Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

The ones in the RPGs are pretty reasonable (it all depends on what you firing at) the problem that they have is they have to fit on scale of lots of weird and wonderful weapons, so the basic auto gun is a it lack lustre. The TL in the setting is all over the place. (The original rogue trader has stats for black powder muskets).



The RPGs and the TT do rather differ in this, the stuff I posted above is more relevant to the TT than the RPG.

Let's see:
Lasgun: range 100m, RoF S/3/-.
Autogun (read: assault/battle rifle): range 90m, RoF S/3/10.
Heavy Stubber (apparently what fills the GPMG/HMG role in their world): range 120m, RoF -/-/10.

A Round is 5 seconds long, which means that the most rapid-firing weapon has a cyclic rate of 2 rounds per second. And poor Steyr AUG A1 at TL8 has a ½D of 800 yards and an ability to make extreme shots at up to 3,500y . . .

[starslayer]

one more important reason why melee might work in WH40k- Because people THINK it might work.

WH40k has a very active 'collective unconscious' between all individuals that actually shapes reality. The gods are real, but only because enough people think they are real. The entire orc 'technology' exists due to a racial ability to do this: Weapons and armor work, despite being nothing more then cobbled together bits of pipe and loosely arranged plates, because they think it does. For orcs painting red stripes on things DOES make it go faster, and putting a cardboard box over there heads that says 'no ork here!' means that they are invisible to advanced sensors.

So the collective unconscious may be contributing to allowing melee weapons to maintain viability- of course that's just fluff, ways to explain it away in game. It looks like mechanically its 'weapons have basically no range and terrible rates of fire'.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Let's see:
Lasgun: range 100m, RoF S/3/-.
Autogun (read: assault/battle rifle): range 90m, RoF S/3/10.
Heavy Stubber (apparently what fills the GPMG/HMG role in their world): range 120m, RoF -/-/10.

A Round is 5 seconds long, which means that the most rapid-firing weapon has a cyclic rate of 2 rounds per second. And poor Steyr AUG A1 at TL8 has a ½D of 800 yards and an ability to make extreme shots at up to 3,500y . . .

Ah sorry i thought you meant in terms of effect on targets. yes by the numbers they are rubbish against RL stuff. But even so they are better than in TT

[borithan]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

If you don't mind being too meta about it, remember that in the wargame, personal long arms have an maximum range of 48 yards, and heavy weapons about 120 yards!

Figure scale=/= ground scale. Well, not in most wargames, and it certainly hasn't been that way in 40k since 1st edition. 2nd edition onwards has not specified any ground scale. 24" is purely a game abstraction of normal infantry small arms engagement distance, and that wouldn't even be maximum range, just effective range (in 1st edition, for example, projectile weapons could as an optional rule fire up to 10x their maximum range, while energy weapons could fire 5x, just with very little chance of hitting).

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

As an aside, GURPS rounds are 1 second. If you take the duration of a 40k round (6 seconds, 1 minute, I have no idea) and determine that this is the actual rate of fire, you can possibly both follow the lore and make ranged weapons stupidly slow.

No time is specified. I think 1st edition originally also specified about 5 seconds, but no edition of the game since has. RoF is simply an abstraction of much effect a weapon will have over a game turn. 1 shot does not represent 1 shot (again, 1st edition gave weapons that fire bursts of fire a bonus to hit at short range). Personally I tend to imagine that each turn is about 5 minutes or so, but I don't really have any justification for this.

Originally Posted by warellis

It's the same reason why we shouldn't assume battlemechs from Battletech only have 90-meter range machine guns.

Some of the fiction did...

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

The ones in the RPGs are pretty reasonable (it all depends on what you firing at) the problem that they have is they have to fit on scale of lots of weird and wonderful weapons, so the basic auto gun is a it lack lustre. The TL in the setting is all over the place. (The original rogue trader has stats for black powder muskets).

The TL being all over the place is sort of part of the point of the setting. Of course this is difficult to translate into a more structured set of rules like GURPS. This is a setting where a big brute of an ork has to be able to force his axe through sheer strength alone through armour that gives at least some measure of protection against light anti-vehicle weapons.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Let's see:
Lasgun: range 100m, RoF S/3/-.
Autogun (read: assault/battle rifle): range 90m, RoF S/3/10.
Heavy Stubber (apparently what fills the GPMG/HMG role in their world): range 120m, RoF -/-/10.

A Round is 5 seconds long, which means that the most rapid-firing weapon has a cyclic rate of 2 rounds per second. And poor Steyr AUG A1 at TL8 has a ½D of 800 yards and an ability to make extreme shots at up to 3,500y . . .

The RoF & range in Dark Heresy does not in any way necessarily reflect the the whole rate of fire over a whole turn or the maximum range. For one "Range" in DH is used in a formula to determine what bonus or penalty you have to shoot. The original maximum range was 10x range, but this was reduced to 4x (but even then this probably more reflects "effective range", rather than true maximum). The RoFs are pretty much abstractions, and meant to include time for lining up the weapon etc, and might be a number of short, controlled bursts spaced over the whole 5 seconds, with aiming between. I would take the RoF number probably to be indicative of the cyclic RoF (so RoF -/-/10 essentially means 10 rounds a second, with no semi-automatic or burst fire option, so the equivalent of 10! in GURPS).

Of course this is all talking about what are entirely abstractions that are designed to make a game work in a specific context (and having the issue that the rules for the tabletop game where developed from a game for a stereotyped fantasy battlefield). Truthfully it is often commented that even in DH (where the rules are weighted to favour melee) melee combat is usually inferior to ranged combat. Now, the specific circumstances of that game, where fights usually occur at short ranges, often mitigate against that, but the few advantages that Melee does get are actually oddities of the system, rather than in universe ones. Adding strength bonuses to damage often makes it better against targets with high levels of damage mitigation, and the fact that melee resolves multiple attacks as separate attack rolls (rather than ranged attacks modified single dice roll) often makes it more reliable in some ways and certainly better able to burn through someone's active defences.

I personally think that for a games master the major problem of translating 40k into GURPS are actually with mundane weapons, rather than how to make melee as a concept viable. It is a setting where fights happen at close ranges, which instantly makes melee attacks more viable, and Power weapons and the like will have large armour divisors, and pretty high damage ratings as well (they are essentially the setting's equivalents to lightsabers). People don't charge over open ground on foot and expect to get to use their swords before they die. You avoid being shot by taking cover, or you get to the enemy quickly (jump packs and the like). Even then, most soldiers primary weapons is a gun, it only being characters and specialist close combat units that focus on melee weapons. The real issue is the one I mentioned before: straight up Strength should still be able to punch through power armour (or any of the other armour types), at the same time as those armours providing decent protection against quite powerful weapons. It isn't realistic, and it doesn't really lend itself to the way GURPS does things. Not saying it isn't possible, just it would take a lot of work to get it to feel right.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by borithan

Figure scale=/= ground scale. Well, not in most wargames, and it certainly hasn't been that way in 40k since 1st edition. 2nd edition onwards has not specified any ground scale.

I take the abstraction point, but I thought 1" = 2 yards was still canon?

Originally Posted by borithan

24" is purely a game abstraction of normal infantry small arms engagement distance, and that wouldn't even be maximum range, just effective range (in 1st edition, for example, projectile weapons could as an optional rule fire up to 10x their maximum range, while energy weapons could fire 5x, just with very little chance of hitting). ...

Really? it's been a long time I'll have to pull my old books out tonight!

[chrissandvick]

Originally Posted by borithan

The real issue is the one I mentioned before: straight up Strength should still be able to punch through power armour (or any of the other armour types), at the same time as those armours providing decent protection against quite powerful weapons. It isn't realistic, and it doesn't really lend itself to the way GURPS does things. Not saying it isn't possible, just it would take a lot of work to get it to feel right.

That problem makes me wonder if it isn't better to try and run a hybrid game, mixing Gurps and tabletop WHk40 for the roleplaying and combat? It seems unavoidable the more you move away from the WH40k tabletop abstractions the more you change the feel of the setting.

A fun exercise is to take the WHk40 units and swap the rules with something like Stargrunt II, Tomorrow's War, or Infinity. Ranged fire is much more effective in those rule sets and doing something useful with the sword and pistol guys is a real challenge.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Sword-dancer

AFAIK the Gurkhas used their kukris in WWII in Close combat.

Also, Australians and New Zealanders notoriously used fixed bayonets in WWII.

[Purple Haze]

The British won the battles of Goose Green and Mount Tumbledown with bayonet charges (Falklands 1982), and a skirmish near Basra (Iraq 2004).

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

The British won the battles of Goose Green and Mount Tumbledown with bayonet charges (Falklands 1982), and a skirmish near Basra (Iraq 2004).

Yes, and besides:

Australians won the Battle of Beersheba in 1917 with a mounted bayonet charge against infantry in trenches with machineguns.

Australians and New Zealanders won the Battle of 42nd Street on Crete in 1941 with a bayonet charge against German paratroopers who outnumbered them two to one. Inflicted a casualty ratio of over five to one, too.

Bayonets rock.

[Anders]

Granted, but don't we remember all these because they were exceptions? You don't hear about the times they charged with bayonets and were cut down by machine gun fire before they had moved ten yards.