No, but they should be, if what they want is Fire Warriors with 'true' FF ratings!


Then you're not playing Epic.

You're playing something a bit like Epic, that makes ranged shooting worse.

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More like, your Baneblade is 29cm away from one enemy unit, and 31cm away from a second enemy unit.

Baneblade fires all its guns, but only 2 Heavy Bolters hit.

Heavy Bolters have a shooting range of 30cm. However, because the Baneblade also has some other longer ranged weapons (Like the 75cm range battlecannon) the range at which your hits can apply are 'stretched', allowing your second Heavy Bolter hit to be applied to the second enemy unit 31cm away, instead of both hits going on the first unit.

This happens because your total number of hits are pooled before being applied as one allocation block, and it is an intentional part of the rules system.

So,

You roll to hit what's in range (Range of each weapon system is checked)
Then you apply hits to all potentially affected units in one allocation block (Range of longest-range weapon is used to detirmine what units can be allocated a hit)

If you're rolling each weapon system on each unit individually and then allocating on an individual basis too then that's not how the rules are intended to work and you'll be playing a version of Epic with quite 'nerfed' ranged shooting.

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It should probably be taken into account then with your complaints about how the Tau list functions that you in fact have been playing the shooting rules incorrectly.

They're better at shooting than they are at engaging right now.
Plus I don't think that Sniper fits well with the standard Tau weapons.
Disrupt fits better, and they already have that.



Nah I've worked through the theory on this again and have again settled on my first interpretation, that the range of the hits can be stretched as normal, but they must still be applied within LOF because the no-LOF special ability itself doesn't transfer to the normal hits.


QFT.

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It must be stated that E&C and I have never allowed guided missiles to stretch LOF nor have we ever even considered using them to do so.

Indeed it was just a theoretical debate that came up. Which I then forgot about.

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I thought the CC4+ of Tactical Marines in comparison to Devastators CC5+ comes from the les than 12" weapons (Flamer, Meltagun and Plasmagun) Tacticals may carry?

On Railguns: Actually the Railgun has is WORSE than a Demolisher in destroying tanks but both have the same Strength (10).
The Demolisher has the advantage that it is an Ordnance weapon ( = rolls 2D6 and chooses the higher result for armour penetration). And it uses a template which can scatter from the intended target but can still hit it ifit scatters less than 5" while if you miss with a Railgun the projectile misses completely.

And a Demolisher is only AP3+/AT4+ Ignore Cover in Epic.

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The earlier post had already been replied to by Jstr19 and E&C had re-replied to that explaining his post so I felt no need to re-re-reply to that post, also when reading your post it appeared you had misunderstood what the term "range stretching" was as it appears no-one had fully explained it.

/Rant engaged/

The Demolisher Cannon is not a better tank hunter than the Railgun in 40k, even ignoring their range. Ordinance vs AP1 is night and day for a tank hunting unit in 40k. Even with Marine vindicators, the odds of 'hitting' /barely/ rise to 50%. Scattering off the target means you're probably not even going to damage it. You might get a glancing hit on a rhino (which has 0% chance of killing it). Staying on target doesn't even mean you're going to do anything worthwhile.

Railgun only has 1d6 to 'penetrate', but when it penetrates (the odds are in favor of the demolisher at this point) the odds of actually /destroying/ a tank jump tremendously. On a 2+ something critical to the tank is gone. Even a glancing hit from a railgun can be deadly (16% chance), which makes the effective +1 to armor penetration the Demolisher gets a moot point because glancing hits from it are most certainly /not/ deadly.

The Demolisher has a better chance of doing /something/ when it hits, but a significantly worse chance of actually making the damage worthwhile and a hit rate a solid 16% behind the Hammerhead railgun.

/Rant disengaged/

Ignoring 40k stats, the Broadsides 'light' railgun (well, a railgun mounted on a 'light' walker) is shown to be able to punch through one side of a leman russ and out the other in the fluff of the codex. Yes yes, 'all fluff is corrupt'.

The Hammerhead's gun is something like 3 times the size of a Broadside one. Lets ignore 40k stats, and think logically (the Tau are one of the few races we can do this with, after all). A railgun's power is affected by how strong the magnets are (how strong of a 'push'), and how long the rails are (how long the projectile is pushed).

The side rails are both longer and thicker on the Hammerhead, which implies to me that they are compensating for the heavier projectile of the submunition. But, when they fire the penetration round it should be absolutely devastating compared to the smaller Broadside guns.

So we have options.

Increase the AT rating. Simple enough, puts it on par with the Broadside railguns. Rate of fire vs Stronger shot. Then the balance comes down to what you want. Mobility vs Resilience. Skimmer vs Garrison. Offense vs Defense. That is a good thing, in my opinion. Make the railgun an upgrade and make their costs equal to Broadsides.

There is also the idea of adding Disrupt to the Hammerhead railgun. This is an intriguing idea, and it works in its own way. Don't send superheavies against a swarm of enemy tanks that are collectively less valuable and can destroy your superheavy with relative ease. Leman Russ crews knowing that even a 'bad' shot from a railgun could kill them all. And so on.

However, balancing that would be a nightmare. As it stands 600pts of Hammerheads w/ AT4+ Disrupt would break a Superheavy Company from the Imperial Guard, possibly in one activation (if they're shooting a marked target). It would break almost any formation I've seen really. While that amuses me, I can't speak for how to balance it. Either the AT would have to drop (making Hammerheads somehow scary, but actually pretty pants at killing things), or the price would go up. How much? It would almost require that the Railgun be an upgrade option. When would it simply be /worth it/, and could the rest of the army support this Terror Weapon formation activation wise.

I love the idea. Don't know how to work with it though. How much is saying "Yes, you, tank formation. You are now broken." worth?

I'm going to test 6 Railgun Hammerheads @ 350pts and see how they go (if they overshadow the Broadsides at that price, then we'll know we're doing something wrong.)

Any thoughts? I'm going to be on Vassal looking for games for the rest of the day.

Ouch... I think I've been playing them wrong, too... I really need to read the rulebook again before I play my next game of epic. That's at least twice that I've been using the Flames of War mechanics instead of the Epic ones.

In both cases it somewhat obviously depends on saves. Half the hits are kills are 4+, 2/3's are kills at 5+ save.

Its also very good. A reinforced infantry company doing the same manoeuvre would have 15 autocannons, which is 15 shots at AP7+, or 1 1/4 hits and they cost 25 points more.
A mechanised infantry company with Hydra has 22 Ap7+ and 2 AP6+, or 2 1/6 of a hit and they cost 125 points more.


Well that would be 3 2/3's. Less than the doubling and firing into cover. FF4+ has the biggest impact on defensive engagements with these weapon stats - unless of course the weapon abilities come down.


Ahh, I thought the Devilfish was 5+ Remove half a hit!

Well, currently the regular tank gun fires a super dense armour penetrating dart. It goes through or your armour or explosive plates deal with it. Compare that to a battlecannon like weapon which was on the IS Russia heavy tanks. Middling armour penetration however more than 3 times the energy of comparable tank guns. Hits wouldn't penetrate however they would wreck targets (external fittings, internal stuff would rip lose etc etc) rendering them combat ineffective and crews thoroughly shaken. Not a kill per say, but no longer a fighting unit.

While true, I'm going to assume there is a reason why the Russians were developing dedicated anti-tank rounds instead of just hurling more high explosive rounds. Of course, I'm not an engineer so I can't speak to the actual effectiveness of various anti-tank strategies. It just seems like if this was such a superior system, we would still be using it instead of, for example, HEAT rounds.

That sounds an awful lot like Disrupt.