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Weapon Types

Hand to hand combat weapons are weapons designed for use purely in close combat. For example, swords of various types, the hunting lance and the power axe. Many such weapons can alos be used to attack vehicles and buildings.

Pistols can be used in close combat but also at a distance, but lack some of the range of larger weapons.

Basic weapons are normally used only for shooting, although the addition of an axe blade or bayonet enables them to be used to stab or chop in close combat. Basic weapons are designed to be fired in both hands rather like a modern rifle.

Heavy Weapons are extra powerful or extra ranged weapons carried by a small proportion of troops and used to support their fellows by laying down covering fire, taking out armoured vehicles and picking off enemy from a distance. These weapons tend to be large and heavy, and are usually less mobile than ordinary weapons.

Grenades are small bombs or grenades that are thrown by hand. Many grenades in the arsenals of the 41st millenium are very small, some are but the size of a large coin, although there are larger varieties.

The weapons described here are not all the weapons that exist in the Imperium or beyond it. To even attempt to catalogue every variation in design and capability would be futile, so we have concentrated on the main types used on the battlefield. There is a further broad class of much larger and heavier weaponry, weapons designed for blasting spacecraft out of orbit, for destroying huge targets from vast distances, or for razing cities.

The most common of these weapons is the Planet Defence Laser, a huge laser designed to be fired against targets high in the atmosphere, such as ememy landing barges and orbiting spacecraft. These supremely potent devices may be constructed deep underground, with only their tips protuding above the surface. Although weapons of this kind play a vitally important role in the defence and large scale destruction of planets, they have no part on the battlefield.

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