I think you're all overlooking the fact that you get flexibility with the Ion head. You can still do both tasks (AT/AP 4+) well. The rail head hits armour hard but lacks AP in comparison to the Ion head. When I want to tailor my list for utility I like Ion heads. On sustain it hits just as hard as a Rail-head. I would still be taking both in my lists if I wasn't trying to find a use for FWs.

I suggested dropping the seeker from the Rail-head a while back and making it WYSIWYG as they come with burst cannons in the pack. This would definitely make them different beasts

So, your solution is 2 different datasheets?

One would be:
Railhead
AV, 25cm, 4+sv, 6+cc, 5+ff
Railgun: 75cm AP5+/AT3+
2x Burst Cannons: 15cm AP5+
Notes: Skimmer

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I am all for a points difference between the two.  They points and capabilities in 40k are fairly different, so I think that could translate to EpicA as well.

I like NealHunt's idea of 25 points for groups of 3, but it is presently not compatible with the support cadre.  

That said... I doubt that the difference in capability is quite that much.  That's ~15% price difference, which equates to about a 30% difference in firepower for the unit as a whole.  The Railgun is better but even taking into account the AP-o-plenty context that's stretching it.

I'd far rather see a points change than nerf the RailHead stats (and had suggested this before the last list was released).
I see no point in removing the Seeker or SMS from the RailHead. Why would the Tau do this?

I'd leave the RailHead out of this and concentrate on IonHeads stats and price to make them more usable (I agree that Lance would be good for RailGuns and I proposed it a while back aswell but this thread is about making IonHeads usable).

Armoured Mobile Hunter Cadre    315 points
6 Ion Cannon Hammerhead Gunships
-any number of Hammerhead Gunships may replace their Ion Cannons with Railcannons for +10 points each

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FYI my Weapons-Transfer-System comes up with the following stats:

Railgun: 75cm AP5+/AT5+ with Lance on the AT-Shot

Ion Cannon: 30cm AP4+/AT6+

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Lance is a "boring" ability, much like Ignore Cover. Having those discourages interaction between formations.

I much prefer having to engineer Crossfires and then leveraging my good AT to-hit values. This makes for interesting play.

(Also, I don't even know anything about how the weapons are modelled in some other game; all I care about is Epic.)

No Chance of giving it AA back?

No.

Ok then  

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Asaura, I am not sure I see how having Lance, Ignore Cover, Disrupt, or anything else really makes Crossfires less useful.  Those abilities are nice and give some flavor to the weapons, but Crossfire still rocks.

In fact it is the coordination and 'stacking' of something like Lance and Crossfire that to me is interesting.  Like how can I get the most out of each activation.

The railgun is not a lance weapon. lance should be kept as a flavorful rule for weapons that are background-wise supposed to be lance weapons. AP 1 is frankly closer to MW than to lance anyway.

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*sigh* And herei wish MW wouldn`t universally hit Infantry as good as Vehicles....
The solid shot (AT) would justify the MW ability, but not the submunition (AP).

But then...the Multi-melta is already a MW but at over half it's range it is even worse than a Lascannon against Vehicles but as effective against Infantry (so shouldn't affect Infantry in Epic...).

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Is there any reason the submunition shot NEED be represented in Epic?

Can the railgun not just be straight AT3+?

Sure it can.
I like this because it will emphasise the distinction between Railgun = AT, IonCannon = AP.
It's like Predator Annihilator and Predator Destructor.

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I think some unit datasheets do have MW ability on AT weapons (e.g. it says AT4+, Macro Weapon not just MW4+). I just can't name any examples ATM but I have definitely seen that somewhere.

Could have been a typo, of course.