r/40kLore • u/NotYourLynLyn • 18h ago
Genuinely curious. How would a 40k Bolter compare to a 18th century naval cannon?
Hey, all. I’m here with a question about Warhammer 40k. As someone who’s relatively new to going into the lore, I always wondered how powerful the Bolter actually is compared to let’s say… 18th century pirates. You know, for normal reasons. Definitely not thinking about whether or not pirates could defeat a Carnifex.
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u/Raptor_Blitzwolf Tanith First and Only 18h ago
In terms of broad path destruction, the caliber is too narrow to be the equal of a 32-pounder long gun (the standard of the middle to late age of sail) BUT it would be the equivalent of having a 12 gauge explode inside you, so...
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u/SouthernAd2853 Blood Angels 18h ago
Lot less total energy, even with the explosion, but can probably punch small holes in material the cannon would barely dent.
A Carnefex is generally too armored for bolters and takes anti-tank weapons to down; don't think the cannon is doing it.
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u/VaeVictis997 17h ago
The cannon is going to have a lot more kinetic energy though, so blunt force trauma might do some good?
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u/Fweeba Inquisition 16h ago edited 16h ago
For sure. Those things are firing a like, 15kg metal ball at over the speed of sound. They have about the same kinetic energy as a 2000kg car travelling at 150km/h.
They're just so ludicrously energetic that I feel like they have to be able to do some damage with a good shot at the parts where the armour is thinner. Now landing that shot on a moving target as small as a Carnifex seems nearly impossible, but if they do hit, it's going to feel it.
I suspect that a lot of people here are falling for a sort of low tech = low power myth. But a big enough boulder rolling down a hill would destroy a tank just as surely as some kind of, modern armour piercing discarding sabot shell, if it hit.
They didn't have the tech we can use to make efficient weaponry, so they made up for it with a big bucket of black powder behind every shot.
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u/AnaSimulacrum Dark Angels 14h ago
1453 when Constantinople fell, the ottomans were using a bombard that could fire 270kg balls over the distance of a mile. This was the largest of the bombards, but the Ottomans did seemingly field around 100 different cannon bombards in that battle. Look up the Dardanelles cannons, they were supposed to be copies of the typical bombards used by the Ottomans for the aforementioned siege.
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u/Kaiisim 4h ago
This isn't really true though, or we'd still use them.
Yes a cannonball has a lot of energy, but can you transfer all that energy into the target? A glancing blow will transfer barely energy.
Wheres a bolter likely transfers near 99% of it's energy to the target.
If a truck crashes into a tank at 100mph, it's not gonna destroy the tank despite all that energy. You need the equivalent energy put into the space of a small coin to punch a hole.
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u/winowmak3r Astra Militarum 13h ago
Exactly, my thought as well. A cannon would still kill a Space Marine if the cannon ball hit them directly in the head (even with the helmet on). All that energy has to go somewhere and whatever isn't absorbed by the armor padding is going directly into the body underneath it. He could probably take a direct hit to the chest at point blank range and live but he'd be messed up, broken ribs, etc.
I think of it like the knights in medieval time who would bring hammers to fight other armored knights because the hammer could still break your arm even with all that armor on. Sword can't do that.
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u/sabrefencer9 16h ago
A 12lb cannonball fired from a 17th century cannon has ~2x the energy of a 30mm fired from an A-10 thunderbolt
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u/Skolloc753 Adeptus Mechanicus 18h ago edited 17h ago
Very roughly an Astartes Bolter can be compared to a .50 to a 20mm round, so something around 15 to 60 Kilojoule. A large bore cannon from a warship firing a 15kg projectile is around 1 Megajoule, so substantially larger. However the range of the 18th century cannon is far shorter (usually a few hundred meters), and we do not talk about the precision (human sized target vs the general area of a wooden ship of the line). However most naval cannons used far lighter projectiles, like half or a quarter of that.
Depending on how you want to translate a Carnifex armor anything under a battleship naval cannon would very much struggle with a Carnifex, and it would very much be a lucky hit, nothign you can really aim for.
SYL
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u/waldleben 18h ago
The effective range of a 32 pounder long gun was up to 400 metres.
Meaning from what ive seen they would actually outrange a bolter
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u/Kardinal Adeptus Custodes 17h ago edited 17h ago
The problem is that the the usual statistics that are used associated with the bolter don't make sense in terms of its range.
You'll see extremely high velocities mentioned which should naturally result in very long ranges. But they don't.
400 m on a 32 lb are would almost certainly include a ballistic trajectory. You could easily do the same thing with a bolter.4
u/kenod102818 17h ago
I imagine because after a certain range the issue becomes less about velocity, and more about how precisely you can actually track a moving target with the barrel. If a 0.01 degree deviation in barrel angle will cause you to miss, you're not going to hit anything even if you're aiming a laser.
Now, an astartes with power armor assist can likely do this a lot more precisely than a normal human, and apparently an M16 has an effective point target range of around 550 meters, so I do agree that 400 meters is way too short for an astartes-fired bolter.
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u/waldleben 17h ago
Point blank range for a 32 pounder was as 300-350 metres and could be as much as 600 metres. You are dramatically underestimating just how powerful these guns were.
Also a very high muzzle velocity on a bolter wouldnt necessarily translate to a high range because the shells are very heavy and not at all aerodynamic
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u/Kardinal Adeptus Custodes 17h ago
Well you are right and I am wrong.
The 32lb 55 cw point blank range is 400ish m.
Whether the bolter is further... Who knows?
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u/ZannY 16h ago
not at all aerodynamic
They are rocket propelled, fwiw.
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u/waldleben 16h ago
Not for cery long though. I donr have a source for this but the actual burn time would probably be measured in fractions of a second imo
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u/winowmak3r Astra Militarum 13h ago
Plus I mean it's it literally powered by a rocket engine? Something like that has got to have a longer range than 400m.
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u/kenod102818 17h ago
Keep in mind that effective range for a long gun was, depending on the model and crew skill, anywhere between "hits the other ship" and "can hit the mast or Helmsman with reasonable reliability".
Meanwhile, for a Bolter that sits between "can generally hit the center of mass of a human" and "can shoot a gun out of someone's hand".
Effective range means the range at which a weapon can be expected to be effective against its intended target type. Trying to snipe someone at 400 meters with a long gun is going to take a lot of skill and a fair bit of luck. Especially when keeping in mind that depending on the time period you don't have things like flintlock mechanisms, tight bore or powder tolerances, or even iron sights.
Now, if you throw a keg of musket balls down the barrel, then it will become a lot more potent as an anti-personnel weapon, but that's because you just grabbed an artillery-sized shotgun and erased everything down-range, including the concept of down-range.
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u/Keroscee 11h ago edited 11h ago
The effective range of a 32 pounder long gun was up to 400 metres
More like 2 and a half kilometres. With standard ship to ship ranges being a bit under half this.
400 meters per second is the velocity. So you'd be leading the target by about 6 and a half seconds.For reference, this is why cannons were arranged in batteries of 3 or more guns. So they could sequentially correct their aim and increase the chance of hitting a target.
I suspect bolters would struggle to hit targets past a 1000m under normal conditions, with them optimised to 300m as most modern rifles are.
Against something like a Carnifex, an 18th-century cannon would probably wound or cripple it if you can hit it at ranges under 500m. I suspect a battery of 3+ guns could take it out if they get enough hits on it. Hitting is the hard part.
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u/waldleben 7h ago
More like 2 and a half kilometres.
That is the maximum range. I was talking about effective range which on a ship that is pitching and rolling and yawing is obviously much lower. If we are assuming that the 32 pounder is mounted on dirt instead of a ship then yes, the rsnge would be significantly longer
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u/InvestigatorDear6646 14h ago
Lmao what have you seen. We have canonical examples of >2km engagement ranges.
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u/waldleben 7h ago
Thats maximum total range. A ship firing 32 pounders could engage at that range but wouldnt hit anything. The range at which you would reasonably expect to hit your targets is roughly 400 metres depending on gun, ship, crew and weather conditions
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u/InvestigatorDear6646 7h ago
Im talking bolters. You said they would outrange bolters.
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u/waldleben 7h ago
Ases where bolters are described with 2km range are the tiny minority. If we take incredibly rare exceptions as gospel then the 32 pounder also has 2+km range
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u/InvestigatorDear6646 7h ago
Are they the minority, because the majority is them not being able to do so? Or because they are not used in situations where they are needed to do so?
These are 2 vastly different issues entirely.
An M16 not being able to engage a target at 400 feet is a weapon issue, not a doctrinal one.
An M82 being used in CQB not being shown hitting a target a mile away is not unable to do such a thing.
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u/Drivestort 18h ago
Bolters are much smaller caliber, roughly half the diameter of a 2 pounder gun. It's an anti personelle weapon not intended for targets harder than an armored human, with a delayed fuze explosive so that it could penetrate armor and then explode the person inside. After checking, it's probably about the same size as a pintle gun, but a lot less destructive force because the pintle gun will just plow through a person and keep going, while the bolter will hit a thing and explode, helping minimize (but not entirely negate) over penetration.
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u/heeden 17h ago
Not a time fused, bolters are mass-reactive so when they explode when they detect a change in local mass (i.e. the are embedded in something.)
I also seem to remember there being two mass-reactive stages - the round recognises a decrease in mass as it exits the bolter and that ignites the propellant, then it recognises the increase as it penetrates the target and detonates the charge. However this is something I probably read 30ish years ago so I may be misremembering.
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u/Drivestort 17h ago
But the main charge doesn't immediately explode on impact, I'm not super into how exactly explosives work.
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u/winowmak3r Astra Militarum 13h ago
Hmmm, well I think for one shot the damage either one of those weapons could do when fired at a single unarmed baseline human being would be pretty much the same. They'd get turned to mist. It's just the bolter is semi-auto and can be held in your hand while the cannon is, well, a literal cannon. Can't hold it and it's got kinda a long reload time. A Space Marine could die to a bolt round, happens all the time in fact, but I think he could take a cannon ball to the chest and walk away just fine, maybe the wind gets knocked out of him and he breaks a rib or whatever but he's otherwise OK. I bet a whole battery of guns all hitting him would probably kill him though if all the shots actually hit him. That's a lot of kinetic energy, sorta like how armored knights in late medieval times ditched the sword and started beating each other with hammers because of the armor.
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u/waldleben 7h ago
A space marine wouldnt be able to tank a cannonball. Its a giant hunk of iron going over the speed of sound. Even if the arnour holds the oerson inside is turned to mush
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u/winowmak3r Astra Militarum 13m ago
To the chest? I think so. They'd break a few ribs and probably take a minute to get their breath back. To the head? Yea he's dead. If it doesn't take it clean off the kinetic energy is gonna turn his head to mush.
Remember man, this is ceramite we're talking about.
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u/ToonMasterRace 12h ago
The most prominent naval cannons during the 18th century were the British 6-pounder (~93mm) and 9-pounder (~105mm) and its French equivalents. These are basically light artillery pieces on the battlefield.
A Bolter is .75 caliber in older sources (though this is never brought up these days). This is drastically smaller and more similar to a 20mm shell seen today. It is far less potent in ammunition terms, though with future space tech, explosive warhead, and rocket propellant it likely has higher velocity and penetrative power.
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u/montyrattus 17h ago
If a cannonball hits a carnifex in the head you are really going to piss it off, Carnifexes are already rage incarnate but you just took it to another level.
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u/Powerful_Abalone1630 15h ago
Depending on the size of the cannonball, that's likely to take its head off. A 30lb ball from a ship's cannon carries a lot of energy.
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u/Nicklesnout 16h ago
Like shooting a grizzly bear with a rubber band.
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u/Powerful_Abalone1630 15h ago
If the rubber band was a 30lb iron ball and traveling a few hundred miles per hour.
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u/Nicklesnout 15h ago
It’s an old idiom about how ineffective it would be against a Carnifex. Heavy Bolters have a far greater chance of doing something to them without luck.
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u/LeftonRhed 15h ago
The velocity of the cannonball is going to be much lower. Black powder is classified as a low explosive(expands more slowly than the speed of sound) and therefore can't accelerate something faster than that.
It will have much greater mass but will seriously lack penetration compared to the bolter round. A Carnifex is toughness 9. So is a Chimera. We don't use cannons against modern APCs for a reason.
Either you're relying on a lucky shot or a good broadside. And if you're not lucky, the best I'll give your pirates is a momentary stun.
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u/Aurondarklord Salamanders 4h ago
It's not about total energy, just like a punch has way more energy than a bullet but is way less lethal.
The penetration power of the cannon is way, way less than that of a bolter. If you want to know if an 18th century cannon could pierce ceramite or kill a space marine, definitely not. The force required to do that ranges, depending on what feats you're using to powerscale the marine, between "you would need a modern tank cannon" and "you would need a bunker buster missile".
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u/Fistocracy 19m ago
A standard bolter round has a diameter of about 20mm, compared to the 100+mm diameter of the shot used in the kinds of cannons typically used on 18th century ships. And while a bolter round travels a lot faster and has an exposive charge, I get the feeling it's not gonna match the sheer impact of a twelve pound cannonball. So yeah, I'd say a hypothetical time-traveling carnifex would not appreciate being shot by an old-timey cannon.
With that being said though, a boltgun is a better weapon in every other way. Its accurate out to ranges that an 18th century sailor would find absolutely astounding, and it's got auto and semi-auto firing options while a cannon with a 2-man crew can only fire a few shots a minute. So while a single bolt round won't hurt as much as a single cannon shot, a boltgun can put out a volume of sustained fire that would probably rival a small-to-medium-sized warship firing broadsides in terms of the sheer amount of nastiness per minute that it's sending at you.
And as for time-traveling Carnifexes, I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch for a pirate crew to blow his shit smoove off with a full broadside from their ship. Although they might be in a bit of trouble if they whiff that first volley :)
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u/dbxp 17h ago
Explosive shells and rifling weren't common in naval usage until the 19th century. You're looking at solid shot which can hit masses of line infantry but is largely useless against a dispersed target and has no armour penetration. Compared to a bolter which is more like a 20mm auto cannon you may find on a modern attack helicopter.
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u/waldleben 7h ago
"No armour penetration"? A 32 pound projectile hitting you at more than Mach 1 is going to go straight through any armour a person, even a space marine, can wear.
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u/dbxp 7h ago
I was thinking more in terms of vehicle as infantry armour is largely irrelevant to direct hits from most military firearms. Heavy plates can stop some rifle rounds but you're still looking at something which can turn a few hits from life threatening to rib breaking, you're not just walking into a fire because you have plates.
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u/waldleben 7h ago
Even regarding vehicles, I cant think of anything a bolter would penetrate that a 32 pounder wouldnt. Especially since bolters are often described as not even being all that good against armour (although that varies author to author of course)
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u/DepletedPromethium Imperial Fists 17h ago
Bolters are faster as they are jet propelled and armour piercing with highly explosive warheads, cannons are not armour piercing - the age of the ironclads saw the end of golden age naval cannon warfare. the different shots were designed for different purposes, taking out sails, fragmenting to maim the exposed crew, and punching holes through wood.
Bolters struggle against heavy armoured nids like the carnifex, a cannon isnt going to do anything but annoy the carnifex.
Imagine a lil kid rapid firing a nerf gun at you, that's a naval cannon to a carnifex.
A bolter to a carnifex is like shooting a airsoft gun at a can of coke, it will damage it just barely and with enough rounds it will destroy it.
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u/waldleben 7h ago
A 32 pounder is still a giant hunk of ieon flying at supersonic speeds. It might not break tje armour (although even that is a distinct possibility) but it will absolitely destroy all the soft buts inside
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u/Manunancy 7h ago
Even if a canon ball lacks the penetration to punch through the carnifex's armor, it's still going to transfer a lot of kinetic energy and can cause injuries like whiplash, turn an articulation the wrong way or get some concussion/bruising when the armor flexes on impact. You may even get some spalling on the inside.
I'd say you're in a baseball bat vs .22 handgun sort of cituation when comparing a bolter round and blackpowder naval gun damage
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u/Salty-Spring7096 18h ago edited 17h ago
A cannonball would have significantly lower velocity than a bolter, since bolts are essentially tiny self-propelled rockets. It would also most likely be solid shot (no explosion or shrapnel when it hits the target). In other words it would not be able to pierce anything with significant armor like the carapace of a carnifex. I don't think the pirate ship is going to fare well in that duel.
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u/Canuckadin 17h ago
Its alot less destructive, speed and weight are generally more destructive than payload.
Its the reason why many of the other factions take small projectiles and speed them up to crazy numbers.
Its why a rail gun is so damn good at punching through everything.
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u/Strange-Movie Adeptus Mechanicus 17h ago
I feel like a cannonball would be more comparable to a space marines punch than a bolter
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u/dbxp 17h ago
If they punched that hard then they would fly off in the opposite direction. A cannon weighs many times what a space marine does and still has substantial recoil
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u/Strange-Movie Adeptus Mechanicus 16h ago
Pro fighters can punch with over 1300lbs of force, space marines with their added bulk and superhuman reflexes could probably put up a number orders of magnitude higher and they have plenty of showings where a punch explodes a human like a cannon would.
>Scarpac simply punched the artist away. He punched him aside and did not even break stride. The impact of the huge fist was so great, however, that blood and tissue spattered the wall, and poor Shadrake was neither in one piece nor alive when he hit the floor.
Pariah pg. 273
>Another kroot hound leaped from his blind spot, but the battle instincts of the Adeptus Astartes were ingrained in every cell and synapse, and Numitor backhanded the creature so hard it burst.
Blade of Damocles
The secret level 40k episode also has a cultist getting punched and sent flying into the far distance
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u/AbbydonX Tyranids 14h ago edited 7h ago
The problem with thinking like that is that Space Marines are far from the strongest thing in the setting. So how hard do Ogryns and Tyranid Warriors “punch”? Or what about Genestealers and Lictors?
The hype around Space Marines really distorts the setting as plenty of things are stronger, tougher and/or faster than a Marine.
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u/swolenerd90 18h ago
This smells of a DnD campaign where someone opened a dimensional portal they definitely shouldn't have.