen are cheap and plasma is usually used on high value targets like Meganobs or Chaos Terminators, so you need to make your shots count even if it risks the operator.

I don't think the Imperium in this case is prioritizing safety over damage, because although the guardsman holding the cannon is expendable, the cannon itself is not. Just a case of the Imperium's tech breaking down and having to make do with unreliable machine spirits and explosions

In the RPGs all plasma weapons only overheat when used on high settings. On top of that the original tabletop rules had Imperial plasma not overheat, but Chaos plasma did because Chaos used it for higher fire rates and damage where the Imperium in it's original incarnation cared more about safety, and in current gen 40k and 30k the Mechanicum/Cult Mechanicus has plasma tech that doesn't overheat.

The rules and fluff all run with the theme that Imperial plasma tech is fine, but the Imperium and Chaos usually either fire it so fast it jams while it vents excess heat, or they overload it and suffer plasma backwash or get caught in a small plasma detonation.

For record: Tau plasma rifles don't cause cancer

Also for record: There's more or less a reason Fire Warriors and Pathfinders don't get plasma rifles, and they're mostly mounted on battlesuits. It's not (just) tactical doctrine. Also also they're marginally weaker than Imperial plasma weapon equivalents, which mostly means they're less useful for vehicles and MCs, not sure if Imperium would mind which way, really.

So, question for those more familiar with exact official detail of lore, particularly Imperial Lore. Tau have lots of mass-produced high-scale equipment, better than standard Imperial Issue, though their prototype equipment usually isn't as good as Imperial Archeotech (saying Pulse Rifles are the Tau's most advanced equipment is like saying a hotshot lasgun is the Imperium's; rail rifles are fucking great, brah, even if they don't have fancier ways of killing their target than 'very large holes in body'). Is the reason the Tau are able to manufacture their quality gear in such quantities that they still have an understanding of science throughout their general population and knowledge isn't kept in hyper-vaults unless the Ethereals decree it? You can say that they don't have to equip as much, but an entire caste of their population is Fire Caste, and they almost all become military personnel, and they have neither forge worlds nor hive worlds with which to enact the whole 'megaproduction' thing.

Nanobots probably help too, don't know if Imperium allows them anymore.

The Tau have a far smaller Empire to distribute weapons among and a far less centralized manufacturing process. Tau munitions factories are spread out among each Sept, likely because of their slow space travel making shipping enough weapons to equip a full army impractical. It's quite easy for a small Sept with only two or three people who'll even get issued plasma to make a few guns or bring them along with their colonisation effort, and a large Sept can manufacture hundreds or thousands to issue to Crisis teams fairly easily. Notably they still don't have the bulk of their army wearing Crisis Suits and wielding plasma guns, so resource and manufacturing issues are clearly a problem.

The Imperium has to equip a far larger number of soldiers from dedicated manufacturing worlds, it's been a problem since the Great Crusade when they had to stop using volkite (basically death ray) weapons to equip the Legions and swapped to bolters because they were easier to mass produce on Forge Worlds and easier to maintain in the field for the limited manufacturing and maintenance capabilities of the Mechanicus cohorts attached to the Legions. When the Mechanicus was devastated in the Heresy this compounded the problem because it killed a lot of their experts and broke a lot of their factories.

Outside of Forge Worlds it's rare to find a facility capable of producing more than light arms and armour. Most Hive City based factories can only make stuff like flak armour and autoguns, though there are a lot of high quality forms of those produced by the wealthier worlds. Some lasgun variants are comparable to bolters or pulse weapons, but they're usually made by a powerful merchant family who responds to attempts at copying them with shadow wars. Good example would be the dueling laspistols from Dark Heresy that can drop a Space Marine when used by a skilled marksman, but which happen to be made to order as custom weapons by the most powerful Rogue Trader family in the Calixis Sector.

[Loud Whispers]

In the RPGs all plasma weapons only overheat when used on high settings. On top of that the original tabletop rules had Imperial plasma not overheat, but Chaos plasma did because Chaos used it for higher fire rates and damage where the Imperium in it's original incarnation cared more about safety, and in current gen 40k and 30k the Mechanicum/Cult Mechanicus has plasma tech that doesn't overheat.

I know cult mechanicus is fine, but Imperial Guard and both space marines had plasma cannons where they could choose to fire more shots per round, with the catch that more shots incurred the risk of ruining the plasma gun. Especially IG. Is that no longer the case? I'll have to check tomorrow

[Kot]

For record: Tau plasma rifles don't cause cancer

Ion rifles do. They're a snowflake kind of plasma weaponry, technically.

Lasguns may be shit, but no matter what side of the galaxy you're on they are the ak47 of the milky way, there are plenty of spare bits and ammo to spare

Lasguns aren't shit. As a personal weapon they're proably best thing in Galaxy. Bolters need snowflake ammo, so do pulse rifles, but at least the latter doesn't break your arms (albeit getting to fire it might cost you your balls and your free will). Plasma weaponry is not fully reliable and a bitch to reload once empty, meltaguns are short ranged and AT weapons anyway, it's like comparing a Bazooka to Garand. Volkites and Gravs are snowflake artifacts that most Space Marines will never see, not mentioning Guardsmen, and have their own snowflake downsides. Stubguns and autoguns need ammo and are less reliable, less powerful most of the time too. Flamers are flamers, shotguns are shotguns and radiation weaponry turns you into cancer when you're on the same planet as one of them. Shurikens also need ammo and aren't perfect at range, and Eldar laser weaponry is just like Imperial Lasguns+. Gauss Weapons are running on pure Necron magic, and one of biggest problems Mechanicus have with trying to replicate it is not lack of interest but rather the fact they can't make the gun fire without vaporising itself and the user, so they're kinda out of league. I mean, yeah, there is always something better than them, but if you wanted to arm everyone with guns you would go with lasguns rather than anything else. Accurate, quite deadly, very easy to resupply, reliable and whatnot.

and in current gen 40k and 30k the Mechanicum/Cult Mechanicus has plasma tech that doesn't overheat.

Mechanicus have black-hole shooting, time warping sentient battleship capable of killing everything in the Materium (while also being secretly and complete STC library right under Mechanicus nose). The point is that Mechanicus have a lots of cool things, but actually using them is different thing.

[Loud Whispers]

Lasguns do not compare to humble archaeotech like ancient nuggets, which no doubt would still be operational in the 41st milennium, encased in blessed cosmoline

[Kot]

Considering that AKA-47s, W2 Borewings, Carbine 4s, Cools .45s and such still exist and work, Moose-Nugget rifles aren't that unreasonable.
Reminds me of that /k/ humorous story of humanity conquering the stars using Nuggets. Nuggets are truly the pinnacle of firearm development.

[Rolan7]

I still like that someone said you can recharge lasgun packs by throwing them in a campfire.  You're not supposed to, but needs must.
The best part being if it's just BS the veterans use to haze rookies.

[Grim Portent]

I still like that someone said you can recharge lasgun packs by throwing them in a campfire.  You're not supposed to, but needs must.
The best part being if it's just BS the veterans use to haze rookies.

If you throw it in a holy fire (real ones aren't common) the lasgun works better on daemons too.

[Kot]

Nah, it works. It was in Only War rules, pretty sure. You're not supposed to, because, while it won't proably explode your power pack and burn your whole squad sleeping around the campfire, it severly reduce lifespan of a pack, and Munitorium hates that since their wet dream is power packs reused for next 10000 years.
There are way more ways to recharge - I recall a story by a "veteran" where they just take whole bags of packs that they somehow procure along their way and pay Chimera/Russ crews to carry them on the engines... or keeping the packs in your pants to charge them off your body heat and so on.

[stabbymcstabstab]

The Chimera one sounds actually practical, especially compared then trying fish out a burn hot and now possible explosive power pack out of a fire. Also I'm pretty sure the Cogboys would be less likely to take offense.

[GiglameshDespair]

From what I remember in the RPGs if you charge them via fire it permanently reduces charge held by half and has a chance just to bugger them up so they don't work.
So while it can be done, it's not recommended.

[Neonivek]

What are the chances that one reason why Psykers are so sensitive to demons... is because it is what is expected?

I know that belief power works in a positive way to make things better.

But like... if everyone believed that Mr. Fancypants was the most insane and vile man in history... is there a chance that alone might make him go insane?

I have this unfounded curiosity with how Psykers might be regarded... and I was like "Wait, if they are generally distrusted because of what they might become... In many ways that directly paralelles" yada yada I am too sleepy good night! (no really night)

[Grim Portent]

What are the chances that one reason why Psykers are so sensitive to demons... is because it is what is expected?

I know that belief power works in a positive way to make things better.

But like... if everyone believed that Mr. Fancypants was the most insane and vile man in history... is there a chance that alone might make him go insane?

I have this unfounded curiosity with how Psykers might be regarded... and I was like "Wait, if they are generally distrusted because of what they might become... In many ways that directly paralelles" yada yada I am too sleepy good night! (no really night)

Psykers have been vulnerable to daemons since before daemons were even a thing. The original malevolent warp entity, Enslavers, can only enter the material realm through psykers. Psykers are sensitive to daemons because they have a soul so powerful it's a link to the warp, which can be turned into a gateway if warp entities try hard enough and the psyker is too weak to resist.

[Kot]

Also, it's not that easy. Faith works in mysterious ways - millions of people believing that Emperor protects them might not cut it, but one person believing HARD ENOUGH that HE WILL NOT DIE whilist charging through the battlefield simply because that is Emperors will might just be enough for the enemies to simply focus on other targets despite he is a screaming retard in red coat and peaked cap that's waving his sword at them.
Orks Waaagh effect is a bit different since it's built into their... existence, somehow.