Infantry Platoon

[Deleted]

OK. Sorry, but I have no time to search for the answer on the forums.

So, in the Codex it says that the infantry platoon consists of [excerpt from the Codex]

"... the Command Squad - a Junior Officer and his attendant staff bought from the Command Squad entry on page 38 - and from 2 to 5 Infantry squads."

So the question is Do I have to have a Junior Officer in each of my infantry platoons or not?

And the other question Do Catachan Jungle fighters have only one special weapon - flamer?

[fatuous]

OK, every inf platoon must have a command squad, that consists of a JO. Then 2 to 5 inf squads. So if you take 2 inf platoons u have to have 2 JO command squads.

If for some reason u don't want JOs, then you could alternatively take 1 squad of conscripts instead, or an Armoured Fist squad (10 guys in a chimera). NB u have to take 1 inf squad to be able to take conscripts and amoured fists squads.

Reg jungle fighters. They should have access to all special weapons if I remember rightly, but have the additional option to take a heavy flamer if they don't take a heavy weapon (I'm pretty sure they loose theoption to take lascannons too). That is going by the newest codex and taking the jungle fighters doctrine. If ur using the catachan codex, then the special weapons are all allowed, altho cost a bit more than normal (except for nade launchers).

Hope that helps.

[Deleted]

Also if you want to not take a JO and all that you can use the grenadiers doc and use stormies as troops.I may be wrong in this but as it looks to me you use them as troops instead of the regular inf. platoon.

[fatuous]

Yep, I forgot about that. U can take grenadiers doctrine and take non DS/Infiltrating Stormies as troop choices.

As far as I know, they don't count as a inf platoon, so u can't take conscripts or armoured fists, but WTH, you've got stormies .

[Colonel Grammissar Azalar]

They cant have Lascannons, and have accsess to the Heavy Flamer.

[Deleted]

Yeah, the idea is that lascannons are two heavy to transport around in the jungle.

[knight (M.I.A)]

Not really. Just take the Autocannon. It's about as same as big as the Lascannon, but you have to carry around loads of ammo.
I think it has some other reasons like the tracing effect. Las weapons always show away your position. That might not be too tragic with the small lasguns and pistols but the light beam from lascannon must be huge. While all weapons that fire solid slugs only have visible shots while tracer ammo is being used. And the reason for the flamers is easy. If you're close enough for a flamer it doesn't matter anymore if they know where you are...

[Deleted]

Actually, a laser beam is normally invisible from any direction except head-on. This is because the photons that form the beam are all moving in precisely the same direction. It takes some sort of scattering medium (smoke, fog, ect) to cause some of the beam to scatter, permitting visable-frequency lasers to be seen.

This does not, however, preclude a las cannon shot giving your position away. Military-grade lasers (and let's face it, even the Las Pistol is a remarkably powerful laser) pump out a lot of energy. This energy does one thing particularly well: It heats things up. Military lasers damage their targets by melting & vaporizing whatever they come in contact with.
In an atmosphere, this has some interesting effects. When that much energy is dumped into air, it heats up. Hot gasses occupy more volume than cool ones, so the air at the 'tip' of the beam would expand rapidly. At supersonic speeds, in fact. Anyone who's ever been in a thunderstorm knows that air forced to expand that quickly from heating can be really loud. It's generally called thunder.
However, "nature abhors a vaccum" as they say, and so once the source of the heating is gone, the surrounding atmosphere rushes to fill the void left by the beam's atmospheric displacement. At the point in the center of the beam's cross-section where the incomming atmosphere from all sides meets, a very high pressure region develops. Just like an aircraft wing compressing air along its leading edge, this high-pressure region squeezes all the water vapor out of the atmosphere, leaving behind a contrail, generally refered to as a Directed Energy Weapon Line (or DEWLine)
Naturally, the larger the laser source, the more noticable these effects are going to be.

Las weapons: No, they don't "Freem!", they "BANG!", and you can't see the beam, but you can see the contrail they leave behind.

[knight (M.I.A)]

It's an interesting idea Major. We should discuss that in the closed parts of the forum a bit more where we won't hijack a tread for scientific talks.

[Colonel Grammissar Azalar]

I belive if you read the Gaunts Ghost novels, you will see a Description of a lasround, in the 4th book i belive.
" A Long thin red objet, about the size of a middle finger"

Therefor, you can see them, and that was a descripton from side on.

[Deleted]

Azalar> Once more, science gives way to fiction. Movies would be pretty boring if ships in space just drifted silently past eachother and every once and a while, one blows up for no obvious reason. Popular culture is so full of visable laser beams and sound in space that authors don't think anymore.
But leaving that aside, think about it from a common sense standpoint. Turn on a flashlight in a dark room. You can see the flashlight (because it's glowing) and you can see where the beam is impacting, but does the air in between light up with a white or yellow glow? No. Same with a laser.

[Colonel Grammissar Azalar]

Maybe, but when you think about, how can you say if we can see a Lasbolt or not?
All we have are the Descrptions in books, and these books are detailed.
You can sit there and drone on about how we cant see a lasbolt, just the area it affect,s but to be honest, do you live in the 40K universe? No. Nor do I, and I know that, but Id rather go with a Desciprtion in a Black Library book, rather than something someone said on an unoffical Forum.

[BobaHat]

Actually, azalar, the description of lasfire varies extremely much even within GW's own litterature. In some novels lasgun fire is described as completely invisible with only a sharp crack sound whereas other places it is described as long red beams. I even read something once where lasfire was influenced by wind like a bullet and even riquocheted off a wall!
But I think that it is widely accepted now that it is a long red beam since both Dawn of War and Firewarrior portray it like that.

Anyway, back to the topic:

ankhmor said:

So the question is Do I have to have a Junior Officer in each of my infantry platoons or not?

And the other question Do Catachan Jungle fighters have only one special weapon - flamer?

1. Yes you need a JO in each platoon.
2. No, Jungle Fighters have the same options as everybody else except the CANNOT have lascannons and have access to Heavy Flamers.

[Colonel Grammissar Azalar]

Darn, There are other novels with Lasfire in them? Lol.
Ohkay then, Maybe within the novels it is portrayed in many ways, but I alwaysa thought it was a Short red beam, about the size of a finger.

[Deleted]

azalar said:

Maybe, but when you think about, how can you say if we can see a Lasbolt or not?
All we have are the Descrptions in books, and these books are detailed.

Actually, we can also take real-world examples of high energy laser systems... or, for that matter, any laser system. All of which have invisible beams.
*shrug* Not that it maters. Anyways, this is getting highly tangental. Thanks for dragging us back on topic Boba

[Warmaster Stabwhiskers]

Play dawn of war and try to visualise the lasguns fire from the guardsmen

[Deleted]

thank goodness lasgun bolts aren't like those in star wars hehehe...single fired every time "piew" "piew"....but hey lasguns can still kill you and that matters....but it would be pretty dodgy u know, having getting hit by a las round and not knowing where it came from. maybe its becuase lasguns may be in visisble that sm scout snipers and cadian snipers use the 'long-las'...instead of solid slugs

[twerd]

if u guys are not getting you cant science in 40k its fiction. oh and yeh you will have to use a JO in your comand squads but whats wrpng with that.

[Deleted]

Actually Twerd, it's Science Fiction. Which means science has every right to be in there.

[twerd]

it may be science fiction but where your science comne into things like the warp and interstellar space ships huh check mate.

sorry guys for not staying on topic but he asked for it

[Deleted]

lol...someone is bound to be bothered enough to explain this...just wait twerd...its gna be like a splat in ure face....hehe anyways it aint me cos i cant be asked to