What idiot is designing Assault Cannons?

[Sotek]

Maybe the ammo gets loaded diagonally downwards through the central spindle into the lower-most barrel and then gets ignited when it reachers the uppermost position.
Some ultra-modern 'recoil-less' guns load ammo in a similar way (though not into a rotating barrel!)

[Veteran Sergeant]

Why start a thread on a forum then? This isn't a mutual validation club. It's fine if you're bothered by something, but if you put yourself out there you have to be be prepared for others to disagree and to say so.

That's not the point. If he doesn't think it's important, present it as "It hasn't really made a difference to me" as opposed to how he came off, suggesting the OP was "wrong" for disliking it. That's just being TFG, and has nothing to do with a discussion forum.

[Hendarion]

I'm hoping that people start converting their guns so they at least look like they could possibly, maybe, perhaps, actually fire.

Haha. I hope ppl start converting all their Space Marines to have proper proportions.
(You made a joke, didn't you?)

[Clarkson]

Haha. I hope ppl start converting all their Space Marines to have proper proportions.
(You made a joke, didn't you?)

maybe convert guardsmen to look ridiculously small carrying boltguns or even bolt pistols.. or visibly strain carrying them.

as far as the question asked.. the idiot who desgined the assault cannon.. doesnt care that 1 detail on a random bitz makes the model look stupid.. when not many field the units that can take them.. beacuse tbh a heavy flamer is better for the fact its 5pts... asscannons are 20-30pts, everyone can spare 5pts.. not many can spare an extra marine or even a rhino.

[Lord Damocles]

Contriary to most of the flawed designs in the Warhammer 40k universe, this one is really hard to explain your way out of. It is a straight forward mechanical f-up. The gun can not fire.

So we can handwave away anything, with the exception of the Assault Cannon being a bit funky?

[xxRavenxx]

There is no centrifugal force

Perhaps the bullets are dispersed through centripetal force?

Sorry, not important to you; an important distinction to make. Suspension of disbelief is an extremely personal thing, trying to cast the OP as unreasonable because this particular thing bothers him is pretty disingenuous, I'm quite certain that you've been bothered by some particular element of a film, novel, or game in the past that your friends have thought you daft for caring about, and this is the same thing.

He wasn't saying the OP was unreasonable, just that the OP was needlessly confrontational in his presentation.

Anyway. I don't agree on the suspension argument. For the same reason as yabbadabba, which is that barely ANYTHING in 40k would work. Its not an assault cannon that may or may not use a futuristic design to operate that should ruin someone's suspension of disbelief, its a flying robot pyramid, or a gun that works because its green owner believes it does.

Moreso, while I fully agree that by a modern standard, the gun wouldn't work its in the future. Who knows how *that* gun works anyway?

[Clarkson]

anyone else notice OP hasnt posted in here for almost 9.5hours.. and that his statements seem like they were trying to incite an argument?

I know personally ive been told off for less on here...

[Clarkson]

Who knows how *that* gun works anyway?

Why the "omnissiah" ofc. The giant dragon C'Tan locked under Mars..

[EDMM]

anyone else notice OP hasnt posted in here for almost 9.5hours.. and that his statements seem like they were trying to incite an argument?

I know personally ive been told off for less on here...

Lol. You've been told off for sleeping?

You think someone has to keep posting in a thread all the time just for the hell of it? As if the number of posts they make is equal to the validity of the point they've raised?

[FashaTheDog]

Now you guys know why assault cannons used to explode in 2nd edition.

As for a few of the explanations thus far presented:

• Loaded diagonally from center
• Loaded from center laterally into spinning through some force or means
• Teleported
• Molten alloy ammo
• Only one barrel works, the rest are for "Dakka Envy"
• Barrels are loaded and the reload transfers ammo from center to barrels
• Magic - psychic power in 40K, perhaps imbued at the Forgeworld as the more the Techpriests believe, the better it works and if the Magos believes real hard, then it becomes master crafted
• C'Tan/Tzeentch did it

[Egaeus]

Different pictures from different sculpts, different sculptors and different times. Someone at some points got it right, others seem to have missed it.

Yeah, it really looks like all one needs to do to fix it is put a bit of green stuff in the bottom open section and now you have your ammo feed.

As others have said the miniature designers aren't engineers, they're making things that "look cool". While it would be nice if they also looked like they might be functional that's merely icing on the cake. And while I think some things are more easily justified with handwavium science (this is the future after all) there is still that expectation that at least to some extent the natural laws still apply...not everything is antigravity, superalloys and teleportation.

Wait! I know. The ammo is teleported from the hopper to the barrels by an modulated tri-phase nano-wave inversion field, to reduce weight and friction! That's the ticket!

Or this.

[Dangersaurus]

Assault Cannons pack superposed ammunition, the central line (the choke point) is used to feed new ammo cores into the barrels in sequence when needed (weapon cannot be fired during this procedure, this is evident in Space Hulk's ability to reload the weapon) by way of a serried cyclic chambering mechanism.
Not fluff, I just made it up, but it's a lot more fun to work out a halfway feasible explanation as to how these things operate than to rage about how they can't possibly work. We are, after all, talking about technology that uses materials and processes that the most modern bleeding edge of science isn't even aware of. Imagine the disbelief of a person at the beginning of the 10th Century being shown a working smart phone, now multiply that by 10-15 times. That's why when you look at stuff in 40K it doesn't make sense.

Nice. Best way to deal with "WTF" moments in sci-fantasy: imagine the hell out of it.

The autocannon has never bothered me, but like someone above said the design actually breaks the rule of cool. Chem-Dog's explanation is best. Now it would be nice if someone could give me an explanation to fix the "spin-up" that every rotary cannon does in movies and TV... the guns they're portraying don't need to warm up, cycling them without shooting just drops unspent shells all over the place.

[TheDoctor]

"If you're wondering how he eats and breaths, and other science facts, you should tell yourself it's just a show, I should really just relax"

As for me, I know the designers aren't Mechanical engineers, so if they get details that I never pay attention to wrong, well, I never paid attention to them.

[chamelion 6]

I dunno.... I think the OP has finally explained the fact that my AC's only seem to roll 1's and 2's.

I'm gonna remodel the darn things at once and see if it improves ther hit dice!!!!

[MarcoSkoll]

Now it would be nice if someone could give me an explanation to fix the "spin-up" that every rotary cannon does in movies and TV...

A similar reason to why many heavy machine guns are open-bolt. Because of the heat built up by firing, a round left in the chamber can get hot enough to fire unintentionally, even if the weapon's safety is on.

As such, open bolt weapons only chamber the round after the trigger is pulled (as opposed to closed bolt, which chambers a round before the trigger is pulled). Similarly, spooling up and spooling down would let you clear all the chambers after firing and only re-chamber again when you wanted to be firing, avoiding any possible accidents.

I can't remember if there are any actual gatling guns that do this though.

[Nurgling Chieftain]

I haven't read the entire new book yet. Do boltguns still use ammunition with deuterium penetrator cores? Deuterium being an isotope of hydrogen, basically just a proton and a neutron, is one of the lightest gasses (heavier than basic hydrogen, of course, and if I'm not mistaken, in practice it's very close in density to helium, as it will form binary molecules).

[Battleworthy Arts]

I get where the OP is coming from. Where as I do like the aesthetics of ACs, a small shift in the barrel mount could have given it a bit of verisimilitude.

Dont get me started on the grey knights.

[Battleworthy Arts]

I get where the OP is coming from. Where as I do like the aesthetics of ACs, a small shift in the barrel mount could have given it a bit of verisimilitude.

Dont get me started on the grey knights.

[Egaeus]

As for me, I know the designers aren't Mechanical engineers, so if they get details that I never pay attention to wrong, well, I never paid attention to them.

Well some of us are mechanical engineers, which is probably why such things bother us more than they should. That said, I don't expect GW to hire a technical consultant because it isn't meant to be a simulation game. Of course the suspension of disbelief can kick in at different levels for different people...there's quite a bit you have to "buy into" just to get into the basics of the setting (aliens, warp travel, psykers) but a lot of it is pretty standard "sci-fi" or "space opera" fare so it's easy to give it a bye. I suppose one could go the alternative route and just see it as "pure fantasy" (by applying Clarke's 3rd Law) but GW has another game for that...

[Clarkson]

Lol. You've been told off for sleeping?

You think someone has to keep posting in a thread all the time just for the hell of it? As if the number of posts they make is equal to the validity of the point they've raised?

No i think someone who posed a question... caused arguments to be raised and then buggered off to "sleep", should be more forethought of what they post...

and as i said.. ive been personally told off for less.. as in.. trying to start an argument.. you managed to start one.. and getting away scot free