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Ok just thought I'd put this out there since everyone seems to love scatter lasers and no one seems to love star cannons due to them costing more and having less shots, but the big difference between the 2 is star cannons have ap2 while scatter lasers have a horrendus ap6. I big argument here is who cares about ap since everything gets cover saves, but after facing terminators, and alot of "Feel no pain" units, and space marines in general I decided to bring back the old star cannon.

I have testing both out and instead of maxing out with high rate of fire power have been including more star cannons in my lists and have been having much better results. against any type of unit with "Feel no pain" they are amazing and the scatter lasers just dont cut it, against big nid bugs with good armor saves, they have been cutting them down pretty fast as well, terminators tend to flop on the ground and in general they are performing quite well, the times where my scatter lasers have been out performing them is when I am facing light vehicles, but I find my missle launchers take them out just as easily, not to mention take care of fnp and also double up as troop killers with the frag option so I am questioning fielding scatter lasers at all, since I do not run accross high toughness low armor save units at all.
Now with the new blood angles getting feel no pain in almost every unit and so many other units out there with it already not to mention, high toughness low armor save big guys like demons, princes and nids, I am perminantly replacing scatter lasers with a combination of star cannons and eml. Feel no pain? Feel my star cannon! Nothin says lovin like massed ap2 in your face.

Hmm an interesting idea. It seems that the early 5th mentality of 'cover saves are everywhere! Lets run more infantry!' has been revoked and often most armies only have one or two extremely tough or large units footslogging and the rest of the army mounted.
Also in recent codex's the number of units gaining Feel no pain has increased.
Both of these point back to using high strength low AP weapons. However with the star cannons they are just too expensive. Also against most infantry units scatter lasers will out perform them for much less points. Added to this is that there is no difference between the two when targeting vehicles and you start to see why few people are using them at the moment. AP 2 is good but using the points you save in the list you could get a nice unit of Fire dragons for all the low AP loving money can buy.

Yeah, the game has deffinanly shifted from everyone taking advantage of the cover saves bye massing bodies to everyone taking advantage of all of the other goodies that they get now, I still field plenty of str 6 fire power, usually on jet bike squads and upgrades on my skimmers, but for what I use those for my elm's firing a frag perform just about as well also forcing my oponent to take a pinning check, if you force enough pinning checks they will fail, and nothing feels better than locking down a big saud of marines for a round ( properly positioned doom, combined with pinning blast templates is a very good thing) . I'll keep testing this out but I am not likely to switch back to massed scatter lasers unless they do away with fnp and I dont see guys like mephiston on the table.

GW double whammied the star cannon because of space marine player whining...

They took away a shot off the star cannon, and jacked the price up. Then gave marines enhance rules like rending assault cannons and better template rules for plasma cannons (not partial hits).

As it is the the start cannon is marginally better against MEQ and far inferior to just about anything else (Hordes, light tank hunting, etc). So if they were pointed identically it would be a difficult choice.

Seeing that the star cannon is considerably more expensive, the scatter laser is pretty much always the better choice in a take all comers list.

Classic GW rules pendulum swinging way the opposite direction...

I used to run almost pure starcannons back in 3rd; they were just that good. 3 shots, S6, AP2 at a decent price was amazing.

Then the MEQ whining got the best of GW. 2 shots, S6, AP2 at a VERY overcosted price makes them one of the worst choices in the dex.

Now, I run scatterlasers/shuricans and EMLs, along with a couple of BLs for AV14 platforms. These weapons make my list much stronger in the 5th ed environment.

Fire Dragons and Councils make a mes out of everying (even with armor saves allowed against the council), and witht e point I save dropping star cannons, I get more of these killy models.

The big difference now is "feel no pain" and the only way to take care of feel no pain units is to hit them with ap2, double there toughness, or charge them with power weapons. People have discoverd that you can counter massed cover saves with massed fire power pretty easily but dealing with feel no pain and things of that nature is a entirley different ball game, I think massed scatter lasers have lost there luster, and will work well against cirtain armies, but going into a tournament I expect the majority of my oponents if not all to be marines of some sort, and expect to see alot of marine lists to be "counts as" using the new blood angels dex.
The only army I would not feel as confident about fielding so many star cannons is ig, but even orcs with nobs and a mad doc, I think its a better choice.

True, but it's still easier to clear feel no pain in hth than stock up on starcannons...

You have a lot of other choices in the Codex. Competitively, you have fire dragons, Yriel, and linked prism cannons.

Slightly, less competitively, but still viable you have howling banshees or harlequins with doom, or wraithlords.

I think most people think of fire dragons as a 5 or 6 man naked squad, but more and more I think 10 FDs with an exarch with dragons breathe is a better choice.

It simply erases troublesome units with feel no pain like swarm lords with a retinue, and it's truly not a lot of points for the upgrade.

I'm looking for a good argument that will compell me to take scatter lasers over star cannons, but I am not seeng any yet, I see alternate options to taking out fnp, btw I would never field fire prisms given we have better heavy support choices in our dex. The problem is most people think just because you have a larger handfull of dice you are going to do better.

Scatter laser vs eml against armor 11.
assuming all 4 hit, chances to penetrate is 51.77 percent
chances to penetrate with one missle launcher is 50 percent
giving the scatter laser a 1.77 greater percent chance to penetrate a armor 11 vehicle as vehicle armor gets higher the odds of penetrating armor with the scatter laser becomes impossible. against multiple types of vehilces the edge goes the the missle launcher.

chances of a scatter laser wounding a t6 creature with a 3 plus armor save vs a eml.
assuming all 4 scatter lasers hit chances to wound a t6 creature is 50 percent generating 2 wounds.
chances to wound with the elm is 83 percent, as long as you dont roll a 1 you will wound, edge goes to scatter laser generating 2 wounds to eml 1
armor save chances are 66 percent chance to save against both the scatter laser shots vs 0 percent against the eml, assuming no cover saves. accually wounding a t6 creature with the edge goes to the eml.

so against large creatures and vehilces the eldar missle launcher is better.
against anything that has a 2 plus armor save or fnp, with a tougness of 6 or less the star cannon is far and away the more cost effient tool in the codex, ill not post the stats as there is no point its clear star cannons against ap2 t6 and below is king in this situation.


facing a army with massed low armor troops, and only low armor vehicles the scatter laser and the eml are very close, due to not needing to roll to hit with the blast and the pinning from the eml.
but if facing a army with mixed and or high toughness low armor save, including vehicles with 12 and 13 armor values the combination of the eml and star cannons accually performes much better, than the scatter lasers.

conclusion, in most cases I will bring the eldar missle launcher as it is a better weapon with more versitility,but if facing a army that includes fnp, and or 2 plus armor saves the star cannon is king, wich meens a combination of both vs the scatter laser is a statisicly better choice in almost any circumstance, you can fill fire dragons and banshees as seen fit but that will not effect the effectiveness of the weapon combos reguardless. They will still out perform scatter lasers in almost every circumstance.

I am glad you still like starcannons, but your logic is flawed.

Eldar do not kill FNP units with shooting, short of Fire Dragons and linked Prisms. We kill them in CC...win with wounds with a council/harlies/banshees/fortuned Avvy and then wipe them when they run.

We kill vehicles with shooting.

We kill hordes with shooting.

We kill tough infanty with shooting ONLY with Fire Dragons or Prisms...and then ony if there aren't better vehicle targets.

We really kill tough infantry with CC. (Of course, with a council we kill everything in CC)

Even against termies the starcannon is crap, since most SM players are using TH/SS verions now.

If you are THAT worried about FNP, you are still better off stocking up on EMLs...they kill most FNP units thanks to double toughness, and while they have one less shot, they have longer range, higher strength, and have a multipurpose role (vehicles, FNP killers, small Blast).

You are looking at scatterlasers vs. starcannons in a bubble...Eldar cannot do that. Look at the entire codex and the synergy of your list...THEN look at what you can purcahse with all of the points you save by going to SLs (a unit of FDs, etc.), and you will quickly realize how crappy Starcannons are and how badly they nerf your list. There is no question that SL+EML lists are FAR better than any lists that include the starcannons.

Well I am looking what weapon options are best suited to put on our plat forms, eg.. wave serpents. walkers ect. not a bubble, I dont want to get into a argument over this as you seem very opinionated on this topic and any deviance from your well thought and formulated opinion would be blasphemy, but unfortuantly the numbers do not lie, in almost every circumstance as stated the combination of eml's and sc's is better than bringing scatter lasers, it will make your fire dragons job easier, your harlequins will require less 6's to kill things, your banshees will require less 6's to wound things ect, it opens up more options for your elites choices and makes your army kill more efficiently, eldar are not required to kill fnp and or t6 2 up armor save units only with hth, the meta game has changed in 5th ed bye alot, and scatter lasers are becoming much less effective than ever. Looking for solid un biased well thought out logical arguments. Backed with solid facts.

I'm not sure what facts you are trying to use to back up Starcannon's being better than Scatter Lasers, I agree that your logic seems to be a bit flawed, so here is some quick but proper mathhammer for you (you appear to have ignored the need to hit in some examples above).

Starcannon vs MEQ
2 shots, 1 hit, 0.83 wounds, in cover 0.41 wounds

gets exactly the same against GEQ

Scatter Laser vs MEQ
4 shots, 2 hit, 0.56 wound, same if in cover

against GEQ, 4 shots, 2 hits, 0.83 wounds and don't care about cover

Ok so the only situation that a Starcannon is better is if it is shooting at MEQ who aren't in cover, in all other situations the Scatter Laser is better for dealing with infantry which is what it should be used for most of the time. If you want to kill T6 MCs or other such nasty things then bring Fire Dragons. Incidentally they also work out to be equally effective against TH/SS marines (0.28 wounds). Also without going into too much probability stuff its obvious that the Scatter Laser can theoretically do much more damage than a Starcannon due to the increased number of shots (the Scatter Laser could get 3 or even 4 kills if you are lucky while even assuming perfect rolling the Starcannon is only ever going to kill 2 max) and while you obviously can't assuming you will always do this it is a bonus for the Scatter Laser.

Against vehicles the Scatter Laser's 4 shots give it a huge advantage over the Starcannon, they are a great tool for popping Rhinos quickly and early (they easily outclass the EML against AV11) and against Chimera's/AV 12 you should be able to glance enough to negate their firepower long enough for your proper anti tank units to do the job (even ignoring the fact you should be trying for side armour shots with the mobility Eldar have). There isn't much stuff above AV12 which can be fielded in large numbers and your proper anti tank units like Fire Dragons, linked Prisms, Bright Lances, Avatar, Councils etc should be able to take that out for you.

The Starcannon does of course have the advantage of ignoring FNP but that doesn't show up in a huge number of games, (certainly in my area anyway) but not many units have it in any case and the majority of them are things I would usually rather just squash with Fire Dragons in one go.

This of course ignores probably the most obvious issue with taking Starcannons over Scatter Lasers, points cost. Based purely on the above analysis of performance I might consider taking Starcannons if they were priced about the same as Scatter Lasers but for 20 points more they are simply not worth it.

Weapon options for different platforms can vary quite a bit, although there are a few combinations which almost never pop up. Generally you should take the weapons loadouts you need to be able to deal with anything which you could come up against. Personally I run either Bright Lances or Scatter Lasers on Wave Serpents (always with the underslung Shuriken Cannon if possible), maybe dropping to T/L Shuriken Cannons if I need the points. War Walkers I run 2 Scatter Lasers, Wraithlords get EML and Bright Lance and Guardians (although I rarely field them) I usually just take Scatter Lasers although EML is also an option. I almost never run EML as I would usually rather either take the Bright Lance if I need proper anti tank or Scatter Lasers to deal with everything else.

The biggest problem with simply comparing star cannons vs scatter lasers is the lack of consideration of cost. Yes, in a few cases star cannons are better; but they also cost more in all cases.

One way to look at the question would be to simply look at what you could get instead of star cannons. Two star cannons for most platforms costs as much as on BL and one SL. Or take an EML and a SL. Either is going to be better than the star cannon option. For that matter, take all SL and then use the extra points you would have spent on star cannons to add in more fire dragons. A unit of 7-8 fire dragons will eat up heavy infantry or MCs.


FNP is the one area where star cannons still shine. If for some reason your local metagame is dominated by FNP then perhaps star cannons will work well for you, otherwise there are better choices.


Sliggoth

PS Fire prisms are a wonderful heavy choice

I prefer scatter lasers and shuricannons for my Serpents.
Starcannons are one shot less than in the previous incarnation of the codex
and they are too expensive for my liking.
I have other units in my Eldar army that have high AP.

The pervasiveness and ease of which one can get cover makes Star Cannon not my preference. As pointed out they're both S6 against vehicles and Scatter Lasers costing 25% less than Star Cannons goes a long way in an already high point army.

I still prefer starcannon,as they have much higher chance against Heavy armoured troops
And I never go into combats,due to the shortage of troops in my list

Ok mathhammer time! You wanted numbers? Well I'll give you numbers.

Going strictly by numbers you have to take into account cost to get the complete picture. These initial calculation will use the price for starcannon and scatter lasers for guardians and warwalkers (thus at BS3). Wraithlords and waveserpents have different points costs, which will change the numbers. If you divide the number of wounds by the points cost of the weapon it will give a more accurate indication of which suits which roles. These number also disregard coves saves, which would lower the starcannon results significantly.

zo...

Against orks

Scatterlaser causes 1.66 wounds, and 0.111 as a function of cost.
Starcannon causes 0.83 wounds, and 0.033 as a function of cost.

Against guard

Scatterlaster causes 1.11 wounds, and 0.074 as a function of cost
Starcannon causes 0.83 wounds, and 0.033 as a function of cost

Against MEQ

Scatterlaser causes 0.55 wounds, and 0.037 as a function of cost
Starcannon causes 0.83 wounds, and 0.033 as a function of cost

Against Terminators

Scatterlaser causes 0.27 wounds, and 0.018 as a function of cost
Starcannon causes 0.55 wounds, and 0.022 as a function of cost

Against TMC (T6 3+sv)

Scatterlaser causes 0.33 wounds and 0.022 as a function of cost
Starcannon causes 0.5 wounds and 0.020 as a function of cost

Against Plague Marines

Scatterlaser causes 0.44 wounds and 0.029 as a function of cost
Starcannon causes 1.33 wounds and 0.088 as a function of cost


So there you have the numbers. You can see that against terminators starcannon are almost 50% better for their cost and against plague marines starcannon are three time better. Against everything else (including TMC surprisingly) scatterlasers have the advantage.

On the point of cover:

With a 4+ cover save the starcannon loses a lot of its effectiveness. It has a 0.016 function of cost for all infantry baring plague marines, for which is has a 0.044 function. A scatterlaser is reduced to a 0.055 function for orks and guard. This means that a scatterlaser is much better against everything in cover than a starcannon with the exception of plague marines, for which a starcannon is only 50% more effective for its cost. I disregarded a TMC in cover because it is so rare that it actually happens.

So those are the true numbers, do with them what you will.