It would explain a shell casing, it just wouldn't explain it being called caseless.

We all know there are different types of bolter rounds and I'm just inclined to believe that the caseless description is based on a more sophisticated round. Maybe a silenced round or some other specialty round.

I guess I didn't say exactly what I was thinking. I meant it explained the casing, not that it answered the caseless point. I myself think that the rounds are not caseless because 1) There are cases being ejected in the artwork 2) The pictures of the bolt rounds themselves resemble a convenstional 20mm round. I would have said 40mm grenade, but since .75 is 19.05mm I went with that.

Shouldn't this be a "astares bolter" thread?

Astares arms and armor.... the armor part was much earlier and swirved onto this.

If a bolter is a sophisticated as its suppose to it could always fire both. I think to my satisfaction my special ammo notion works best in explaining both, without invalidating the artwork or the fluff.

Rule 2 of fluff interpretation, unless a more recent statement directly contradicts the old, both hold true no matter how much of a stretch it requires.

Special ammo, notion is the only way both ideas of casing vs. caseless can hold true without completely ignoring one or the other.

aka_mythos said:

This is also the only way to explain the use of suppressors on bolt pistols, as has appeared in some books.

That just doesn't make sense though. The rocket fires after it has left the bolter. The woosh or whatever is what gives the weapon it's distinctive sound.

Eponral said:

If this was in response to my post:

A special high caliber, subsonic, non-rocket propelled, cased round could be used in place of a standard bolt round. Combine this type of special ammo with a suppressor and this could be the explanation for the bolt pistols, as written in some fluff, that are used for infiltration work by the Deathwatch.

I can't speak for 40k tech too much, but in real life a bolter round sized rocket wouldn't produce much noise. It would be quieter than a conventionally fired round. In either instance you're talking about roughly the same quantities of similarly explosive propellants. In a conventional round it all burns before the projectile has left the barrel. With a rocket it burns slower, so there would be less recoil and its quieter. In a sophisticated enough system that rate of burn could be controlled, allowing the round to home in before a final burst of acceleration.

@itsUncertainwho: My general thought was actually the reverse, that the basic rounds are the more conventional shelled rounds while the silenced rounds take advantage of a caseless and purely rocket propelled round's quieter firing.

Looking back at the inquisitor game, i remember Stalker silenced bolt rounds, let me go dig up the book and get a quote on their mechanics.

Edit: At work so can't find book, but found this article on Lexicanum with diagrams of bolt rounds and various references quoted. I think it's safe to say that the caseless description of bolt weapons may be a little out dated now. You have to remember that at the time when 40k was first being conceptualised, caseless ammo was all the rage with prototype weapons like the Heckler & Koch G11 being showcased. Gamesworkshop probably thought they'd follow the trend and make the posterchild of their new game, Space Marines, utilise this at the time new technology.

You'll also find in a lot of places that autoguns and pistols are caseless, something i run with a lot in my games of Dark Heresy to justify the relatively low weight and cost of ammo and weapons. Stub weapons on the other hand i consider a catch-all for any weapon with solid slugs and cases. That said, ammo rarely becomes an issue in most games, with the players wounds running out long before their ammo does.

I would have imagined a bolter to work fairly like the AA-12 with modified slugs in the movie "The Expendables". Those slugs have a small explosive warhead in them, and it basically end up blowing six-inch holes in people, and sounds quite like what I'd expect a bolter to sound like too.

MILLANDSON said:

For everyone that is curious about this perform a Google search on AA-12. The first link retrieved from the search will be a youtube link. Watch it and see what you think. but as an exampe from the above example, it was stated that the AA-12 can fire 20 grenade rounds in 4 seconds through a window at 100m and then detonate with a killzone of 90 ft each. Tell me that doesn't sound like a bolter that could thin out a horde very quickly.

I think that the AA-12 illustrates the problem with all sci-fi games (or games that pretend to be sci-fi, like 40k): Reality often outstrips the imagination of writers. Subsequently the "fans" end up trying to shoe-horn more advanced or alternate technologies into a concept that wasn't really designed for it.

Same thing with the bolter, ultimately. Try ramping up the technology and things begin to fall apart even further since the setting has difficulty handling combat that isn't inherently predicated upon a melee-focused, "medieval" style of combat. The whole tank commander screaming "Drive me closer so that I can hit him with my sword," amply illustrates this.

And that's Rule 2 of Fluff Interpretation from the Revisionists Handbook.

Kage

Kage2020 said:

Which is why I consider Cyberpunk early 80s science-fiction and play it as such. Cell-phones? Only for the upper class.

Alex

Those are beautfiul. I have a inert prototype on my desk at work. We really struggled packing the fuzing in there. With most grenades, its usually a mixture of explosives, to tweek in cost and meet requirements, but because of the size and special application its all the "good stuff." We only produced a bulked order for some special forces units and to support the marine's testing. Personally I think a bolter would utilize technology more similar to the XM25's 25mm grenade. The army just bought 25,000 of those launchers.

The thing about bolter rounds is that even if GW has gotten past some of what its set down and the science has eclipsed the fiction, there are still aspects of the fluff that technology has yet to live upto. Bolter shells have more of brain/computer than just a dum round. Although the Arbite Executioner shotgun round is capable of seeking out targets, bolters allegedly do so as well to a lesser degree. Thats not something they can do yet. Then a bolter supposedly has fire modes to control when and how it detonates, we can do that now but probably not to the same degree on something that size. If I had to guess they are probably smart enough to choose their own mode in flight for optimal lethality. The real "advancement" is that all these features together in a single device, at this point are impossible. A bolter shell does all of those things in a single basic package, the 5lb rockets for UAVs can't do as much, but bolters do at probably 1/12th the weight.

Rule 2, is golden. If you don't have structure to how you interpret you will result in varied interpretations. Any time GW changes something if you accept its legitimacy than you have to take that page from the "Revisionist Handbook."

ak-73 said:

There's an irony in that statement, methinks.

Unfortunately "Rule 2" is kinda invalidated by its description.

Kage

Meh, I'm putting 40k down as a hundred percent accurate picture of the future. People will have to wait thousands of years to prove it wrong.

Which is more that can be said of almost all science fiction, Arthur C Clark, Star Trek, Cyberpunk. All proven wrong already.

Except for all the stuff Arthur C Clarke wrote about that NASA figured out would work and now use.

Shhh... Let people have their "40k is so much cooler than your setting" moments.

Kage

Kage2020 said:

Care to explain?

Alex

Oh, nothing bad. Just the "cyberpunk" as a genre is not inherently fixed in the 1980s as a cultural referent. It seems to be a tad more organic than that, although some of the tropes (cyberdecks) are admittedly a bit whacked. If nothing else, one might consider literary examples such as Neuromancer in the same light as, say, Diamond Age .

Again, though, it was more due to the organic and composite nature of the genre rather than what is more "cyberpunk" than something else.

On the other hand, Rule 2 was all but invalidated by "if you accept its validity..." (Just in case you were referring to that.)

Kage

Kage2020 said:

No, I was referring only to "I think that the AA-12 illustrates the problem with all sci-fi games (or games that pretend to be sci-fi, like 40k): Reality often outstrips the imagination of writers."

As for cyberpunk, I am aware of that, but later cyberpunk development seems to have lost some of its initial cultural punch. Classic cyberpunk has mostly been used only as a backin culture since then.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Sorry, it's pretty hard to understand what someone is asking about if they don't include the appropriate quote or include more specifics in their question. The example of Traveller illustrates this quite well, and I thought your own post did so in many ways too. 40k is a game that was written in an earlier period that doesn't necessarily mean that it can be updated to the most current "real world" information. When you try, it breaks down, which is probably one of the reasons that it is becoming increasingly "fantasy" as time goes on. Or at least appearing so.

ak-73 said:

In part, the lack of the punch seems tied to the idea of the existence of the genre itself.

Kage