ITT: fictional weapons that would be impractical IRL

Post gun lol

>laser that delivered 20KJ in a second or less, provided it was on a reasonably small area, would at the very least ignite almost any fabric, hair, etc, and create rather horrible burns in tissue. Blinding would be the worst problem,
Bruh. A laser that delivered 19kj in 0.3s to a 5mm circle would defeat 33mm of perpendicular tungsten. At 20mm beam size it would do 0.6 (15, 2.5), (10,7.5).

With a 2cm lens an 800nm (near IR) laser can do that at 100m if the beam is diffraction limited (M^2=1). At a blue 460nm current flea market chinesium laser beam quality (~1.7) is sufficient. A 13.5nm EUV laser (like is currently used for CPU manufacturing) could produce a 150 μm point with worse lenses than we currently bother to make and would be in the realms of slicing tanks in half.

Reflectance and obliquity tend not to be big problems for energy absorbance as you go past blue, for eg tungsten goes to less than 2% absorbance for wavelengths under 380nm or so. Partial target transparency and armor diffraction are also largely positives at these kind of energies.

Basically we just make shit lasers right now. High energy lasers have god awful beam quality, orders of magnitude worse than chineseum pen lasers, while emitters and optics for high energy wavelengths (DUV, EUV) are at the cutting edge. Finally, our contemporary military aspirations for laser weapons are insane compared to carving armor at infantry distances - they're doing things like shooting boost phase missiles at 1000km or mortars and boats at kilometers away. AN/SEQ-3 is only a 30kw (ie 1kj/s) laser in near IR and it disables boats kilometers away easily with short pulses.

Err, you do realize that all the images of bolters apart from the one apart from the top left are obviously the ones made by posters?
If you do what the fuck are you even asking?
A, B and C have nothing in common with each other and are not explanations.

>B are definitely identical and showing what they believe are how it could work.
There's a fucking great big yellow line saying that the ammo has to move through air, are you stoned right now?

Posters there are clearly taking issue with the unnecessarily convoluted path the bullet has to take and the location and size of the "ejection port". That it should had been drawn like C would had been the point. Korobov's weird designs have nothing to do with it other than a superficial resemblance to the design. Korobov's protoypes were already very well known back then, I can't imagine anybody taking issues based on an ignorance of his designs.

>just without a control unit
This is not true. You have created a robot with very intense and unique ergonomic, environmental, and I/O requirements for its control unit. It's much more difficult than creating a robot. But it's a much better control unit.

Its almost as if the control unit with sensors, pathfinding, adaptability to environment and decision making is the hard part.
So back to my original post, as long as there will be infantry, and the moment exoskeletons are introduced, we will get power armor infantry.
They might not be tip of the spear, but if giving a trooper an exoskeleton increases their perceived combat lethality, they will have to get into those god damn suits.

A robot without control and power is not a robot.
a pneumatic cylinder hooked up to a PLC is not a robot.
>Designing a car is easy, you just weld a bunch of metal sheets together and you have the shell. Now the Engine and suspension, that's the real problem
You also completely overlook the impact that random real world environment has on an autonomous robotic system by citing Boston Dynamics as an example.

>Its almost as if the control unit with sensors, pathfinding, adaptability to environment and decision making is the hard part.
This was the exact argument that was made for why drones would never be viable.- AI and controls have been, and for the forceable future will continue to be the fastest maturing field - Radically exceeding power generation technology

>So back to my original post, as long as there will be infantry, and the moment exoskeletons are introduced, we will get power armor infantry.
Good luck convincing anyone to consider Infantry literally tethered to vehicles - Because that is the only way to have a suit that is going to have more than a few hours of combat endurance for the forseeable future, and by the time that exists the AI control aspect will already be a matured technology

suits in the back line will be used in the back line to allow a tethered generator to run several logistics suits to ensure artillery batteries aren't exhausting crews causing reduction in capability and to allow engineer vehicles to have automation tethered, meaning larger tools usable without again exhausting the engineer crews

>They might not be tip of the spear, but if giving a trooper an exoskeleton increases their perceived combat lethality, they will have to get into those god damn suits.
What percieved combat lethality is there in reducing infantry's mobility - both in terms of reducing their speed and flexibility in not being able to clear buildings with doorways sized for humans, increasing their target profile, tying them physically to support vehicles

The bar is very low. Gundam is usually considered Real Robot and it's got back flipping lightsaber duels in space. There are elements of the setting that are very grounded and then there's giant robot honor duels. If a mecha was built in real life it would probably resemble an Urban Mech or something like it.

>outside of the tabletop distances being the same as lore engagement distances.
This wasn't a thing in the beginning and I don't know when it started. The first novels even had lasers invisible to the naked eye and cameras instead of windows on canopies.

Clanner Enhanced Imaging cockpits are sometimes described as being the classic 'floating seat with a 360 degree view'.

Note that the EI cockpit and EI implants are two different halves to the same tech, but someone without EI implants can still make use of the EI cockpit. Having the implants (or their Word of Blake counterparts, (B)VDNI) just lets you control your mech with your mind directly, and also have sensor data and shit sent directly to your brain.

It is internally consistent and has systems and logistics so you can run a repair garage and order parts from FedEx, or scrounge your own from salvage and even machine parts from basic stock.

>No my summer 'mech where you balance repairs, upgrades and maintenance with wrecking your 'mech on mercenary contracts

Most efficient armor scheme for a given mass, and dropships are often shot at while landing. Battletech armor is NERA that shatters/melts/sloughs off when hit to prevent penetration of nearly anything you can hit it with, there are a few weapons that will pen the armor outright though.

A sphere has the most internal volume for the least material. Plus it gives battletech a rather unique spacecraft look

I mean it more like if they say a tank has 300 RHA armour or the like, that RHA means a completely different thing to them. Or it could be reasonably have been subtracted from say 300 000 to 300, so the numbers are more practically usable. That sort of stuff.
The benefits of having a post apocalyptic, religiously fanatical society. You don't need to presume that people or more precisely that the systems is entirely logical.
And I hate precise powerleveling in fiction so this helps to deter that.

Because of how the universe is set up it CAN be a mistake, so I let it be one. That's the big difference, it can be whatever you want to make of it, within reason.
You could just as well say that this design is completely retarded and that could be right. That particular model could have been complete shit and lead to the deaths of those who tried to use them. The Imperial machinery is vast enough that every possibility exists within it.
But for the universe as a whole to make sense you have to make certain concession and not take everything literally. And that's where the beauty of it comes, at least to me, is that you absolutely can make to concessions.

What a nonsense piece of reasoning. RHA is a set thing. It'll be like as if someone said a lasgun was 50 joules and you claimed "nooo they meant space-joules". The dudes who wrote Games Workshop data were basically WW2 tank buffs, and this translated to 350mm RHA being an impressive amount of armor in their heads, simple as that.

So you're admitting it's just cope now? There's a point where you should just throw up your hands and admit the authors were stupid, not double down and join in the stupidity by pretending that akshully they meant space-RHA, honest.

>unreliable narrator
Doesn't mean what you think it means. It's means the narrator is deliberately written to be unreliable, not that you can play "death of the author" and pick and choose what you want. We can collectively agree that GW fluff is nonsense and the concept of canon is fleeting at best, but deciding to put your own personal spin on things is just head canon and fanboyism. Deal with it.

Cool blog bro, no one cares about your head canon.

I care about it, besides the reason why people don’t want to make shit sound “weaker” is 40k is pretty much the rule of cool. You want the setting to be badass so you make it badass. Doesn’t really translate to table top but I don’t play that so I don’t really care.

Og guy here, I specifically don't care about that stuff. Coming back to the original 300 RHA example, it's more about what to do with obviously faulty info, since if said tank legitimately had 300 RHA of armour and functioned as it did, it would call into question practically everything about the setting to explain how it's holding up against said attacks.
Much simpler to just say that the 300 RHA number is bullshit and then come up with a reasonable explanation for that, since 40K allows for it.
And expanding on the other guys post, why I think 40K works so well in a rule of cool way is that there is at least some plausible reasoning behind everything, so if you do care about a specific thing or feature, you can pursue it or defend it or whatever and you'll have some role basis for doing that.
Everything basically being techno magic makes it a lot easier to believe in all kinds of stuff than if it were just played of as contemporary logical advancements taken some few decades or even centuries into the future.

The problem is that if you lower one, you kind of have to lower everything for things to remain as they are.

I'm really sure what you're trying to say. My point is that for 40K to internally make sense, you have to basically ignore or massive increase certain stats, and once again that is something you can do. If those stats functioned as they're stated, then everything in 40K would have to change to fit that. Going back the 300 RHA example once more, if that were truly the case, then what the hell is going on with everything from missiles, lasers, plasma, kinetic rounds, explosives, psychic or even just straight up biological strength not cutting through that that like butter.
Basically the official stats are complete nonsense in a lot of instances and for things to function as they are portrayed, then those must be changed.

Well yeah but for matter to exist in a plasma state, it has to have a significant amount of energy in it for example. So it has a certain expectation of power behind it, regardless of what the stats say.
I agree with you mostly, but my main point was that the official stats are completely whack in several instances and make absolutely zero sense under any kind of scrutiny vs the reported impact. And that with how 40K is set up, you can just ignore those stats.
>Organic beings can tear apart tanks with pure strength despite basic sheet metal being proof against any such thing in real life.
An elephant stepping on top of most vehicles outside of MBTs would crush them. SM augments are actually pretty reasonable and stuff like the tyranids would absolutely wreck everything we could come up with irl. Biology basically has no limits on what you can accomplish with it. Hell just start infusing titanium and other metals or composite materials into the make up if need be. Beavers for instance have iron infused into their teeths and certain ants have zinc jaws.

why are you comparing mammal myosin/actin muscle fibers with hyper-evolved extragalactical war machine ones?

M8, even an actual real life mech made of metal and powered by electricity wouldn't be able penetrate steel plate without being ludicrously oversized, let alone an organic one essentially made out of water held together by macromolecules.

The setting mostly exists outside those "stats". they're not the main point of things. They're just there as fluff and help compare stuff to each other and for gameplay reasons(in universe that is). A big problem here comes from the fact that 40K is spread across a wide variety of mediums from books to board games to vidya. So for example what makes sense from a balancing perspective for the games has no bearing on the books and whatever kind of story they want to convey.
Basically the stats don't really matter outside limited environmental like a board game battle so you can do a degree do whatever you want with them. What matters is the portrayal of effectiveness in practice.

Also I don't give a shit about this whole "40K vs every other series" because that's just an endless quagmire of nu-uhs.
You're honestly coming across as needlessly salty.

Well yeah, I get that but you've kinda brought that on yourself because the way 40K is set up, those kind of people are practically unbeatable since there is no concrete ground to trap them onto.

Once again, comparing any scifi settings to each other super seriously is just dumb imo.

>"bigger number than other series."
40k is a post-apoc setting, where every faction (other than Tyranids and Chaos) has fallen from its glory days and is now armed with scraps and prayers. It isn't even a bigger number compared to itself, stagnation and overall superstitional retardation is a big point of it.
Also you are the one bringing up supposed comparisons between 40k and other series, I've literally never seen "can 40k beat X" posts here or on /tg/, only people like you which complain about it.
And no, nobody who knows 40k from anything other than reddit memes, would argue that for how big the universe it, numbers in can't back it up and make overally no sense. Its been like that forever, 1 million spacemarines total is a most famous example, people talk about improbably small numbers because they are. Thanks to the fact that GW are Bri`ish and can't into guns.

My moron in christ, you are the only one in the thread bringing up "40k vs X" bullshit, you literally painted a picture to be mad at.
>Retreat back to your sci-fi forum
Comes to thread discussing scifi weaponry, is baffled and upset at people discussing scifi weaponry, what a lad.

>I hear it used ONCE to lower the power and not raise it.
Matt Ward era Ultramarines could be toned down with saying their tales might have been exaggerated for propaganda reasons.
Though even with that you have the meme explanation of blue being the Orks lucky colour, even if that's mostly tongue in cheek, it could once again work as a legitimate reason.

Because of stuff like plasma, energy weapons and the overall amounts energy in various forms energy being thrown around.

It's like showing a wall stop a speeding truck head on, and then insisting that wall was made of plywood. If that was the case then it would call in question everything else and just make the same problem elsewhere a thousand times.

Yeah you're just coming across as a salty bitch that got too involved in some flame war between 40K and whatever else it was compared to.

Not saying that your post doesn't hold a ring of truth. There's plenty of completely shit and contradictory fluff, but that's kind of the charm for me. It comes back to the whole "unreliable setting" thing. I view 40K as basically as a modern mythos so of course there's going to be all kinds of contradictions and the like that people can use to argue about. Kind of like real history or even religious writings. That's the main point I love about, that vagueness because any sci-fi universe has to be like that in order to be believable to me. Just compare our real world of just one planet and some 3000 years of written history. How little do really know about that even, how spotty and contradictory our understanding of things are and were. Just look into the various forms of dinosaurs we though have existed basically from just one random bone.
Now extrapolate that some 38 000 years into the future, with several apocalyptic periods and on a true galactic scale (which frankly I can't recall seeing anywhere else).

>Like I said, the only time this logic comes out is when "big number" is threatened, never the reverse.
Well no shit, the kind of people who care about that enough to argue about wouldn't self sabotage to that point since they absolutely can do the opposite.
And people like me who don't give a shit about these kinds of flame wars won't do that either since it would mean adding more chaos and confusion the actual setting.

Like goddamn dude learn to take a chill pill and not get so infatuated on childish "my dad is stronger!" type of games.

Yeah because the way the setting is set up you can do that, that's why it's meaningless to argue about these kinds of things since there is no concrete ground to stand on and you'll never convince anyone that cares enough to start this whole shitshow anyhow.

The settings main purpose is to serve as background for a tabletop wargame and also to help string together hundreds of different competing viewpoints into a coherent whole. It has to vague and permissive to accomplish that.
Incidentally this also makes it so that if you really want to you can argue about anything basically without the lore or setting having any hard boundaries or stops to impede you.

Fair, but I'd like to think in that case the people in the setting are still logical enough that they'd notice that kinetic penetrators work super well and focus on those.
But still, stats outside of and for the tabletop are basically just fluff with no real meaning or bearing.

Yeah but WW1 had some pretty great generals as well. That one italian guy comes to mind. Or Russia's current disaster of a special operation. There's no limit to human incompetence, especially not in a setting so full of power and resources.
It's just that technical stuff is a bit more iffy to argue about.

They do. Vanquisher cannons shoot APFSDS. It's considered a rare superweapon. Until recently in the fluff shaped charges were practically lostech too. From a Doylist perspective you can see why: RPG spam would make space marines and all the other heavy infantry elites key to the tabletop game obsolete.

Alright that's actually pretty neat, thanks.

Fair. I chalk it up to chaos shenanigans making people paranoid about creating too effective formations incase they go rogue. And the rampant corruption across the whole Imperium. Still I'll admit a large part of that is just style and basically copying WW1&2 plus added grimdark.

I've always found it utterly hilarious APFSDS were considered super high tech that only one forge world in the entire Imperium figured out how to do. It's a shame that later fluff has worked hard at hiding this shameful history and turned to vague allusions about velocity. However, are not krak weaponry of all kinds meant to be shaped charges?

Yeah GW stats are retarded in a lot circumstances, but I personally default that a unreliable narrator and mistranslated measurements.
Honestly my favourite part of 40k is exactly that vagueness in everything. We don't know everything, there are massive information gaps both chronologically and geographically and the person who in universe wrote this could be religious fanatic or have a laundry list of reasons why they're not exactly the most objective and grounded narrator. It's like reading ancient historians and mythology.
Basically it gives me a neat way to handwave everything into exactly the shape I wish while still not breaking canon.

It is best to ignore most sci-fi numbers and simply characterize effects against a familiar target. 12.7mm(.50cal) machineguns pulp people and 9x19mm mostly just pokes holes. Anything larger than .50cal is going to pulp flesh even more.

As far as craters and such a 500lb bomb will fling a house's walls and roofs, but it won't do much more than give a mild concussion to a man in a foxhole who is only a 10 meters away, even though the bomb would nominally have a 100m kill radius.

Overall it doesn't matter and you can have really big explosions that won't harm something that isn't hit directly or has some intervening cover. A WW2 tank cannon with 90mm RHA pen is mogged by a modern APFSDS dart with 3000mm RHA pen. The same dart is only going to pass through a few meters of dirt, because nobody can shoot through mountains.

>Rule of cool
We are talking about the FANS, not the WRITERS, retard.

>implying its any different for the writers or that they are competent in any way or form
No, not even slightly. It's completely irrelevant.