Makes me wonder what would happen if you hit a marine in Power Armor with a Heavy Phaser type A... that EMP effect is a BITCH, especially when it knocks out subsystems Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It takes the psychic power of a God to overwhelm the systems in Marine Power Armor, "The First Heretic" first chapter... They are hardened to such an extent because someone thought of EMP problems. And even his power, didn't completely override ALL the power armor of every warrior. So the answer is, nothing much, a few seconds in the Adamantium/Ceramite plates would buckle, but in that few seconds, our friendly marine has unleashed hell on the shooter in the form of (if your lucky) regular Bolter rounds.
Uhm, you guys DO realize a Heavy Phaser type A is a STARSHIP weapon... not a handheld one... right? (For the record, yes, I have had people tell me a Space Marine in Power Armor could withstand a shipboard phaser blast... wtf)
I am referring to after that, when he knocked them back, the description i took to mean that even the armor had failed to physically hold up under the pressure of the Emperor.
It didn't really fail to hold them up. They would have told the armor to kneel because they were essentially being mind controlled by the big E.
No after he tells them to kneel, there comes a point when Lorgar is just pissing off E ... iirc its just before the emperor teleports out, and just before Lorgar smashes Guilliman.
Well from an emp stand point you could throw it into the middle of your warp core and it wouldn't affect the suit's circuitry. From the aspect of actual damage then yah, it'll take it out. Terminator might be able to... but thats a massive if and I personally doubt it.
Terminators routinely survive (ok maybe not routinely) orbital Bombardment. That invulnerable save helps a lot.
Then the question is simple - is WH40K armor capable of, or designed to, resist(ing) molecular disintegration? Otherwise, a phaser should slice and dice it like it does anything else at higher levels (well, okay, it should vaporize it, but you get the point)
See, I don't really think the two operate on the same principle - the gauss flayer still seems to be a micro-level weapon, where as the Phaser is a sub-micro (sub-atomic technically) level weapon... unless the armor is, quite literally, completely atomically bound (which is why Neutronium is highly, highly resistant to them), it should still be affected. And even Neutronium was able to be damaged by Quantum Torpedoes... though they weren't fully effective.
no offense, but where does the phaser get described as you said? When I looked it up on memory alpha it was described more like a laser, sometimes explicitly
The idea behind the phaser is that it operates on the Rapid Nadion Effect and, essentially, upon impact with a target (at least on higher settings, like level 16 for example) breaks down the sub-atomic bonds within the target material. Disruptors (like what Klingons and Romulans use) actually, at the molecular level, expand and compress the target material hundreds or thousands of times a second, causing massive stresses within the material and forcing it to break down. Most of this is inference from examples on the show, both from what we see on screen and what is described to us. Examples including the fact that people do not violently "explode" when disintegrated by a phaser.
The Gauss Flayer is designed to do a very specific job, it is imho, essentially a phaser made to function a bit like the Varon-T Disruptor. Excepting that where the Varon-T does it from the inside out, the Flayer goes from the outside-in. But layer by layer, ensuring that it is felt. No, while people don't more hardened targets do, water doesn't explode when I heat it up, but an unopened can of beans will.
