Volkite and Melta

>>50130031
Volkite combusts you, melta, well, melts you

>>50130048
I thought melta microwaved you?

>>50130114
>I thought melta microwaved you?
clever..

They do and they don't, It depends on what lore you read.

In theory they are suppose to work like a plasma weapon.

>>50130114
Melta is microwave turned up to 11
Volkite is X-rays turned up to 11 like a dalek ray gun

>>50130031
Melta is a death ray, volkite is a death beam

Don't confuse rays with beams

Melta can't bounce.

>>50130566
ok, how is it it different?

>>50130031
What's the difference between a shaped charge and a frag grenades? They're both explosives in metal casings.

Well a volkite makes you explode and hurt people around you. Melta just disintegrates I think.

>>50130114
>>50130161

The way I imagined plasma and melta working visually was always like this:

- Plasma weapons glow until they go critical, in barely a second, and this glowing blob comes out that eats anything it touches. The blob is kinda unstable once the containment field around it breaks up into pieces, so a solid hit will make a hole in you and maybe keep running on a little bit. A glancing hit will spread it out into smaller blobs that can still hurt. So say you shoot it at a Space Marine: the blob passes through the Marine leaving a hole in the torso (the edges glowing silver for a moment) before whatever excess plasma went through disappears in the air or against something else it also burns a bit.

- Melta is a distortion in the air that marks the passage of an invisible beam. This beam instantly eats the first thing it touches and then the thing explodes. If you shot it at a Space Marine, you would see the Marine sport a sudden hole with burning edges before the whole Marine exploded in flames from inside a millisecond later.


No idea about Volkite because honestly, I´ve been out of 40k for some time and this is literally the first thread I´ve visited here in a long time. I have no idea what Volkite even is. Really gotta get up to date with the fluff.

>>50130604
>What's the difference between a shaped charge and a frag grenades? They're both explosives in metal casings.

Frag grenades explode, sending shrapnel in every direction.

Shaped charges are anti-tank munitions made with a cone of dense metal on the tip and explosive behind. The idea is the cone hits the target, the explosive detonates, and the cone becomes an extremely effective penetrator that goes through armour. Unlike regular kinetic munitions (that is, the shells fired by tanks), shaped charges always have the same performance, more or less, regardless of distance or speed. They will always penetrate the same amount of armour.

>>50130716
Well, there you have your answer, OP.

>>50130716
Thank you brother-captain Titus Obvious.

>>50130566

I understood that reference.

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>>50130031

Melta is such a shitty concept by GW. Literally the weapon they dont know what do use for.

They cant make their minds up on what it is, just that it is good for busting tanks.

On some places you see it as a hot stream like a laser (Fire Warrior, Eternal Crusade), on others it's a blast of heat like in Space Marine.

I think Melta needs a massive rule overhaul, making it a combat shotgun that fires superhot blasts like in Space Marine.

Picrelated is what i think it should be lore wise, and game wise it should be an assault weapon with one or two shots with the flamethrower template that does not get past the first miniature it comes in contact with, but that allows you to get two or three miniatures at the same time in a longer range, and with instant death on a 6.

Multi meltas should have the same short range but fire two to three shots instead, being a heavy assault weapon as well.

This should be good to pop tanks as well as infantry, and would work better lore wise

>>50130031

Volkite is the classic "martian beam ray of death" concept from the 50s and 60s, the shit dat disintegrates your atomic unions

Melta is based on vomiting superheated fuel on the enemy, it can also turn some things to vapor

>>50130031
You shoot melta at a guy, he vaporizes in a stream of superheated particles.
You shoot volkite at a guy, he eats a narrow crimson beam and catches fire and/or explodes.

>>50130579
melta fuel can't power death beams

>>50130824
That's probably the best visualization of Melta to date

>>50130824
This is actually pretty awesome pic.

>>50130031
What's the major difference between plasma and melta, on that note? They both seem to be oriented towards the same thing, what makes them different?

>>50130682
Melta could be invisible in a vacuum (like a halogen space heater's beam) but still heat up the target; in atmosphere, it will ignite the air and be highly visible. Plasma is any kind of weapon that ejects matter in an energetic state, usually stated to be some type of fission or fusion reaction.


Volkite is like a death ray kind of thing.

>>50130576
Volkite can't bounce, the deflagrate effect is simply the explosive reaction of a mass when its chemical bonds are excited to breaking point.

The actual method Volkite weapons use is anybody's guess, but the effect is not a bouncing beam.


>>50130824
You would expect both effects, dependent on atmospheric conditions, thickness, etc. I think the FW Salamanders dreadnought has a combination flamer/melta weapon which is based on a solid understanding of that - you could, with appropriate technical understanding, construct a melta weapon which should be able to diffuse its beam to act more like a traditional flamer weapon, using atmosphere/minimal fuel injection to achieve the same effect.

Multimeltas used to be blast weapons! They were fucking awful to deal with and nerfed accordingly. The last thing you want is a squad of Space Marine Bikes or Land Speeders running around the back of your force on turn 1 and tabling you with blast multimeltas. The same would apply if they were Heavy 3 - you'd still get the same number of casualties/dead tanks.

>>50130943
kek

>>50130031
As outright weird as it sounds, I've always pictured the Melta gun to fire off a cone of "fuck you!" a la, the red eco Shotgun from Jak and Daxter 2/3.
>Mental image due to having the "Close Range=More Damage" of a shotgun and being an energy weapon instead of a slug-thrower.

As for volkite, not really sure, cause I only heard about those recently, and am not very up to date on them. (Why am I picturing a gun that shoots a red lightning bolt? Eh, whatever)

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>>50131235
>
Multimeltas used to be blast weapons! They were fucking awful to deal with and nerfed accordingly.

It's legacy continues, though.

Was the Devil Dog around for that time, by the way? Like, was its main gun only a multi-melta, but then they named it something else to keep it a unique tank? I've only started playing the tabletop around four years ago.

>>50132051
>put large blast melta weapon on Caestus assault ram
>intend to use it to breach the hulls of enemy ships
>blasts can't target flyers

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>>50132051
>It's legacy continues, though.

laughing_flyrant.jpg

>>50132411
That makes perfect sense.

There's a big difference between a giant, effective stationary ship and a dog fighter.

>>50132051
Devil dog is new. Multi-melta was non-blast for the entirety of 3rd, 3.5th, 4th, and 5th edition before the Devil Dog came out.

>>50130031
Volike is essentially the heat ray from War of the Worlds. Which, unlike in most visual desciptions of the story, was not really a solid beam, but more like a camera flash (only, you know, deadly). A brief burst of intense ligth and heat that sets the thing it was aimed at on fire.

Meltas are kind of weird, though. They're sometimes portrayed as essentially microwave guns, but that doesn't really match the look of the weapon, and the description in later codex mentions it fires what is effectively plasma (gas heated to the point its molecular structure breaks down). How this is differnet from plasma guns, I don't know, but based on how the two weapons work in the game, I'd figure the plasma gun fires what is effectively an artificial ball lightning, ie. a ball of plasma encased in a semi-stable magnetic field, which can travel for a given distance before the magnetic field breaks down and it dissipates, while the melta just shoots out a stream of superheated gas that will melt anythign at close range but loses its effect as distance increases due to dissipation of the stream (ie. at half range the beam is hot enough to melt right through the side of even a land raider, while up to its max range it's still hot enough to go right through armour but dissipated enough that it's less effective against heavily armoured vehicles, and beyond that it's dissipated enough that it won't really do anything).

>>50132411
It's not meant to shoot at flyers. It's, as the name implies, an assault boat. Your fly it at a starship, cut a hole in the hull, and unload marines inside. The melta weapon on it is really just a very large bulkhead cutter, that also happens to be able to melt tanks into a pile of slag (considering starships are armoured with several meter thick metal plates, it has to be).

>>50132723
>space ships aren't flyers

>>50133632
Considering the standard Imperial Navy cruiser is over 3 miles long, I don't think they'd count as "flyers" in the 40k rules sense. A starship (or rather, a section of its hull) would be the board you fight on. Firing the melta blast at it is less like trying to hit a flying aircraft and more shooting at the ground. You can't really miss it.

>>50134129
>You can't really miss it.

You can't even fire at it, since blasts can't target flyers.

>>50132696
Ah okay. Thanks, Senpai.

>>50132696
>>50132051
I don't even recall the MM being that bad to deal with. It was basically a heavy plasma gun with insane AP, but you still had to contend with it being a short range (2"? there were like 6 templates in 2e) blast weapon that could literally scatter most of the way back in your direction, and the non-trivial chance of the misfire centering it on you.

>>50130796
Dreadful technique.

>>50130682
That's not at all how it works. For one a plasma gun is so hot that even a plasma pistol is capable of vaporizing a space marine, and a passing shot from a plasma pistol will set everything within a couple feet of it on fucking fire.

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>>50130031
I've always been under the impression melta weapons were one of two concepts.

The first being basically an intense microwave gun. As the waves lose coherency, the effect drops off quickly, hence the short range.

The second, and the one I prefer, is fusion weapon. Basically directing the unbelievably intense heat of a small critical fusion, or heck even fission, reaction out of a barrel. Eldar Fire dragons have fusion guns that behave just like melta guns and the Tau have fusion blasters.

Volkite weapons seem to be dark age of technology ray guns that use an extremely exotic beam to cause an explosive chain reaction on the target. Attached is a cool artistic depiction of a volkite weapon being fired. Perhaps volkite a very elaborate maser. something like that.

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>>50130031

From the looks of it, Volkite turns you to ash from the heat, and the explosive heat of exploding into hot ash might fuck up the guy next to him.

Melta basically has the same effect on near everything as a heat gun has on chocolate or wax.

We actually do have a single image of a melta in action, but surprisingly these visual sources are few and far between.

>>50130824
>making it a combat shotgun that fires superhot blasts like in Space Marine.

But it already behaves like a shotgun, the closer you are the better the heat ray is, the bigger the explosion (and therefore vehicular damage) is.

>>50130031
Volkite is the old inperium reaching necron tier guns before the great fall. Basically a zappy gun that dissasembles you.
Meltas are a microwave gun.

>>50131210
Id guess plasma is more aimable since its a cloud of go away cunt
Melta is just a big cone of FUCK YOU a few meters ahead.

>>50130031
Plasma is an electrically neutral medium of unbound positive and negative particles. You can confine it in electromagnetic fields. Melta is 80's fiction born of late-night cocaine abuse. Now you know.

>>50136579
Volkite =/= plasma, though.

>>50136352
>Vape gun
VAPE NATION

>>50136668
They tell it to everyone, so that all the vapefags will think it's safe to use, stick the muzzle into their mouths and pull the trigger.

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>>50130031

>>50136796
In comparison, Melta is just a heat beam.

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>>50136579
As someone who uses ICP-MS, refer to pic related.

So are Volite weapons just larger and more powerful versions of lasguns? It looks like they both just send beams of energy that melt, disintegrate and explode whatever fleshy target they're pointing at.

>>50130943
chuckled audibly

>>50139676
A larger lasgun is a lascannon or a hellgun. Volkite is different.

>>50139676
lasgun is just light, volkite is entirely different, its a ray that basically ignites anything it touches.

>>50130031
To the enemies of man, nothing.

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>>50136352
>Vape gun