Let's not forget that it's an explosive bolt that explodes when it hits it's fleshy target, but doesn't so much as spark when it hit's solid ground, ground solid enough to cause it to ricochet....

Some shooting that.

Good points.

Also to add, in the RPG PnP games, bolters can be used on handed, with an accuracy penalty (of -2o).

Hehe, yea. Let's have the explosive round, designed for maximum target penetration, bounce off the floor. Still, that makes more sense than firing it 2500km

To my mind the solution is simple enough, reload times.

Give gun style weapons a few second reload time, with a cast bar that can be disrupted in CC, make pistol weapons instant reload that cannot be disrupted at all.

Problem solved, you can use your boltgun in CC but if your opponent is any good have little chance to reload it, but reloading your pistol is easy in CC.

Heavy weapons are covered by immobile stances while firing.

Basically put if I come at you with a boltpistol and you have a boltgun, you out range and out damage me, but once I close the gap, assuming I've played it smart and forced you to empty your weapon, I can keep firing at point blank and constantly disrupt your reloading so you don't get to fire your bolter any more unless you find a way to back off.

Yeah, assuming he's so good that he can account for the slight breeze that will blow the bullet into the next continent at 2500KM that's a long way for no one to stick their head up or a bird not to fly past.....

To counteract gravity he would need to point it almost straight up and most bullets leave a barrel at 880 meters per second.

So it would take the bullet (assuming for some weird reason there is no air friction so it doesn't slow down at all) 2081 +/- seconds to travel the distance, so about 47 minutes to travel from the gun to the target.

I could have gone to lunch. had a beer and come back before I was shot by that....

I would hope it was meant to say 2500m. Which is still borderline BS, but less Bs than ''I fired my bolt like it's an MRBM''.

I always felt that the exploding warhead of a Bolt round was to prevent over-penetration, so it actually detonates within a person and not after it's passed out the back of their body-armour.

As for that quote, 2500Km strikes me as wrong as the human would not be able see someone at that distance.
2500m is more believable as it does match up with the current world record for sniping.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Harrison_(sniper)

Plus considering the Marine in question is an Iron Warrior, he probably has augmetics and a boltgun modified to improve its accuracy.

There's the 2nd issue though, even if it was meant to be 2500 metres, the story still puts the range of a boltgun in excess to that of a sniper rifle, I can buy that a sniper rifle in the 41st millennium can hit someone at 2500 metres away, so long as it's user is good at what he does, has a firm point to mount the rifle on and the appropriate scope.

But a boltgun? Air friction alone would mean the velocity of the bullet was slowed to the point that it would just end up falling into the dirt as it runs out of momentum.

It seems to be an issue of you dealing in absolutes, which is usually not a good idea. It's rarely that simple. Troughout history there have been weapons that could be used almost as effectively with one hand as with two hands. What is the point in classifying them into one category based on some relatively small difference in efficiency?

For example, compare a xiphos, a longsword and a zweihänder. A xiphos has a 50-60 cm long blade and can safely be put into the "one-handed weapon" category. A zweihänder is up to 180 cm long and cannot be wielded in one hand at all and thus has to fall into the "two-handed weapon" category. A european longword usually has a blade 90-110 cm long and can be effectively used with just one hand, usually along with a shield. On the other hand it is long enough to be an efficient two-handed weapon as well. The sword itself can be used more efficiently with two hands, but is usually considered better to be paired with a shield. So where do you classify it? By your logic it would be a two-handed weapon yet historically it was mostly used as a one-handed weapon. How is this a simple matter?

Perhaps you should allow a third category into which weapons fall that can be used almost as efficiently with either both hands or one hand. The Bolter seems to fall into that category, likely being more efficient to use with two hands but just as likely not losing too much accuracy when used in one hand (at a certain effective range, I'd say).

That's for a bullet. But a Boltgun round is not just a bullet as it is self-propelled by a rocket motor.

This motor actually increases the rounds momentum from the moment it fires, and it doesn't fall off until after the motor cuts-out.
It's one of the reasons why such a weapon as the boltgun is so devastating.

I don't know if the range on a boltgun is equal to a modern sniper rifle, but it is at least the equivalent of a modern assault rifle.

It is, absolutely. But it still has to penetrate to begin with, and they're designed to penetrate the likes of Tyranid armour or even marine power armour. They'd definitely penetrate the ground. I mean, most modern bullets penetrate concrete to some degree, and bolts are supposed to be .75cal, meaning they'd punch a large hole in to concrete, even before exploding.

Aye, it does. 2500km is physically impossible. 2500m is more realistic, yea, but that wasn't shot with a naked eye, it was massively magnified. I know a marine helmet would greatly aid in target acquisition, but I don't recall it magnifying the target itself. Perhaps it does, but marines are generally designed for mid-short range, I'm not sure the bolter would even be effective at the sort of range, that's well in to sniper rifle territory. Makes me wonder what a space marine sniper could do if bolters work fine at such a distance.

Perhaps it is semantics, then. I accept that some weapons are in the grey. Many weapons can be fired in one hand, and all weapons are given better stability in two, but that's not to say there aren't some which definitely need two to be used effectively. Usually because of either recoil, weight or size. A bolter ticks all three of those boxes imo.

That isn't to say they can never be used in one, with a penalty to accuracy, and there's been nothing shown which seems to suggest their accuracy isn't hindered by using them in one hand (and several sources which say it is, including this game itself), so I stick to my original point - that they require two hands to be used to their fullest effective capability.

I mean, the sheer number of sources where they hold them in two hands, the fact there's a pistol version, the fact they don't bother to duel wield them and a whole manner of other things seem to suggest the gun isn't so easily wielded in one hand. The guns are designed to be easily fired from the hip as they move in to the enemy, which is part of why they lack stocks, and is why they're rapid fire in the TT. It's just impractical to even hold them like that in one hand, and that's before even discussing firing from an iron sight with one hand, which suggests they're designed with two hands in mind.

But, in the quest to bring this (what should have been short, imo) discussion to an end, perhaps we should agree to disagree. The lore Space Marines varies quite a lot, probably because GW designed them with rule of cool far more than real world physics in mind. I guess that in general its bad to read too far in to 40k. If we did, we'd have to admit that 40k tanks wouldn't work in real combat - which would no doubt start upsetting folks - so it's probably best not to

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Also, and this is off topic, but a long sword may have been called a hand and a half sword, but it is still usually handled in two hands. It can be used in one hand, yes - if the user is very fit and quite experienced, but you generally struggle with swinging it in one, because it wants to nose dive toward the ground at any given moment. You can get away with stabbing motions, but you lose most of your defensive capability and a chunk of offensive capability. The usual reason to take a hand off the weapon would be to grapple, as grabbing the other guy makes it a lot easier to stab him, or to lance it outward like a spear, which gives you longer reach than usual. Both are highly situational, the rest of the time your second hand is either on the hilt, or the pommel. Using it on horse back would probably have been done one handed (else you'd possibly have to let go of the reins) but it's not such an issue when you can basically use it as a lance and have almost no need to defend.

Using a shield with a long sword has been depicted in history, but it's not the most common depiction. History doesn't show it as the better usage, as the fighting techniques we still have generally pertain to two handed use, and the majority of drawings show them used in two hands. There are a few long sword/buckler techniques, but they're comparatively rare. Plus, just try swinging them in one hand, it's bloody hard

But we should stick to the topic, so feel free to PM me if you want to discuss that more.