My issues with scale between miniatures and video games.

[Xenith]

I took the liberty of changing the topic title to something more fitting of the converation and a bit less click-baity - thanks for generating interesting discussion from the opening remarks.

 

I took a look at that DoWIII trailer, and oh gods. They look awful, oddly tall and T-Shaped - but remember that DoWIII was designed to appeal to the DotA/whever was the latest fad crowd. 

 

I think Space Marine nailed the 40k aesthetic perfectly, however those models were just like normal clunky marine models standing upright. Huge pauldrons is a warhammer/40k thing. Making them reduced or more streamlined/practical for modern warfare isn't what the models are about. 

 

[TrashMan]

 

...In a D6 system with only 4 values to work with...

Huh? A D6 system would intuitively have 6 values with which to work. Presumably there is a logic behind you saying there are only 4, though, so please explain.

 

 

1 and 6 are values that you never give to any weapon/armor, since they are critical fail/critical success.

So yes, you only have 4 to really work with.

 

In terms of actual tabletop models - they can be what they like. I UNDERSTAND the limitations the creators have to work with, and it's fine. But when you move to a madium that doesnt' have those limitations, it is silly to still follow them.

 

 

The latest trailer from GW with the SoB and ultramarines fighting necrons? Details are great, scale is messed up. The primaris is barely slightly taller than a SoB, a non-agumented woman. She should be barely above his waist.

 

As for some other models - even some in-universe numbers are suspect. A Land Raider supposedly can carry a full terminator squad. Plus, fuel, ammo, generators, etc... All those things take up volume. Most vehicles to me look too small or have hypespace storage inside. The new flying transport being probably the most obvious.

[MrSpoon]

Slightly off topic, but I appreciate the change in title for this thread. The original was ambiguous.

[Xenith]

The latest trailer from GW with the SoB and ultramarines fighting necrons? Details are great, scale is messed up. The primaris is barely slightly taller than a SoB, a non-agumented woman. She should be barely above his waist.

Seeing as Primaris are ~8feet tall in armour, you're saying sisters of battle, peak physical fitness humans in strength and height augmenting armour, often with heels, should be a little over 4 feet tall?

Scale seems ok to me. Admittedly, it looks like the marine might be on a step behind the SoB.

I also hate to say it, but sometimes things have to be fudged a bit to make good cinema. Like in films, where you have two leading actors of different heights who both have to be in shot. Taller shoes, boxes, trenches, etc, are all used.

If that SoB was at waist height to the marine, you'd barely see any detail.

To give the benefit of the doubt regarding that step, I went back to the original video - in the above image they're both on the same level ground.

If she was a normal human, yea, she could be shorter, but as I mentioned above, sometimes realism has to give way to style.

Edited September 7, 2020 by Xenith

[Volt]

Aren't escorts supposed to be bigger than 1km? Up to 2km?

 

Also, ships in BFG do look bad IMHO, as they are far too thin to the the durable, tanky imperium ships we know. They need some more meat on those bones.

Also, windows are way, way too big. I've seen models that despite being lower-poly, looked more right due to their texture. Tons of tiny windows.

Like this:

 

If only the models were higher-poly, they would be perfect.

The ships have meters thick armor dude. They're already insanely durable in terms of material structure, their look in that regard is irrelevant.

[Lord_Caerolion]

 

 

...In a D6 system with only 4 values to work with...

Huh? A D6 system would intuitively have 6 values with which to work. Presumably there is a logic behind you saying there are only 4, though, so please explain.

 

 

1 and 6 are values that you never give to any weapon/armor, since they are critical fail/critical success.

So yes, you only have 4 to really work with.

 

 

Well, better tell that to all the many, many units with 6+ armour saves, or only hit on 6's, etc.

[Volt]

Ohhhhh, so now the issue is equivalent to "you can't fit ten Marines in a Rhino." You know what also has volume issues? Bolters. Looking at the size of the muzzle, breach, and visible rounds on belt-feeds, your standard bolter magazine has room for about five rounds. The box mags on stormbolters? Maaaaaybe a dozen.

 

The designers made compromises in the scaling in order to create models that look good and are easy to paint. Even Infinity, which has much more realistic scaling of weapons, isn't perfect because at 28mm there's only so small you can go before it becomes impossible to mold the piece. I understand part of your point in the OP was that people base lore discussions on these models and to the extent that people forget these are "as close as we can get them" representations as opposed to true 1-for-1 avatars, I agree. But they are still representations so gross detail still applies: massive cathedral windows on starships? That's a thing in the lore, sorry. Guns that fire shells the size of a Walmart? That's a thing in the lore, sorry.

The magazines on bolters aren't wrong. The problem rather is that the average bolter magazine could fit about 40-50 rounds, not a mere 25 or 30..75 caliber is incredibly small functionally speaking, about the same diameter as your thumb.

[Fajita Fan]

I’ve never heard anyone describe a round half again bigger than a .50 as incredibly small :D

[Volt]

I’ve never heard anyone describe a round half again bigger than a .50 as incredibly small

Compared to what GW thinks they are? They are incredibly small. Hell I have a .264 magnum round casing on my desk right now, and while obviously the bullet is just .2 in diameter (well, if this wasn't fired), the base of the cartridge is actually .5 inches. Bolts basically never are depicted with a flared cartridge, so the base of the round is probably .75 as well, meaning the rounds themselves are just incredibly long but roughly thumb sized in diameter. You could fit a lot of those into depicted bolter magazines compared to marine hand size.

 

 

The black cylinder is a bolt round to scale, the gun is an M4A1, and the scale assumed is the marine being exactly 7', or 2.1336 meters. The bolt round is 19.05 x 123.325mm, allowing you to cram a ton of ammunition into a single sickle mag.

Edited September 8, 2020 by Volt

[Fajita Fan]

Well technically there are codices that say the rounds are caseless mini rockets in some of the art so there shouldn't be shell casings popping out anyway.  Either way a .75 explosive round is pretty big any way you slice it!  Magazine capacity aside I'll never understand why marines weren't modeled with more extra magazines on some webbing.  

[Sword Brother Adelard]

They definitely have cases. They are fired using a traditional propellant, it is then the 'bullet' which is rocket propelled, the rocket propellant only igniting after it has reached sufficient velocity and cleared the barrel

 

A more problematic issue with boltguns and realism is the idea that you can load belt into a magazine port.

[Gederas]

I’ve never heard anyone describe a round half again bigger than a .50 as incredibly small

Compared to what GW thinks they are? They are incredibly small. Hell I have a .264 magnum round casing on my desk right now, and while obviously the bullet is just .2 in diameter (well, if this wasn't fired), the base of the cartridge is actually .5 inches. Bolts basically never are depicted with a flared cartridge, so the base of the round is probably .75 as well, meaning the rounds themselves are just incredibly long but roughly thumb sized in diameter. You could fit a lot of those into depicted bolter magazines compared to marine hand size.

 

[image snipped]

 

The black cylinder is a bolt round to scale, the gun is an M4A1, and the scale assumed is the marine being exactly 7', or 2.1336 meters. The bolt round is 19.05 x 123.325mm, allowing you to cram a ton of ammunition into a single sickle mag.

Uhhh, Volt? Bolters are referred to as .75 Caliber (19.05mm to use another metric) and some other bolters are .998 caliber (about 21mm) [note: These are in Relic's games, so Dawn of War and Space Marine].

 

To compare, this is a lineup, with a .50 BMG (12.7mm) on the left:

 

That's still 6.35mm smaller than a Bolt.

 

The standard Bolter bolt size is bigger still than the .700 Nitro Express (17.8mm), which is an elephant gun cartridge.

(.700 Nitro Express bullet and case with .45 ACP cartridge (center) for comparison)

 

For comparison, in IRL firearms, 20mm cartridges is autocannon level. THIS is a 202mm round with .50 BMG rounds, golf ball, and a stick of SDRAM computer memory for size comparison:

 

The biggest known bolter caliber is 21mm.

 

And then the Heavy Bolter uses a 1.00 (25.4mm wide) round, which if you need a scale size idea:

 

No, Bolts are really huge.

Edited September 8, 2020 by Gederas

[Toxichobbit]

 

I still remember the original Dawn of War trailer and realizing how silly the SM armor proportions are in motion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-E1RcRvny8

 

Everytime I re-watch that trailer and get about 30 seconds in, all I can hear is Sly Marbo.

 

Edit: quoted the wrong bit.

Edited September 8, 2020 by Toxichobbit

[Bryan Blaire]

Gents, has anyone ever actually seen a bolt round?

 

No, I haven't either. Let's try and keep it a little more in the realm of "we aren't talking about real things" - depicting real thing and expecting this made up world 38K years in the future to follow the exact same conventions regarding explosive charges, casing lengths, etc., doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

Let's dial the real world vs. made up world discussion back and focus more on the actual game information.

 

Granted, there's a lot of stuff about the game world and game scale that doesn't necessarily make sense either, but that's why there's the "Space Wizards Did It" explanation, which is a legit explanation in this situation.

 

Honestly scale-wise on the models themselves is the size of the bore - it's always seemed far too large for the caliber round they are supposedly kicking out - mini-rocket after standard cased propulsion or not, it has always just seemed too big overall. Even saying "Heroic Scale" (say like a time and a half larger than needed), it still seems like the bore as produced by GW on the Heavy Bolter is like a time and a half/two times too large.

[Gederas]

Gents, has anyone ever actually seen a bolt round?

 

No, I haven't either. Let's try and keep it a little more in the realm of "we aren't talking about real things" - depicting real thing and expecting this made up world 38K years in the future to follow the exact same conventions regarding explosive charges, casing lengths, etc., doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

Let's dial the real world vs. made up world discussion back and focus more on the actual game information.

 

Granted, there's a lot of stuff about the game world and game scale that doesn't necessarily make sense either, but that's why there's the "Space Wizards Did It" explanation, which is a legit explanation in this situation.

 

Honestly scale-wise on the models themselves is the size of the bore - it's always seemed far too large for the caliber round they are supposedly kicking out - mini-rocket after standard cased propulsion or not, it has always just seemed too big overall. Even saying "Heroic Scale" (say like a time and a half larger than needed), it still seems like the bore as produced by GW on the Heavy Bolter is like a time and a half/two times too large.

Yes?

 

Also, despite people's comments on the movie, we do see bolts in the Ultramarines movie, including the "soda can" sized Heavy Bolter rounds.

[Bryan Blaire]

Gederas, I think you knew what I meant... yes, we've seen depictions - yet none of them are real, so we've got very much a disconnect between trying to say "Well this is how it would really work..." or "This is how the real world works..." and how we have the world described. There's all kinds of things I could say about how it doesn't even look like those depicted bolts are in scale, that they wouldn't function the way described, etc., but it doesn't matter - they do, because GW states this is how they work.

 

So what I said stands - let's get back to it.

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

Gederas, I think you knew what I meant... yes, we've seen depictions - yet none of them are real, so we've got very much a disconnect between trying to say "Well this is how it would really work..." or "This is how the real world works..." and how we have the world described. There's all kinds of things I could say about how it doesn't even look like those depicted bolts are in scale, that they wouldn't function the way described, etc., but it doesn't matter - they do, because GW states this is how they work.

 

So what I said stands - let's get back to it.

 

 

An inch is an inch is an inch, bub. Using real life tech as reference is perfectly fine in a discussion about scale preferences, especially if people would prefer those scales to be more in line with reality. None of us can say with any sort of certainty what a thing's scale absolutely is within the game world, but using experience from without is a good start in most cases.

[Bryan Blaire]

Yes, bub, an inch is an inch. And yet a pound of propellant we current have isn't a pound of propellant that the 40K verse has, or other questions like "do they use a basic spring feed magazine system, or is there some other magi-tech feed mechanism or even magi-tech locking bolt mechanism that allows for things like belt feeds into a magazine well", etc.

 

Sheer volume calculations themselves don't even matter, because we don't even have all the factors to do the appropriate physics calculations for the structural forces and stabilities, etc. Maybe a magazine only has to have a partial millimeter thickness wall and all the feeding mechanisms are actually in the weapon - the magazine might be able to hold more or even in a different configuration than we are used to, therefore the simple scale of the mag to the model is much less meaningful.

 

So, bub, I get back to "No, the real world we have don't mean :cuss ". Just crying "scale matters" is meaningless - because the scale itself may not even work given the other physics and magical physics of the game world - there's no such thing as "being in line with reality" when the only reality that actually matters (the one the game lives in) is unreal - that reality isn't in line with our reality.

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

Read what I wrote, kid. A discussion about Scale Preferences, not physics or hard facts of the 40K universe. Scale Preference is entirely based on visuals (thus my use of the word Inch and not another unit of measurement that effects visuals less), and for a good chunk of people will be influenced by pre-existing notions of what things should look like according to them. It is unsurprising that a lot of those notions are based on real life objects. And thus, in a discussion about Scale Preferences, using those real life references to point out how something might look, or even function, in that person's opinion is perfectly acceptable. if you do not agree that is your opinion, but it does not make theirs less valid

 

This is a nerd discussion as old as time itself. That it needs to be explained to you is disappointing.

[Bryan Blaire]

It's okay, kid, I get that nuances that affect uninformed opinions might not matter to those that like their uninformed opinions - that it needs explaining to you is disappointing. Also, affect != effect, if you want to start talking about reading and comprehension. Move along, you're dismissed from class. ;)

 

Scale is only in a vacuum when discussing only scale - the instant someone wants to start tossing around "reality" or how things function, then the discussion is no longer only about scale preferences (which really seems to be proportions, not necessarily scale) and all those other "real" things start being factors into the sizes and potential representative sizes of things.

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

I can't discuss your points when you keep going back and changing the messages to add to them, but I think my point is clear. Let people discuss using the references they prefer. It's not an invalid way to handle these discussions.

[Oxydo]

 

Yes?

 

 

Also, despite people's comments on the movie, we do see bolts in the Ultramarines movie, including the "soda can" sized Heavy Bolter rounds.

 

 

Because I was bored and in attempt to get this thread back on track, I decided to do a little bit of 'measurement' in paint on the righthand bolt.

Using 19ish mm as a baseline over the width of the bolt, the entire round ends up being 55-57~ mm in length.

[Bryan Blaire]

Because I was bored and in attempt to get this thread back on track, I decided to do a little bit of 'measurement' in paint on the righthand bolt.

Using 19ish mm as a baseline over the width of the bolt, the entire round ends up being 55-57~ mm in length.

So clearly not a four+ inch round. Also not the same dimensions as a modern cartridge we use with approximately the same diameter slug/ballistic round.

 

It'd be interesting to take that set of measurements, and look at how big it would be based on the image Volt posted, because it's less than half the length of the measurement he posted, so you could get even more rounds into that mag. We do know the weapons are out of scale with the models though, due to their heroic scaling.

[Fajita Fan]

I think one of the things I like about the goofy scale of tabletop space marines is they’re easier to paint. Have any of you guys tried painting DE or Harlequins or some Warmachine stuff? Good lord my hands don’t have that kind of dexterity!!

 

If bolter, and hence their magazines, were more realistically proportioned they’d be impossible for me to paint anything other than black. The same goes for heads, I can’t paint eyes as it but I cannot possibly paint smaller heads at all. The big SM shoulders might look funny but it gives painters a realistic shot at painting icons or the room for transfers.

 

I would still prefer the Space Marine or DoW3 cutscene scale proportions for gaming or videos because it makes the movement far more realistic.

[Leif Bearclaw]

 

Because I was bored and in attempt to get this thread back on track, I decided to do a little bit of 'measurement' in paint on the righthand bolt.

Using 19ish mm as a baseline over the width of the bolt, the entire round ends up being 55-57~ mm in length.

So clearly not a four+ inch round. Also not the same dimensions as a modern cartridge we use with approximately the same diameter slug/ballistic round.

 

It'd be interesting to take that set of measurements, and look at how big it would be based on the image Volt posted, because it's less than half the length of the measurement he posted, so you could get even more rounds into that mag. We do know the weapons are out of scale with the models though, due to their heroic scaling.

 

 

If accurate (and that's a big if, naturally), then that would make standard bolter rounds about the height of the 5.56 NATO (second from right in the pic with the dollar) but about the width of the 0.50 at its widest (I know the bolt is bigger calibre, but the base of the 0.50 is wider than the bullet). However the bolt (assuming similar densities to modern bullets, I used the 0.50 Action express to calculate this, as that's quite a cylindrical bullet), as basically a solid cylinder would weigh approximately 50% more than the 0.50 BMG (63g for the bolt vs 42g for the BMG). That's not a small round by any means.

 

That said, I'm not sure length matters for 'how many bolts would fit into a magazine' as bolters do not use 'nose to end' magazines (which would be a bad idea anyway, as bolts tend to look like centrefire cartridges), instead using fairly conventional looking double stack boxes. So it's diameter that limits how many rounds per magazine, length would just make the .magazine overall less wide. Something of a tangent on the subject of bolter magazines, they should probably be straight, not curved, as the rounds themselves are very cylindrical and hardly tapered at all (and so wouldn't need the curve in the magazine).