Alright. So, According to /tg/ plasma cannot be used as artillery

>>45900623
Plasma loses its heat quickly due to the massive difference between the temperature of the bolt and the air it falls into contact with, not to mention the magnetic fields holding it together would disperse at long ranges.

It might make for a suitable "flak," like weapon which destabilises in the general vicinity of the targeted aircraft (a rather easy task for a Cogitator to organize if it locks on), but it wouldn't be the best thing around.

>>45900658
It sounds like your saying plasma is pretty much useless.

>>45900674
It's very, very ineffective at long-range against a moving target if you're firing bolts, yes. A military engineer must first understand that no matter how good a concept is, it will fall flat on its face outside of any situation it's designed for.

>>45900623

are guys on your /tg/ are aware that artillery can also be direct-fire?

>>45900691
I'm sure at one point the lore will be updated to include a sort of flak plasma just like artillery plasma in HH.

I was thinking of pinpoint but flak plasma sounds better.

>>45900623
>Because you could fire giant blobs of plasma into the air and they wouldn't have to deal with gravity.

Uhh, plasma is matter so it does in fact have to deal with gravity.

>>45900623
Plasma is ionized gas, like a neon light.

Instead of using self-repelling gas [thanks to the electric charges], how about we use an electrically neutral solid?

>>45900827
If we utilized a self-repelling hydrogen fuel plasma, then upon command from the targeting cogitator the "bolt," could expand, not only bathing the aircraft in heat, but electronic and magnetic disruption. The last thing you want is your electronic systems on a speeding aircraft to become slightly scrambled during flight.

... Jesus Christ this weapon would actually be pretty horrifying.

>>45900827
We do. It's called a gun.

>>45900907

A haywire hit that forces a dangerous terrain check on top of it's regular effects?

>>45900922
We also call it a pistol and a cannon.

>>45900715
Yes. If you have to use it as direct fire you've fucked up bad. Or are a poor former Soviet Union country that can't afford actual tanks.

>>45900938
On TT I could see it being a Skyfire weapon with reasonable S/AP to deal with flying monstrous creatures, but less so than true Plasma, maybe S5/6 AP3. Haywire to deal with the aircraft and maybe dangerous terrain, yeah.

>>45901002
Or are fighting dudes in really tall buildings.

>>45900907
So basically just a directed EMP

>>45901036
Less effective than an EMP, but more focused and with an additional punch from the plasma itself. The projectiles would also be simple and capable of rapid-fire without wasting electronics.

40k plasma isn't the same thing as real world plasma. Just like promethium isn't the same thing as what is known as promethium in our world, las weapons don't act like lasers, etc.

40k plasma acts more or less like a blob of super-heated metal.

>>45901072
Plasma is it a lizard or a gas? we just don't know.

>>45901002

>If you have to use it as direct fire you've fucked up bad. Or are a poor former Soviet Union country that can't afford actual tanks.

It was a bit harsh for a bit of common sense trivia.
Can i be at least desperate or in urgency xeno remover senpai?

>>45901002
The imperium doesn't always give its troops tanks.. more just men that form the tracks and other men for the hull and other men for the ground and bullets and so on..

Also, A small ork population.

The Thanatar has a plasma mortar specifically mentioned to fire in arcs.

>>45900623
>it would be perfect for Anit Air.
Probably would be for void ships. Not so good on a planet.

>>45900674
You're trying to spray hot gas at someone, as you might imagine there's going to be problems with that.

If you form the plasma into a vortex ring you may get better results, but your plasma glob is going to be trying really, really hard to dissipate as soon as it exits containment.

>>45901072
40k can't even agree with itself on what it does. Plasma Guns sometimes fire globs of plasma as a bolt that wrecks face. Other times they function like a flamethrower, putting out a stream of plasma like in a super soaker stream of death.

>>45901667
Just use DoW for visuals since it's made by competent designers.

>>45901688
>Relic
>Competent

Nice meme anon.

>>45900791
Plasma is destructive because of it's immense heat, not because of it's kinetic impact compared to weapons with similar destructive potential.

The plasma "bolt" barely weighs anything, 40k plasma weapons uses agitate hydrogen for it's plasma so you're basically talking about a supermega heated puff of hydrogen gas.

>>45901715
Plasma is the coolest thing in 40k, shit is completely insane.

>Burns at a temperature over twenty million degrees Fahrenheit
>So fucking hot and has enough heated mass that a bolt of plasma passing by you will light you and all your friends on fire and melt chunks of your bodies from simple exposure.
>So fucking hot it'll go through power armor, tanks, practically anything besides heavy MBT armor.
>Hypersonic rounds
>Turns into an IED if you don't cool if off between shots

>>45901667
Meltaguns and plasma guns function similarly and both run on superheated gas, the difference is that the meltagun vents it in a short range stream and the plasma gun uses a magnetic containment field to allow the gas to keep from dispersing over a longer distance and fire a bolt of plasma instead of just pissing it away.

The plasma containment tech is rare, poorly understood and has been lost in a lot of places, which is why meltaguns are way, way more common and more easily produced.

>>45901758

How plasma is better than melta, its more useful, practical and shoots super heated stream of particles so its basically a fucking lava cannon...

LAVA CANNON

>>45901834
Meltaguns require you get within suicidally close range of the enemy target. They're not really ideal weapons at all unless you're using a multi-melta or have a jump pack. Plasma is also much more useful as it has far greater range, and travels much faster than a meltagun blast.

>>45901921
>Meltaguns require you get within suicidally close range

To be fair, plasma is suicidal at any range.

>>45901936
The meme of plasma guns killing their wielder is overblown. It rarely happens at all in the "reality" of the lore, and primarily to guardsmen who panic and don't cool the gun off.

>>45901921

>B...but my LAVA CANNON Q___Q

>>45902046
>Q___Q

>>45901688
Even then things aren't always clear - sometimes a melta weapon fires a single, straight burst, sometimes it's a long stream. And in Space Marine, it was a shotgun.

>>45901936
>>45901960
IIRC this is only because on the TT plasma guns used to act differently depending on who was using them, as it was explained to me, marines and guard plasma guns only ever fired one shot but couldn't get hot whereas chaos marines could overheat their plasma weapons and fire up to three times, but with the chance of having their gun explode or straight up kill the user. This was simplified and plasma was given the worse of both worlds, making it seem very dangerous to use to TT players.

I've only played since late 5th, so take that with a pinch of salt.

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>>45901921
The real problem with plasma in 40k is that for the Imperium it's powerful, but it's pretty fucking dangerous. Like said before, it'll explode if it's used too fast or otherwise overheated, so you can't use it as often as you would, say, a bolter.

A meltagun isn't as good against infantry as a plasmagun, even though it could probably easily kill a target, but it's great against vehicles where plasma is only okay. If it were more common in pistol form, that'd be great - then the short range isn't so bad of a thing, because when you're using a pistol you're probably an assault marine anyway.

>>45902046
That's not even how you memetext.
>Q__Q
fuck off.

>>45902114
It's not even that dangerous for marines. I mean let's go over this.

>You have to roll a 1 when shooting
>You then have to roll to wound (yourself)
>You finally get your 3+

You REALLY have to have a bad day to lose a marine to gets hot.

>>45901704
>relic
>incompetent
nice meme anon

>>45902342
>relic
>competent

nice meme anon

>>45902371
>relic
>incompetent
nice meme anon

>>45902168
The real problem with plasma in 40k is shitty writing and ebbin may-mays.

In the old fluff plasma weapons exploding was the result of a catastrophic failure. Not a built-in feature. Plasma weapons could be shot normally quite freely without too much of a heat buildup (just like any other weapon). When using a more powerful charged shot, the weapon needed a moment to cool down.

Then they got the Gets Hot! rule and they became a danger. And in time this "plasmas exploding left and right" meme reached the point that in the Munitorum articles a plasma guns just explode left and right because of lulz, you need a techpriest to reload on and it takes him hours.

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>>45900907
EMP Patriots OP

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Not entirely related, but I'm curious – has anything like Willy Pete ever been used in 40k?

>>45902423
I'm just saying, a melta gun does have a benefit in that it's more stable - as far as I know, it can't be misused in a way that would cause a plasma gun to misfire.

Fluffwise, you still don't often see plasma guns exploding. Mostly because most novels are just bolterporn, but the fluff isn't exactly concurrent with the tabletop in how often the damn things explode.

>>45902336
>>You then have to roll to wound (yourself)
nope, you don't, the model suffers a wound, not a hit.

>>45902336
>getting your armor save against an AP2 weapon
literal retard

>>45902510
prometium is the closest your going to get to white phosphorus and it's used by everyone.

>>45902510
There's phosphex, which is significantly worse but is obviously inspired by it

>>45902573
No. RAW states that you simply suffer a wound. Not from an AP2 weapon.

>>45902510
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Phosphex_Bomb

In game terms it's medium Str. AP3 and Poisoned (3+) with a blast or a large blast. It also leaves the blast on the table as dangerous terrain for the rest of the game. You can get quad mortars with this stuff, so that's 4 blasts. 3 rapiers per unit. 4 units per the AoD FOC. So, you're dropping 48 small blasts worth of dangerous terrain on the board every turn.

>>45902592
Promethium is fuel for vehicles and flamers.

>>45902510
Avatar of Khaine is made of lava, thats sorta like willy pete.

But they sword fight tanks and shit. They dont skull fuck space marines.

But they should....
so yeah Avatars could be like willy pete, and really should. But they dont.

>>45902573
You know what's literally retarded? Now knowing the fucking rules.

>>45900623
Plasma has a lower velocity and slower propulsion than "conventional" ammunition in 40k, and its low rate of fire would mean you'd need to lead the target AND have the BS of sergeant Telion to hit anything.

>>45902336
This is how I lose plasma cannons most consistently.
Followed with a gap by wraiths.

>>45902540
A water cooled machine gun can pretty much fire as long as it has ammo and water. More modern machine guns cannot and can have quite limited amounts of shots they can fire in a minute to keep themselves operational. But this drawback is worth it for the benefits.

Plasma gives a squad a high powered gun with range which will work as long as it's maintained, while a melta is a short range anti-tank weapon. An MG42 was more useful to a Wehrmacht squad than a panzerfaust, even though the MG would overheat and shit.

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>>45902693
See here, it only receives a wound, and may still make its armor or invul save, whichever one is superior.

>>45902765
I don't know about that, archers could be pretty accurate at a decent range through direct fire and a plasma gun is going to fire a much faster projectile than that. It shouldn't be too difficult to aim with.

>>45902930
Archers were never asked to preform anti aircraft work though. Even extremely high velocity cannons have extreamly low hit rates on aircraft, and are useful only at intimate range, with almost all anti aircraft work being done by missiles today. To have anything like a whole number percentage hit rate on aircraft, you simply must have a munition with post launch guidance, and there is just no way around this.

>>45903180
>Archers were never asked to preform anti aircraft work though.

Well someone hasn't played Civilization.

But yeah, prior to proximity detonators on shells, you could just fill the air with lead and hope for a lucky hit. In case of heavy AA guns, you just guessed their altitude, set the detonator and filled the sky with shells. And if they changed altitude, you had to adjust your detonators accordingly.

>>45900995
...which are types of gun...

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>>45900623

What is the Helix Plasma Mortar?

>>45904494
A mortar isn't really an anti-air piece.

>>45905435
^

>>45903180
When it comes to 40k there's still flying creatures and an abundant use of low altitude drop ships offensively though. Plasma could be useful at shooting those down.

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>>45904494
>plasmortar

Sure, why not?

No one at GW has ever had even a passing acquaintance with firearms or ballistic science. Their blissful ignorance is matched only by their nigh-catatonic indifference to plebeian concerns like balance, continuity and simple math. So, they want to have autonomous, bipedal, self-propelled artillery inexplicably built with humanoid arms and heads that shlepp pony kegs which lob flaming electric snotballs onto their literally bugeyed enemies?

Sure, why not?

>plas aaa
>ignores gravity

WTF??? Now you're just talking crazy, OP!

>>45906759
What, so they should hire some ballistic expert that has knowledge 28,000 years out of date? That doesn't make sense at all!

>>45902738
>They dont skull fuck space marines.

I see you also read empowered.

>>45904473
>Missing the joke entirely.

>>45900623

Nigger even LASCANNONS which shoot LASERS OF LIGHT aren't good for AA. Fuck 40k physics.

>>45911686
Take a look at a Firestorm Redoubt and tell me what you see.

>>45911787

Icarus-pattern guns, the specific weapon that must be from that pattern, design, and forge world to gain anti-air.

Tell me what you see, for every other 99% LC in the game that doesn't have skyfire.

>>45911889
Handheld or anti-vehicle targeting systems.

The weakness isn't in the gun. It's behind the trigger.

>>45911958

Icarus pattern plasma cannons when

>>45911983
Works better when you have both c-velocity fire AND good targeting.

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>>45900623

>>45911686
Anon, you're talking about aiming in 3d space. It's a bit harder than video game "put the reticle over the target and pull the trigger".

>>45912427
See >>45905435