DJSunhammer said:

Ummm...yeah. That's what I said. I'm glad we agree.

IF it makes sense, for your game, that a melta-gun can be silenced and IF you think it's in the spirit of the weapon, then you should get the benefit of having it silenced, whether or not there is a bright light or intense heat. If you don't think a Melta/plasma should be silenced for whatever the reason then that's your perogative. You obviously don't think it can be.

My point with the light vs sound is that regular guns have muzzle flash as well as a loud sound. So you shouldn't penalize one class of weapon over the other because of the fluff. If you allow a silencer on a gun in your game, then it should benefit.

Lecram said:

However, there are muzzle flash dampeners, I suppose they could be incorporated into the silencer. A meltagun, or las gun for that matter, makes a bright light along the whole line of fire, easily tracked by the naked eye, where a bullet is extremly hard to see. If nothing else, the light should leave an "impression" in the air, the same way you can "see" a lightning strike after it has passed. Basicly, I find it hard to belive that you can silence or "hide" the firing of a weapon that leaves light and sound all along its traveling path.

A lasgun for example, the "crack" it makes does not come from the gun, but from the superheating of the air, and it happes all along it's path. A stummer might be able to disguise the initial sound, but as soon as the heat leaves it's range, the sound will occur.

Melta weapons, as mentioned in the holy tome: Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader. States that it is basically silent ( a rumbling/wooshing of air particles energizing) with little visible 'beam'. They are microwave weapons.

Also explosions do not have to happen with in the visible light spectrum or audible range, only relatively low energy explosions do so.

This makes Melta weapons automatically 'silenced' . With such short ranges, that means your targets is practically looking at you any way & brushing dirt off your shoulder.

As for plasma weapons, sure silence them, but then you would either be sending the bolt into higher energy bands (bang-bang in hand time) or into the lower ones (lessening damage).

A bit of logical narrativium works well.

Of course everyone should listen to me as I AM the greatest legendarily awesome free marine ever!

8-)

I remember Melta Guns always being decribed as bassicly "Microwave Lazers", and that they don't make much noise when fired. Being described as a eirie glow on the end of the gun when fired. They have always been basicly specail ops weapons.

In the Video Game Fire Warrioir the melta guns did this when fired.

It confused most players who thought it was some kinda of Melee weapon since thier was no visable shot like all the other guns. This is why the shots in Dawn of War/Space Marien are more visable.

=/

I seem to remember Meltaguns being known as cookerguns and cannons. They fire with a roaring sound, as the massive microwave and heat burst ignites organic matter, and agitates atoms into producing heat. The target is ripped apart/disintegrated in a horrifying manner.

This is what it was described like in the in the older editions of the miniature game. It has stuck with me since.

So, Meltaguns in my opinion cannot be silenced. And Plasma Weapons. Well, they already give off enough heat, that they can easily kill their (Mortal) operator if misfiring. Good luck trying to come up with some sort of device that can silence a weapon that volatile and heatproducing. It does fire superheated matter. This is bound to deliver a rather noticeable sound as air is superheated.

Lockark said:

Which from a science viewpoint sounds bizarre - microwaves basically bounce back on metal, making them a very poor choice for punching though vehicles and bulkheads - which they do in the fluff. The descirption in rogue Trader also mentions a fuel canister, which doesn't make sense for a laser-based weapon.

Using a sustained beam of gases superheated on an energy level close to plasma weapons would make more sense, turning them into a ranged blowtorch of doom. Which would also have a very neat seath-ray style effect as the superheated gases moves away in a stream.

Probably some kind of man-portable particle accelerator, (the linear ones will have some considerable radiation output as well just from the induction) and extremely high powered, even microwaves are very nasty with enough "thump" behind them. In this case maybe the imperium has decided the standard energy packs in las and hellguns aren't enough and taken a step back with a chemical power supply. Bit like we do now with chemical lasers.

As stated, while it's probably theoretically possible to silence most anything, practically when your spewing out a great big ball of pain the heat and brightness of a small sun or freeming something with particles so violently charged they've visible in the spectrum to the human eye... its a bit pointless.

well as with most things that in 40k that seems odd i use a simple answer...the warp. say instead of a mechanical device the heritic attaches a charm of tzeench that changes the color of the plasma bolt so mortal eyes can't see it or such.

It's entirely possible to silence any type of weapon in the 40k setting (don't dare quote real world science to back up any arguments! ) however i would maybe have greater or lesser penalties to detection depending on the type of weapon... so SP and bolt it's -30, Las and Melta -20 and Flamer and Plasma -10. This would represent the increasingly volatile nature of the projectile being, well, projected and the nature of the launch mechanism.