Hey, this is my first post but I also found an interesting tech note in the Eisenhorn trilogy. *They collective book not the seperate articles*
The fact they were using solid-round weapons confirmed they were Vessorine. The ultimate military pragmatists. They'd tailed the train in a poorly-insulated speeder abd deployed through a blizzard. In those conditions, standard las weapons might have died, their cell power drained by the cold. But a well lubricated autogun would fire well below freezing it had only to rely on its percussive hammer action.
This implies that Imperial las weapons are extremely susceptible to the cold at least within the Imperial guard. (I'd assume that Lascannons are not likely to suffer this problem.)
Despite this several Imperial Guard regiments etc are founded from ice-worlds and the like. For example the Valhallan regiments. Yet they still field las weapons.
Presumably whatever elements are affected (Can't actually be the power being drained, for obvious reasons) are replaced or insulated in those made for ice worlds.
Oh, and, welcome.
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I had assumed as much myself given the lack of the imperiums consistency with design and application..
Also Eisenhorn states the length of a sprint trader at 3km long and having six hangars (presumably for cargo transit)
Also Eisenhorn's personal "Gun Cutter" was described at 80 metres long having an average crew of 8 personnel on board as well as an extensive armoury, wing mounted autocannons. It is also mentioned that the gun cutter weighed in at 450 tonnes of "armoured alloy"
I had assumed as much myself given the lack of the imperiums consistency with design and application..
Also Eisenhorn states the length of a sprint trader at 3km long and having six hangars (presumably for cargo transit)
Also Eisenhorn's personal "Gun Cutter" was described at 80 metres long having an average crew of 8 personnel on board as well as an extensive armoury, wing mounted autocannons. It is also mentioned that the gun cutter weighed in at 450 tonnes of "armoured alloy"
The gun-cutter may be longer than that, I'm not sure. I always had the impression at least some of the mounted weapons were similar to Vulcans or miniguns, but I could be wrong on that-- I don't know what the firing rate of autocannons is.
Maxilla's Essene is probably pretty typical of the mercantile craft of the Imperium; big, optimized for cargo, plenty of room. Really quite elementary; if they can manage multi-kilometre-long battleships, then they can manage the same size for cargo transport easily enough.
Autocannons have slower fire rate than miniguns (assault cannons are minigun equivalents). They fire fairly big explosive shells at a fast rate and are good light vehicle/heavy infantry/flier killers.
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Imperial Overlord wrote:Autocannons have slower fire rate than miniguns (assault cannons are minigun equivalents). They fire fairly big explosive shells at a fast rate and are good light vehicle/heavy infantry/flier killers.
Right, always got the impression it was firing fairly quickly. I suppose I always thought of the gun-cutter as somewhat of a Hind, just bigger (obviously), the sort with the minigun stuck under the chin...
Elheru Aran wrote:
Right, always got the impression it was firing fairly quickly. I suppose I always thought of the gun-cutter as somewhat of a Hind, just bigger (obviously), the sort with the minigun stuck under the chin...
They do fire quickly, just not minigun quickly.
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If we use the game Dawn of War as a judge on the firing rate of the autocannon the rate seems to be about 2 rounds per second.
The gun-cutter may be longer than that, I'm not sure. I always had the impression at least some of the mounted weapons were similar to Vulcans or miniguns, but I could be wrong on that-- I don't know what the firing rate of autocannons is.
I can't find the quote at the moment but the gun cutter is clearly stated at 80 metres long.
That was all the cue Betancore needed. His temper was hot, his mind void of anything except the fact Vibben was dead.
The gun-turrets in the ends of the stubby wings rotated and washed the platform with withering heavy fire. Stone splintered. Bodies were reduced to sprays of liquid.
It is clear that the gun cutter is armed with wing turrets not a nose mounted cannon. (Unlike a light lance equipped on a speeder much later on.)
Also assuming (as I do) that the turrets are twin linked autocannons. (Thats probably conservative considering the size of the gun-cutter and the fact it is an Inquisition craft. Using the dawn of war rate of fire for the autocannons means that it was raking the "platorm" with 8 high explosive shells a second. Which isn't consistent with the description of it splintering stone. But it is clearly stated that they are wing mounted autocannons.
Actually they are probably simply twin linked autocannons given that the Witchunter (who was wearing powered armour) survived being hit with several rounds and then buried under debris. A more potent weapon would have killed him.
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That was my beleif too, but you would have thought with all the crap Eisenhorn put up with he'd have fitted better weapons to the gun-cutter being an Inquisitor.
Also not as a curiosity despite some Super-heavy tanks possessing a void shield or two (rare I know) Eisenhorns gun cutter did not have and shields allowing it to be destroyed with ease later on by the Chaos warlord titan Cruor Vult despite this chaos titan only having it's solid munitions weapon funtional due to a damaged and or poorly repaired reactor core.
(The weapon was a gatling blaster, if the gun-cutter had been up to standard imperial quality it should not have gone down so easily, still easily but not quite so.)
This easily establishes a range of motion and response times for titans as a warlord was able to down a light space craft using a main gun. (Sheer volume of fire of course)
I imagine the majority of the gun-cutter's engine power was devoted to the drive systems, leaving little enough for weapons and atmosphere. Void shields would have consumed massive quantities of power.
According to Abnett's Double Eagle, Imperial fighters have limited power for their weapons; this would indicate that lascannons and such draw significant power, enough that it would detract from the gun-cutter's engine if there were more than one. It may also be a hardpoint issue-- could just not have another place to put weapons.
Eisenhorn's not the type to blow shit up, anyway. I could see Commodus Voke using a gun-cutter bristling with weapons like an AC-130, though...
You have completely forgotten the importance of disguise. Eisenhorn's gun cutter is armed with weapons used on military vessels and are quite capable of dealing with most situations that a craft that size could reasonably be expected to deal with. If it had bigger weapons or shields, it wouldn't appear to be a the craft of a wealthy traveller, but would instead appear to be that of an Imperial VIP and kill the stealth option and Eisenhorn loves stealth.
As for toughening out, a gatling blaster throws up a hail of 150mm shells. That the gun cutter was intact enough to crash with survivors after being hit is quite impressive.
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On the point of double eagle I definately see what you mean but Lightnings and thunderbolts are less than a third of the size of the gun-cutter and are not space capable.
As to Eisenhorn not being the sort to blow shit up..... Of course not, he prefers using Daemonhosts and warp vortices... (Well he doesn't prefer it but seems to do it quite frequently once he aquires the Quixos' book. Poor bugger.
And Imperial Overlord you make an excellent point, I overlooked that for this discussion, and you are quite correct. Eisenhorn was more an internal operative. After all his freind Titus Endor was mentioned at owning a ship. (Which I presume to be a warp capable vessel, maybe a destroyer or sprint trader)
Ships can be small enough to land and be warp capable (Eye of Terror, Inquisition Wars) so that it is warp capable doesn't tell us much about its size.
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On the point of double eagle I definately see what you mean but Lightnings and thunderbolts are less than a third of the size of the gun-cutter and are not space capable.
As to Eisenhorn not being the sort to blow shit up..... Of course not, he prefers using Daemonhosts and warp vortices... (Well he doesn't prefer it but seems to do it quite frequently once he aquires the Quixos' book. Poor bugger.
And Imperial Overlord you make an excellent point, I overlooked that for this discussion, and you are quite correct. Eisenhorn was more an internal operative. After all his freind Titus Endor was mentioned at owning a ship. (Which I presume to be a warp capable vessel, maybe a destroyer or sprint trader)
I was using the fighters' weapons for comparison, actually. They seem to use high-capacity batteries of some kind as power sources for the lascannons/multilasers, and those batteries are expended in short order, hence high power consumption, hence why autocannons are used instead of lascannons or other power-intensive weapons like assault cannons.
Endor's ship is unlikely to be a destroyer, as that's a military vessel; more likely it's a privately owned trading vessel or something similar to the Inquisition's various crafts. I personally doubt it'd be that large as Endor never struck me as particularly wealthy; Eisenhorn is affluent enough to own large estates and luxurious apartments, but he still uses Maxilla to ferry him about the galaxy. Of course, that's probably more a matter of convenience rather than necessity, as Eisenhorn is quite capable of commandeering any ship if need be...
I haven't read Eye of Terror or Inquisition Wars yet. (Or half the books mentioned in this thread to my shame. It's over a two hour trip to the nearest store that stocks Black Library books for me.)
I used the word Destroyer as a size classifier, for example maybe Endor doesn't strike us as wealthy because 99% of his Inquisitor income is spend on paying the crew, maintenance etc on his ship.
Also Inquistorial ships for the most part. (aka the Black ships) are converted military vessels.
I think the gun cutter is far too small to be warp capable. (A discussion I had elsewhere in speculation placed the smallest warp capable craft at about 200+ metres in length. Also I always pictured the Cobra class destroyer as being capable of atmospheric landings despite it being 1.5 kilometres long.)
Inquisition vessels are different than vessels owned by Inquisitors. Inquisitors (Like Jaq Draco of the Inquisition Wars) will often be posing as someone else and have use for a small vessel posing as a travelling noble or private trader.
Inquisition vessels are official Inquisition ships and they exist for specific purposes. Null ships are small, stealthy, spy ships. Inquisition cruisers are high tech death machines with Exterminatus capabilty in a cruiser hull that are sent into shit storms because that's what they are suppossed to handle.
The Excellent Prismatic Spray. For when you absolutely, positively must kill a motherfucker. Accept no substitutions. Contact a magician of the later Aeons for details. Some conditions may apply.
I've never seen the cobra quoted at under 1.5km in any source.
Indeed like all imperial tech perhaps more so their ships are inconsistent in size. But the Cobra is the only one i've seen with a given "size". Where did you get the 1km?
Inquisitor Ryan wrote:I've never seen the cobra quoted at under 1.5km in any source.
Indeed like all imperial tech perhaps more so their ships are inconsistent in size. But the Cobra is the only one i've seen with a given "size". Where did you get the 1km?
40K ship sizes discussed in this thread. Note Black Admiral found a reference for 600m long Cobras.
The Excellent Prismatic Spray. For when you absolutely, positively must kill a motherfucker. Accept no substitutions. Contact a magician of the later Aeons for details. Some conditions may apply.
Most of the measurements we use are the few and far between ones mentioned by GW itself instead of the books.
Indeed the average length of a cruiser (according to the many conflicting sources GW spits out) is between 3 and 8 kilometres...
I can't remember the source exactly. (Most of my white dwarf magazines were destroyed in our last move.)
Indeed according to our discussion group any lengths of spaceships mentioned in any book not written by Dan Abnett is regarded as either non-canon or non-standard. (Due to the fact that in a discussion that lasted well over a month we came to the conclusion that the books written by people other than Abnett did not capture the spirit, technology etc of Warhammer 40'000 as GW portrayed it.) I'm not saying that they are non-canon just that our personal discussion group ruled out most books as official source due to conflicts and contradictions much like the star wars books.
Inquisitor Ryan wrote:(Due to the fact that in a discussion that lasted well over a month we came to the conclusion that the books written by people other than Abnett did not capture the spirit, technology etc of Warhammer 40'000 as GW portrayed it.)
That's really a steaming turd. While there's plenty of abysmally bad writers in the stable, Goto springs to mind, many of them do a fine job of capturing the atmosphere, such as it is, and indeed, by that standard, some of the older stuff, which defined said atmosphere, would be more valid.
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Hmm, you are right but I didn't fully mention the context in how I meant it. *(Stupid mistake)*
This discussion was had so that we could get a universal "standard" so that we could begin modelling in 3d to a similar scale and architecture.
(I define spirit as how cool the technology and killing is, and as I have only read 2 black library books I was heavily dependant on others opinions of the other books.)
Inquisitor Ryan wrote:Hmm, you are right but I didn't fully mention the context in how I meant it. *(Stupid mistake)*
This discussion was had so that we could get a universal "standard" so that we could begin modelling in 3d to a similar scale and architecture.
(I define spirit as how cool the technology and killing is, and as I have only read 2 black library books I was heavily dependant on others opinions of the other books.)
You got any samples of your 3D models ?
its always nice to see them realised in 3d, given that medium can do a little more than models can these days.
