My bad, it should have read 60cm AP5+, 75cm At4+ Lance.

I am suggesting that the addition of Lance to AT is offset by reducing the range of AP.
Furthermore, ensuring that Lance is only applied to the AT aspect of the Railgun should have a minor impact to the game as a whole because of the limited number of RA vehicles that are in most armies. Consequently we should be able to try this with minimal price increases, 0-25 max.

I am also conscious that Tau are very price sensitive, so if this is felt to be too powerfull, then dropping AP completely should be considered.

No it's average kills to hits (disregarding the Inv. Save). If we are working with "average kills to hits" you cannot claim it is always the fourth hit that will kill the tank, that's not average that's extreme.
With averages only 1 tank should die on the fourth roll, 1 tank should die on the 3rd roll, 1 tank should die on the 2nd roll and 1 tank should die on the first roll. That makes 10 hits at an average of 2.5 hits per kill.

TBH, personally I would prefer to drop the AP, gain Lance and go to 250 for 4. I'd rather see them more expensive and less jack of all trades to begin with if it's tested and see them become more on-par with LRs so at 62.5 each that would match LR costs more closely.

I think of it as one has great armour with good shooting while the other has good armour and great shooting

Cept even with Lance, I'd say that a hammerhead shooting isnt better enough at shooting than a russ to match the Russ's armour advantage over the hammerhead, doubly so if they lose the AP part of their shot.

and as an MBT, it should have access to AP shots as well as AT ones. Broadside Railguns shouldnt have an AP value, but Hammerheads have always had submunitions. shouldnt be as good as their AT shot, for sure, but I'd say a drop in range and not collecting the lance ability should go a ways towards keeping things even, with the difference being made up by the fact that the hammerhead was not a great choice to begin with

a 60cm AP5+ shot is hardly "jack of all trades" material, but any MBT role should be able to deal with a pure infantry ork force as well as a pure armoured minervan one. Doesnt need to be equally awesome at both (though the Russ pretty much is) but it should be able to atleast put a reasonable showing in either direction.

a 25 point increase for them might be fair (though I think unneeded, as shown against the still way better, fire prism) but a 50 point increase would be overmuch.
50 points is an increase in price by 25%
Now, yes, against RA vehicles, they have had an increase in killing power of 50%, but against everything else, their power has remained the same. their survivability has not increased, nor has their movement.
so even if you say they should be fighting tanks of the RA variety half the time, thats still onl a 25% increase in killingness without a corresponding increase in survivability, which means a 25% increase in price would be overcosting.

Add this to the fact that the initial contention was that hammerheads currently underperform for their points bracket, adding 50 points to their cost would largely undo the benefits of the change, if not actually make them worse off.

25 points, yeah maybe, but 50 points is overcorrection

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As promised, here come some comparisons of possible changes to the Railgun, and how the tank would then compare to some of the others discussed in this thread.

It is still by nature going to be "stats out of context" as Steve54 said, but I've done my best to show these when fired at a range of targets in a variety of firing modes, and then to present them as clearly as possible. That means its not perfect nor can it be, but fortunately some of it is as simple as "2x AT4+ is better than AT4+" and "Lance is better than No Lance" which makes it at least fairly easy to compare.

I've even stacked it vertically instead of horizontally for people with smaller screens and colour-coded it. Effort has been made

The tables below shows the changes to kill three different armour classes (4+, 4+ RA and 5+). The three armour classes are now one after each other vertically rather than horizontally to save space.

The "Shots needed to Kill compared to" columns show how many shots would be required to kill each target because this is the number most people find easies to work with and most relevant. For example; number of shots required by a Current (AT4+) hammerhead to kill a Predator (4+ armour) without modifiers would be 4.

The "shots needed to kill" columns are from left to right: The Improved Version being examined, then the Current Hammerhead, then the Fireprism. The Falcon is too relevant to ignore (skimmer, exact same price, similar speed, some advantages and disadvantages) but I've seperated it from the main comparison because its range is shorter.

Table 1 - Comparing the Hammerhead if the Railgun was improved to AT3+
Best performers are marked Green, second best performers are Yellow, worst are Red. (Expect the Current Hammerhead to frequently be Red) The falcon is separate, but if its score is Green it would be the best except for its range.




Conclusions: Improving the Hammerhead from AT4 to AT3 makes it better against all targets.
[] The Hammerhead would still be worse than FirePrisms and Falcons vs 4+ armour and 5+ armour.
[] It would still be significantly worse than FirePrisms and Falcons vs 4+ Reinforced Armour. Eg it would take 6 to [] kill a Russ without modifiers rather than the current 8, compared to 2.4 Fireprisms
[] It would be a better general anti-tank vehicle. All gains would be against all targets, it would now do better against its peers but still get significantly outshot by Russes etc.


Table 2 - Comparing the Hammerhead if the Railgun was given the Lance rule



Conclusions: Improving the Hammerhead with the Lance rule makes it better against Reinforced Armour.
[] It would still be worse than FirePrisms and Falcons vs 4+ armour and 5+ armour. The Falcon in particular has a large lead in every way except range.
[] It would be twice as good against Reinforced Armour. Eg it would take 4 to kill a Russ without modifiers rather than the current 8, compared to 2.4 Fireprisms. If it were to sustain and markerlight the target it would be as good as a Fireprism that fires without modifiers.
[] It would not be a better general anti-tank vehicle. There would be no impact on its performance against its peers, but it would be significantly more useful against RA. Specifically it would cause similar damage to the damage Leman Russes cause to Hammerheads.
[] This means that if the price of Hammerheads was to increase, they would actually be worse per point spent vs all armies not fielding RA.

Table 3 - Comparing the Hammerhead if the Railgun was 2x AT4+



[] This table shows the impact of changing the Railgun to 2xAT4+ (the same power as the Falcon's Pulse Laser).
[] Unless markerlights are added, the Falcon actually remains ahead in damage output because of its secondary AT5+ weapon.
[] I would expect a change like this to be difficult to place a cost on; 2xAT4+ is very powerful.
[] I also don't believe multiple shots is a good representation of the Railgun, and wouldn't recommend this.

Table 4 - Comparing the Hammerhead if the Railgun was given a rule that reduced enemy armour rolls, eg:
"Non infantry units suffer a -1 save Modifier"



Conclusions:
[] Improving the Hammerhead with an Armour Reducer rule makes it slightly better against all Armoured targets, without any impact vs Infantry.
[] The affect is actually very similar to giving it AT3+ against normal armour (see table 1 above), but because Reinforced Armour rerolls its save the affect against RA is enhanced
[] It would still be worse than FirePrisms and Falcons vs 4+ armour and 5+ armour, except for being marginally better than Fireprisms against AT4+ when sustaining. The Falcon in particular has a large lead in every way except range.
[] It would be better against Reinforced Armour. Eg it would take 4.5 to kill a Russ without modifiers rather than the current 8, compared to 2.4 Fireprisms. That compares to 4 required to kill a Russ if it had Lance
[] It would be a better general anti-tank vehicle because reducing armour saves has an affect against all targets, and it would be a much better anti RA tank.

Comparing "Armour Reducer" rule: "Non infantry units suffer a -1 save Modifier" to "Lance"
Unlike Lance, "Armour Reducer" only affects vehicles. It improves damage output vs all AV rather than only RA. It has a much greater impact vs RA than non-reinforced, but still not as good against Lance vs AV4+.
My opinion - This rule idea is not as good as anticipated because while it does improve damage vs the intended targets it also affects all other targets.


IMHO
Note: Edited 22/2 after feedback from Yme-Loc

TL:DR - Give the Hammerhead something similar to lance but that only affects Armoured Vehicles, so not nearly as powerful as eldar's rule against reinforced armour INF.
EG; "Armour Penetrator - Tau rail weapons use linear accelerator technology to project a solid projectile at hyper-velocity. It is capable of punching through the thickest of armour and of taking down the largest of enemies. A Non-infantry unit with Reinforced Armour that is hit by an Armour Penetrator weapon is not allowed to re-roll its saving throw."

Then test to see if cost adjustment needed, eg formation cost (225pts-250pts?). This would make Hammerheads worse per point spent vs all other armies, but better vs RA.

That could be a lot closer to the anticipated affect of the Railgun we all know and love.

I can't quite figure out your maths here. It's true that it's not always the fourth hit that kills, but it could just as easily be the sixth hit as the third hit? Are you talking about the chances of the tank surviving a certain number of hits? (ie 75% of surviving one hit, 56% of surviving two, 43% of surviving three and so on.)

Ulrik, I think so, given that 4+RA has a less than 50% chance of saving 3 hits, I'd say dptdexys intuitive guess is about right... it's certainly been my experience

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Each hit as a 25% chance of a kill (against 4+ reinforced armour), so Statistically you need 4 hits to get a 100% chance of a kill.
But each hit has the same chance of failing to pass the roll, so on Average 4 tanks with 4+ reinforced armour should have 1 tank fail on 1st hit, 1 tank fail on 2nd hit and so on.
It's correct that if you roll 16 dice all together you should end up with 4 failed saves but that is not what happens in the game regarding how amour saves are made.
If you roll each dice individually for each tank it's not always going to be the 13th,14th,15th and 16th dice rolls that fail, as above with average dice rolls only 1 of the tanks should fail on the last roll, one on the 3rd roll and so on. although this is not what happens in games either regarding how armour saves are made.

So if you don't take into account the chance of extreme rolls (as in all failing saves on 1st roll or all passing 4 rolls etc) as we are talking "average rolls". Having average dice rolls should lead to 1 kill every 2.5 hits.

Seriously? You step to me on probability with that? You come into my house and bring that weak ass first year missunderstanding of gamblers fallacy? Who do you think you are?! Shame on you! :P:P

For one thing, you do not need 4 dice for an 100% chance of a kill. thats not how probability works, and if you're going to try to pick on use of average vs mean, you gotta be more pedantic than that.

its not "every 2.5 hits" its' "1 in every 4 hits" the maths doesnt change just because the first of those 4 shots is the kill. the probability is still that it will take 4 shots to get a kill, the maths never says which of those 4 shots it will be, just that it is probable that across time 4 shots will average a single kill.

more accurage to say would be "it takes 2 hits to have a fifty percent chances to kill" which is far from "every 2.5 hits"

Every 4 hits, but on average, the killshot will be at 2.5 thats where the 2.5 in. its not "every" 2.5 at all.

you hit 40 Russ, it's still average odds that 1 will die in the first 4, one will die in the 5-8. so to kill 10, you're looking at between 37 and 40. Average that out to 38.5, divide by 10, and now you're looking at "every 3.85 hits kills"

*drops mic* :p

[edit: if you cant tell, I have my tongue firmly in cheek here, I am not, nor have ever been, a popular rap probability artist. Maths is still maths though.]

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I think that's misleading. If a Russ formation takes 5 hits, over 60% of the time the results is one kill or no kills.

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- Ulrik

Sometimes you kill four or five, and if you take that into account the average goes up sharply.

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- Ulrik

Regarding the weakness of hheads and tau as a whole, how often do players who regard them as weak shoot using markerlights?

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Well, I lost Baneblade to 5 hits from a formation of Broadsides last night so that beats even those possibly wonky stats...

Got the tongue in cheek bit, you are correct I should not have said "every" 2.5 hits gets a kill as the reference was averages it should have been the average kill shot should be on the 2.5th* roll.


* put 2.5th to join in the tongue in cheek bit