Twin-Linked weapons are supposedly two weapons directed to fire at a single point (why you would want to do this in reality, I don't know). So, why do you re-roll misses? If both weapons are linked to fire at the same point, why if one misses does the other one not? I have heard some suggestions that the two weapons make a larger fire zone, but almost all twin linked weapons are side by side, almost barrel to barrel, so the "fire zone" would be larger, as the rounds travel down range, that zone would get smaller and smaller, until they are essentially riding atop eachother. Another interpretation is that the rounds travel parrallel to eachother, but there is still the basic problem that if one whiffs it, the other isn't effectively much more likely to hit.

Instead, I propose that Twin-Linked does not give rerolls to hit, but one reroll to any result after that. So if the weapon hits, then fails to wound (or penetrate armor), reroll the result. If your opponent succeeds their armor save, they will reroll Twin-Linked wounds (but not cover saves) for a chance to fail. No rerolls on the Vehicle Damage Table, however, as both shots are hitting the same point.

Is this more complicated? Yeah, a bit. Will it slow things down? Yeah, a bit. Will it make Twin-Linked weapons more interesting? In my humble oppinion, most definitely. Will they be almost the same points wise? I don't think it will change their end result far too much, which begs the question; Why make a more complicated rules system if it isn't going to change things considerably? I have always had a raw spot when it comes to how Twin-Linked weapons work, the current rules just don't make any sense, and if anything, it will mean fewer twin-linked weapons strikes, but those strikes will be more affective, more entertaining in my opinion, and make more sense, which is the real objective of this change. And with these rules, Twin-Linked weapons should be more effective tank hunting weapons (if you're going to fail anything when attacking a vehicle, it usually seems to be the Armor Penetration roll).

Wow you utterly missed how twin linked weapons actually work.

They are linked side by side, so that if one is off a bit to the side, the one to the left of it will hit and visa versa.

There is no need to overly complicate the rules with something that doesn't even fit how the weapon is supposed to work.

See Attached Diagram. As you can see they arnt aimed at a single point, but side by side to cover a wider area, and therefore more likely to hit whatever you are aiming at (hence the reroll to hit)

Skinnattittar wrote:Twin-Linked weapons are supposedly two weapons directed to fire at a single point (why you would want to do this in reality, I don't know).

You have obviously never seen real world weapons, like the anti-aircraft guns that make an appearance in every WWII movie that features navel action. That's the kind of effect TL weapons are supposed to emulate.

I think they should get to reroll every roll!!

I'm looking foward to the new leman russ exterminator cannon. It has a rumoured twin-linked 4 autocannon shots!

@ Gwar and Book : I'm guessing you only read part of what I wrote.

Skinnattittar wrote:Another interpretation is that the rounds travel parrallel to eachother, but there is still the basic problem that if one whiffs it, the other isn't effectively much more likely to hit.

Because I clearly covered that idea as well.

@ Book : You'll notice those anti-aircraft weapons also worked completely different from how 40k models are modeled and fluffed to work. WWII AA machine guns (on ground emplacements) had their weapons mounted in very wide patterns and fired at very high rates. this created a cloud of ammunition in the air. Since then an now you can't really aim a round at the ranges they were firing, they weren't directed towards a single point, as you would still make a cloud rather than a stream of rounds. Twin-Linked Lascannons still only fire one shot at a time, so they wouldn't make that cloud effect, jsut two beams either aimed at the same point of traveling relatively close to eachother (as the models always have the weapons mounted directly next to one another). There is no representation for large fire zones increasing accuracy in 40k. Many weapons have large fire zones, bit it a massive rounds like the Vanquisher, Rail Gun, Plasma bolts (which fire a sort of beam in some fluff, in others a large ball of plasma), some eldar energy weapons, ect... why would Twin Linked get the benefit if these other weapons don't?

I can appreciate your thought process on how Twin-Linked weapons work, but mine is just as valid and better supported by history, engineering, and fluff (depending on whose and what era you are reading, of course).

A simple experiment for parallel barrels is to take two rifles, mount them side by side, and go target shooting. You are only increasing your likelyhood of hitting your target by increasing your fire-zone, but then you are still putting two rounds on target. If you miss, you still miss, but twice. The current system completely forgets about the other round once you have hit your target. Are we saying that if one hits, the other misses? We would need weapons spread far apart for this. But then what happens when you fire at hordes or utterly massive objects like buildings, super heavy tanks, Titans, the sides of regular vehicles, ect... we are forgetting a LOT more if you think about it, the way things are now.

No, no I read what you wrote.

Its still utter rubbish, but I did read it.

Skinnattittar wrote:Are we saying that if one hits, the other misses?

No, but it's a simple abstraction that gives you a better chance of hitting without straight-up doubling the firepower. You're introducing a 'fix' that's more complicated and time-consuming to 'fix' something that isn't broken.

It isn't as simple as "Re-roll missed hits" but it isn't really complicated either, just; "Re-roll failed 'to wound', 'armor penetration', or successful armor saves."

Obviously, Book and Gwar have their sights set on how Twin-Linked weapons MUST work (I'll remind everyone that there isn't anything in reality called "Twin Linked"), there really isn't much point to debating with them about it. I have my opinion (which has reality support) and they have their's, which helps keep things simpler, but I don't feel accurately reflects such a system.

I like your idea much more than the "reroll to hit" idea.

IMO, the best way to do it would be to roll once to hit, and then it would be like 2 of the weapon hit you. IE, you hit with a twin-linked lascannon, it does 2 lascannon wounds. So I hit a Carnifex with a TL Lascannon, and I wound with both, it takes 2 wounds.

If you miss, then nothing happens.

The logic works both ways, a twin linked heavy stubber isnt going to improve your change to wound/pen with a hit, but more hits. Its just an abstraction that applies to all weapons, rather than each type having separate rules. Neither is more supported by reality than the other, just different examples.

If you wanted it to be real they would just be separate weapons using 1 to hit roll (2nd Ed) or 2 guns that fire at the same target.

Most of the rules in the game are very abstracted from what it would actually be in a "real life' situation of those same events. The rules you are proposing would be more complicated than the current rules, but if you and your opponents find them to be more enjoyable, go nuts with em.

I will say that rules that are more realistic are not always the best for abstracted table top games - too many such rules and things can really bog down. But, if you like to have complicated rules to better simulate real world conditions, and your opponent does too (an important point!) then play the game that way.

Have you tried a game with these rules yet?

@ Vlad : I actually think your solution/suggestion is actually pretty good, except that there would need to be some sort of narrowing point, one roll to hit, but only one result at the same time. i.e.; one model shouldn't take two wounds from the weapon, nor should it get two results on the Vehicle Damage Table. So perhaps the final result should reflect that.

Roll to hit, roll two dice to wound/penetrate. If the model is wounded, or the armor penetrated, use only one result. Resolve as normal. Re-roll succesful armor saves.

The whole point of the 40k rules are to be simple.
The basic idea behind twin linked is that 2 guns firing in the same direction kick out more rounds in that direction so there is more chance of a hit. things like lascannons that only have one shot a turn, twin linked versions would just use a spilt second delay in the second barrel to cause the same effect.

Im more of a fan of twin linked weapons being more deadly, as in fire an extra shot or lower Ap or higher strength

My main issue with twin-linked weapons is with large targets.
There would be good chance of hitting something with a large profile like a Rhino or Land Raider with both barrels.
I've thought that getting to roll an additional chance to hit on a successful hit with a first roll natural 6 would be a good way of simulating this.
This second hit would not benefit further from twin-linked.
Though, in regards to burst and template weapons I think the current rules should stand unmodified.

- just my nickel

EDIT: in italics

Yeah it makes no sense why doesn't it get to re-roll EVERYTHING?!

My idea is just to reroll ONE die in the whole process per Twin-Linked shot. Even if it is decided that to hit is also re-rolled, I would still be happy, the majority of my first post is about how I interpret (and how it has been presented in the fluff and engineering) "Twin Linked" weapons.

I'd just make it count as two weapons, if I was re-designing the rules.

Twin linked Lascannon = two lascannons that cannot fire at different units, unlike most tank-mounted weapons.

(Note: most tank-mounted weapons can fire at different targets because that's how I'd redesign them. Obviously they can't do that now.)

That's actually a pretty nifty idea Skinnattittar. I like it.

The way we do Twin-Linking in 40K Revisited is you get the standard re-roll To Hit, but if you roll a '6' when rolling To Hit the first time (not on the re-roll), you get 2 hits with the weapon.

It can lead to situations where a weapon hits more than it shoots (ie. a Twin-Linked AssCannon can potentially hit 8 times, assuming you rolled four 6's), but we like the roll a 6 get something special style of doing it (hence the reason why Rending stays on a To Hit in our rules even if To Wound makes more sense).

That said, Skinnattittar, as I said, your idea is a nifty one and I'll be bringing it up with our group.

BYE

H.B.M.C. wrote:

The way we do Twin-Linking in 40K Revisited is you get the standard re-roll To Hit, but if you roll a '6' when rolling To Hit the first time (not on the re-roll), you get 2 hits with the weapon.

Who's this going around re-rolling sixes?

I'm quite happy with re-rolling to hit, but I've always been of the opinion that linked template weapons should be niftier than they are.

I disagree on the whole 'both shots are hitting the same point' point. That doesn't make sense.

Arctik_Firangi wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:The way we do Twin-Linking in 40K Revisited is you get the standard re-roll To Hit, but if you roll a '6' when rolling To Hit the first time (not on the re-roll), you get 2 hits with the weapon.

I disagree on the whole 'both shots are hitting the same point' point. That doesn't make sense.

Having two weapons firing at different points makes even less (with the exception "Cloud" weapons, talked about earlier). If one round is not enough to destroy your target, then a second one in the same general area but not striking at the same point isn't going to help at all. But if both round are focussing on the same point, well then slamming that point twice is definitely going to increase your chances of breaking the target. Having them fire parallel is just going to make a larger "fire zone," and not really increase your chances of hitting your target much at all.

Just blame GW. They wanted Co-Axial, called it Twin-Linked, and then said "ohh, that's the word... hm... let's put it on tanks and call it a day!"

I agree that the rule could use some tweeking. The big problem is that the second weapon in every twin-linked profile is bought at a reduced rate in every codex. This means that whatever rule is used to update has to be nerfed or GW has to simul-release every codex with the new ruleset.

I do like the idea of in addition to the normal re-roll, the first roll of a six to hit with each twin-linked weapon system per turn adds one extra hit over the normal weapon profile. Blast weapons gain one extra to wound die to add to the total number of models hit per template.

Abstraction.

Twin-linked is the step below gatling (as we know from VDR)

It represent increased R.o.F. which in the abstraction equals increased chance to hit.

I'm ok with this, and if I wanted to change anything I would just let everyone fire them twice rather then have a floating re-roll, as Orkeosaurus's solution.

Jack

@ Jack : I have no idea where you got Twin-Linked being one step below Gatling, which is a multi-barrelled, gatling gun style, version of the original weapon, firing D3 rounds.

A "floating" re-roll actually seems like a good way to run it, rather than even the whole +1 shot on 6's to hit. Remember, Space Marines and IG aren't the only ones with Twin-Linked weapons, Orks got them too, which means on 6's, which is half the shots they make, they're landing extra rounds.

@fire : Actually, if it stays at just a floating re-roll (I like that term now), then the weapon's value is not going to be that much higher than the weapon's price, so it would be okay to leave things be while GW eventually gets around to updating codices.

I couldn't quote you the page in VDR where it talks about the scale of stuff from single barrel>twin-linked>gatling but I'm pretty sure its in there.

Glad I at least provided you with some help you like

Jack

Skinnattittar: [...] Orks got them too, which means on 6's, which is half the shots they make, they're landing extra rounds.

This isn't such an issue if the '6' grants an additional to-hit, as apposed to a 'hit'

This thread give complete explanation on TL weapons:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/228159.page

LunaHound wrote:This thread give complete explanation on TL weapons:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/228159.page

Yeah, I just read through a chunk of that and they're mostly wrong. A lot is covered there, and it shouldn't be brought up here unless you are going to post it here.

Twin-Linked weapons seem nice enough as is.

Maybe a nice rule to add on is when you roll a 6 you get two wounds instead of one.

The Bringer wrote:Twin-Linked weapons seem nice enough as is.
Maybe a nice rule to add on is when you roll a 6 you get two wounds instead of one.

As I said before, this favors low BS models and is disproportionate to higher BS models. If a model with BS1 is properly priced, they will get a second wound everytime they hit once, even if they have to roll to hit again, they still get a disproportionate chance, and you're STILL not reflecting the reality of the situation. So unless we go to a weapon where you roll to hit once, then get two hits (which makes more sense) or have a "floating" reroll, double hits on 6's doesn't really reflect the situation.

Skinnattittar wrote:

Arctik_Firangi wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:The way we do Twin-Linking in 40K Revisited is you get the standard re-roll To Hit, but if you roll a '6' when rolling To Hit the first time (not on the re-roll), you get 2 hits with the weapon.

I disagree on the whole 'both shots are hitting the same point' point. That doesn't make sense.

Having two weapons firing at different points makes even less (with the exception "Cloud" weapons, talked about earlier). If one round is not enough to destroy your target, then a second one in the same general area but not striking at the same point isn't going to help at all. But if both round are focussing on the same point, well then slamming that point twice is definitely going to increase your chances of breaking the target. Having them fire parallel is just going to make a larger "fire zone," and not really increase your chances of hitting your target much at all.

It's just the idea the the weapons can pivot independently together and compensate for range in order to hit the same target twice... I can understand hitting a broad tank-like target twice, and I think that linked frag launchers ought to put that second template somewhere, but like most of your proposed rules, this is just what you would prefer, right? The re-roll to hit covers all of these scenarios.

In bold above, wut?

Arctik_Firangi wrote:

Skinnattittar wrote:

Arctik_Firangi wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:The way we do Twin-Linking in 40K Revisited is you get the standard re-roll To Hit, but if you roll a '6' when rolling To Hit the first time (not on the re-roll), you get 2 hits with the weapon.

I disagree on the whole 'both shots are hitting the same point' point. That doesn't make sense.

Having two weapons firing at different points makes even less (with the exception "Cloud" weapons, talked about earlier). If one round is not enough to destroy your target, then a second one in the same general area but not striking at the same point isn't going to help at all. But if both round are focussing on the same point, well then slamming that point twice is definitely going to increase your chances of breaking the target. Having them fire parallel is just going to make a larger "fire zone," and not really increase your chances of hitting your target much at all.

It's just the idea the the weapons can pivot independently together and compensate for range in order to hit the same target twice... I can understand hitting a broad tank-like target twice, and I think that linked frag launchers ought to put that second template somewhere, but like most of your proposed rules, this is just what you would prefer, right? The re-roll to hit covers all of these scenarios.
In bold above, wut?

Just think about it for a bit and it should make sense. Two shots travelling towards the same point, or a very very close point/small area. If one misses, why should the other hit? Was the aim off only so slightly that one misses and not the other? Well then if the first hits, shouldn't the other still be rolled for? Or are we talking about something more complex going on here...

If you have ever practiced combat BRM you would understand a bit more, perhaps, on that section in bold. 95% of the time, if you are missing your target, you are missing wide, not by a little bit, but by a good margin. Now, I do agree that a big target like a tank should be easy to hit, but you have to remember with tanks is that they are designed to be taking fire, and it can be presumed that the MBTs are designed with thought of anti-tank weapons. So the majority of tanks are inpenetrable, but they will have weaknesses.

A HMMWV (Humvee) can take anti-tank mines and rockets and still have reasonable crew survivablity, even the un-uparmored ones. But the HMMWV is only a light tactical vehicle?! Soldiers do die in them too! Well that's because they have weaknesses. Bradleys are armored personel carriers (APC/APV) designed to shrug off small arms fire. however they have been known to be penetrated by AK-47 rounds. Weaknesses.

So a Leman Russ may actually be quite capable of taking Melta and Anti-Tank rounds with more then enough left over armor for another go. However, they would have weak points; exposed tracks, sight holes, weapons joints, ect... Those are the areas to hit. Some will be small, like joints and look-outs, others will be parger, turret and tracks. Toughness of the armor would also be included, where plates meet might be thicker, and more resilient, or weaker because they are rivetted together or only have surface welds (Rivets are far weaker than surface welds, and surface welds are far weaker than deep welds, which are weaker than single forge). So there is a lot that goes into shooting a tank, even a lightly armored Rhino or Eldar Speeder will have hard points (though I doubt they would shrug off a Lascannon no matter where you hit...).

What does all that mean? Even if you miss by enough that another barrel firing to the side to strike the vehicle, odds are it won't be enough inboard to strike that weak point. Same goes for weak spots and near misses, assuming you're not actually missing by a mile.

IMO they are fine as they are.

just because they are both aimed at the same point does not mean they both fire at the exact same time.
what if one fires a second or 2 later than the 1st?
effectively you then have the 1st shot missing but give a more accurate aim for the 2nd shot afterwards.

nowhere does it say they fire at the exact same time as eachother.

JD21290: nowhere does it say they fire at the exact same time as eachother.

actually in DoW both barrels of the T-linked lascannons are shown firing at the same time, and I believe the imagery in DoW (at least the 1st one) is canon

ill state again belphegor.

Nowhere does it SAY they fire at the exact same time.

DOW is a game, and its not even close to 100% right as there are alot of faults with it.

oh, my bad JD21290.
Good call and I stand corrected.
Visual references of GW IP should not be taken into account when discussing modifying rules to more appropriately reflect the background.
Please strike my previous statement from the record.
The written word should be forever separate of the crude illustrations of artists.
Also, the simple game DoW has no connection with the untouchable faultless gilded texts of the Warhammer 40k way of life.
Thus, I stand corrected. Doubly so.

im simply saying that DOW is nothing to go by due to the ammount of faults in it.
no one here has seen such a weapon in real life (TL las), so no one here can really state how it would fire, all that can come of this is simple opinions.

That's kinda my point.
It's all made up.
So your designing rules for something that is entirely fictional you need to make-up how it works and stay consistent with the available fiction to give the universe some sort of cohesion.
(which is a struggle to say the least when it come to Wh40k in general.)
So, the T-Linked lascannons fire both barrels at the same time at a single target, based on the most widely distributed visual reference we have.
(it's one the reasons GW try's to keep a death-grip on their IP)
and unless you have at least one direct counter-reference, then that's how it works

lol, not atall, that would just be your opinion.
as are every other posts here.

so all in all, it doesent fire in any particular way.
we do not know how it works, so we could all be right or wrong.

and to be honest, i rather not waste time with pointless posts about how a fictional weapon system works lol.
rather be working on getting updates done for my 2 blogs or reading other blogs.

Actually, there have been a few weapons that could be considered "Twin Linked" the way GW has somewhat consistantly portayed their version of Twin Linked in history. The Italians, I think it was the Italians, had vehicle pintle mounted automatic pistols that were mounted side by side firing from seperate magazines on a single trigger mechanism, some time around WWI I think. The Russians later had a twin barrelled tank, though it worked completely different I believe from 40k Twin Linked (I don't think it could be fired at the same time at all). However, there is something we can reasonably assume from all the fluff on Twin-Linked weapons, both portrayed in various GW games, written in accepted cannon (I don't know of many things in DoW that could be considered wrong enough to throw the game out the window as canon) that Twin-Linked weapons fire either simultaneously or so close to simultaneously that the difference in inobservable.

Next, you, JD21290, you have even less, and by that I mean absolutely zero, nadda, zilch, pittoi, squat (not Squats as a reference source), none, total lack there of, non-existance, ect... to support your proposition. So I would ask you to please keep such unsupportable, entirely un-defensible, pointless, and frivolous comments and suggestions.

However, that is not what we are hear for. This is not "Fluff for Nutters" or "General Discussion," this is Proposed Rules.

i take it you have seen a TL lascannon fire in real life then?
if not then you have just about as much info as i have.

ok, using a ref. from older things such as tanks, great, but this is 40k and alot of things are different.



just as a semi-old reference here, but in the previous ork dex if a dread took 2 or more of the same weapon it became TL, now, they were not next to each other like most TL weps, so would they have the same function, or different?

JD21290 wrote:i take it you have seen a TL lascannon fire in real life then?

Yes.

JD21290 wrote:just as a semi-old reference here, but in the previous ork dex if a dread took 2 or more of the same weapon it became TL, now, they were not next to each other like most TL weps, so would they have the same function, or different?

Congrats! You have found one outdated reference! The Eldar used to (they may still) have a similiar model with that same idea, though for them it was a horrible option that nobody took (anyone with half a brain at least). As far as I know, those are the only two that come close to being modern Twin-Linked weapons cases where the weapons AREN'T side-by-side mounted.

i would like to know where this time machine is.


i was simply giving a reference of a TL weapon that was not side by side.
nothing worse than an old tank.

also, by taking vulkan in an army it TL's weapons (?), so, how does it work with them?

JD21290 wrote: would like to know where this time machine is.

Corner room, fifth desk in the center isle, third drawer down on the right hand side. Open the secret bottom, reach down under the spinal ganglion, under the thirteenth magazine you see. Becareful, their might be highwaymen along the way, they keep snarks for pets.

JD21290 wrote:i was simply giving a reference of a TL weapon that was not side by side.
nothing worse than an old tank.

also, by taking vulkan in an army it TL's weapons (?), so, how does it work with them?

First off, you don't seem very confident of that rule you seem to be trying to palm off as fact. It could be true, but I don't know and you don't seem to either, so please can it. Second, it's another rare exception, we can't base everything on exceptions. 40k is chalk full of exceptions. 99.9% of all Twin-Linked weapons are mounted side-by-side and on vehicles. Let us work from those facts, shall we?

JD21290 wrote:just because they are both aimed at the same point does not mean they both fire at the exact same time.
what if one fires a second or 2 later than the 1st?
effectively you then have the 1st shot missing but give a more accurate aim for the 2nd shot afterwards.

And what does the second cannon do if the first one hits it target and fails to destroy it?

According to the twin-linked rules, it does nothing. It just sits there and waits for the first cannon to be ready to fire again.

It's illogical.

skinn: i posted the ? because i was unsure of the spelling of vulkan, not the rule.
so, 99.9% are based side by side? so, how many variations of TL weapons are there?


ork: i would guess the 2nd shot misses.
seems more viable than 2 fire together at the same point, as they would either both hit or both miss.
seems to work better with the rules idea.

Why would the second shot always miss though?

They can hit it the first time, but they can't hit it again?

Surely it would have at least as good of a chance to hit as the first one, after all, it's supposed to adjust it's shot based on where the first one lands.

Let's look at a Land Raider. If those cannons fire simultaneously, a marine hit in the chest would not be hit by the other barrel, unless he was pulling a stupid pose. It's possible but not likely. Stormbolters have their barrels very close together, multiple barrels implies a design for using alternating barrels (higher rate of fire) and/or a dual-magazine (higher rate of fire). But wait, these are assault 2! Now look at the linked bolters back on the Land Raider. They're pretty far apart...

Barrelled firearms with solid ammunition (as opposed to laser/balls of energy) are just inherently inaccurate.
Two guns strapped together aren't going to be as accurate - that should be pretty obvious. If they fire out of phase they;'re going to throw one another off quickly, and if they fire simultaneously then the greater recoil would necessitate more time to restabilise... If it's firing faster it's less accurate, if it fires slowly to compensate, it gets less shots off. If we're looking at a twin-linked ork shoota, whereas a stormbolter is probably designed to compensate for off-centre recoil.

This is just as speculative as what anyone else has said, but I'm just saying that your opinion is not irrefutable, within the fluff or no. Remember that the rules are an abstraction - an autogun doesn't just fire two bullets in an entire round when you rapid-fire, and Eldar catapults are supposed to absolutely piss shurikens. You could up the scale by making wounds more in-detail, and rolling a lot more dice to-hit, but that's just a pain. Twin-linked is easy and it makes sense, unless you insist that the barrels are pointing inwards, which simply cannot work.

Uh.. who are you talking to?

@ Arktik- good explanation. Now if I might add.

Actually, lets look at the defensive armaments of WWII bombers. They are what GW considers twin-linked. Look at the gun footage from those turrets and its easy to see how only one barrel hits while the other doesn't.

I know, I know, the planes were travelling faster and you have the effects of mass and friction. GW doesn't take these factors into play because the added complication of solid mass vs energy vs wave vs particle weapons would slow and complicate the game to 2nd ed(biblical) proportions.

What I'm getting at is 2 guns linked firing at the same time from the same mounting have a completely different downrange characteristic than 2 weapons firing parallel simultaneously. GW represents this as recoil for solid mass weapons and something like parallel energy shots affect each others path through something like rotating magnetic containment fields that push/pull each other.

Is this truth verbatim? No
Is this how I interpret the function and reason? Yes
Is this how you have to see it? Heck No.

One little clarification, the side by side mountings on aircraft fired parallel. The wingtip guns on fighters were aimed inwards at pilots preference. Generally the allied pilots used 100-200 yard convergent points where as the Luftwaffe pilots would set as low as a 50 yard centerpoint. From what I understand, the pointing inward for convergence only is effective if the guns are more than six feet apart.

Arctik_Firangi wrote:Let's look at a Land Raider. If those cannons fire simultaneously, a marine hit in the chest would not be hit by the other barrel, unless he was pulling a stupid pose. It's possible but not likely. Stormbolters have their barrels very close together, multiple barrels implies a design for using alternating barrels (higher rate of fire) and/or a dual-magazine (higher rate of fire). But wait, these are assault 2! Now look at the linked bolters back on the Land Raider. They're pretty far apart...

That would be great, if anybody fired at individual, man-sized models.

Lascannons are anti-tank weapons; 3/4 of the time they are fired at tanks. Or monstrous creatures, which are much the same. Now, there is virtually never a situation where the two barrels being a foot and a half apart means that only one is able to hit the tank.

Now if you're not firing at a tank, what are you firing at? An independent character?

No, you're nearly always firing at a unit, a squad of ten or so models, so spraying those models with twice the number of shots should do, approximately, twice the amount of damage. Not 1.3 times as much.

And, if a twin-linked weapon was resolved as two, the chance of both hitting would be lower.

Barrelled firearms with solid ammunition (as opposed to laser/balls of energy) are just inherently inaccurate.
Two guns strapped together aren't going to be as accurate - that should be pretty obvious. If they fire out of phase they;'re going to throw one another off quickly, and if they fire simultaneously then the greater recoil would necessitate more time to restabilise... If it's firing faster it's less accurate, if it fires slowly to compensate, it gets less shots off. If we're looking at a twin-linked ork shoota, whereas a stormbolter is probably designed to compensate for off-centre recoil.

First of all, no, Heavy Bolters don't have that much recoil. A space marine - who is strong, yes, and is wearing power armor, yes, but is still and infantry sized model - can fire a heavy bolter. Are you saying that a tank wouldn't have the ability to handle twice as much recoil? Seriously? Even though it's already known that a tank can move and fire while a space marine cannot?

Second, if a lascannon has the ability to fire once in the time it takes to reload, or recharge, or whatever, then it wouldn't be slowed down at all by firing them out of phase. You fire the first shot, fire the second shot, fire the first shot, fire the second shot, and since twin-linked weapons are usually no more than a foot and a half apart, there's not much of a need to re-aim, apart from using the right targeter when you fire the right one, and the left targeter when you fire the left one.

This is just as speculative as what anyone else has said, but I'm just saying that your opinion is not irrefutable, within the fluff or no. Remember that the rules are an abstraction - an autogun doesn't just fire two bullets in an entire round when you rapid-fire, and Eldar catapults are supposed to absolutely piss shurikens. You could up the scale by making wounds more in-detail, and rolling a lot more dice to-hit, but that's just a pain. Twin-linked is easy and it makes sense, unless you insist that the barrels are pointing inwards, which simply cannot work.

The rules aren't entirely an abstraction of a real combat; this isn't Chess, this is a miniatures game, made to sell the miniatures it is played with, which means the capabilities of what a model can do should tie into the miniatures appearance, and to how whatever the model is a model of would theoretically have the capability to do.

It is not intuitive for the two lascannons mounted on the turret to be significantly less powerful than the two lascannons mounted on the vehicle's sides. It is not intuitive for a model spraying a squad of orks with two miniguns to be doing barely any more damage than one.

You talk about simplicity, but one of the strongest principles of simplicity in a game is for the mechanics to be intuitive; the two guns on the side of the tank should be as powerful as the two on the turret. Hitting a tank with two laser beams should have better chance of hurting it than one.

What is the benefit to this abstraction? Not all that nonsense about "rolling a billion shots for an assault cannon and applying wounds to the ork's limbs," what is the benefit of the abstraction of twin-linked weapons to the gameplay? What makes it more "tactical?" What makes it easier? Do you really think rolling four dice twice takes longer than rolling two dice three times?

Personally, I don't see a single benefit. I see a counter-intuitive mechanic that makes two guns here far less powerful than two guns there, and makes it a bitch to try and keep track of whether something has two guns, or one twin-linked gun, or a second weapon entirely. (See: Bolters, Combi-Bolters, Storm Bolters)

Also, there is nothing in the core game that is anything close to a bomber. I can't even think of anything besides Wazdakka that can shoot after moving over 12".

Orkeosaurus wrote:That would be great, if anybody fired at individual, man-sized models.

Lascannons are anti-tank weapons; 3/4 of the time they are fired at tanks. Or monstrous creatures, which are much the same. Now, there is virtually never a situation where the two barrels being a foot and a half apart means that only one is able to hit the tank.

Now if you're not firing at a tank, what are you firing at? An independent character?

No, you're nearly always firing at a unit, a squad of ten or so models, so spraying those models with twice the number of shots should do, approximately, twice the amount of damage. Not 1.3 times as much.

And, if a twin-linked weapon was resolved as two, the chance of both hitting would be lower.

Not necessarily true. there is a reason why the military moved to 3 round bursts. Cover fire is inherently much less accurate and much more wasteful.
There are times where you are going for the insta kill on the toughness 4 multiwound model and its not a mosterous creature. So please to not make assumptions.
We're talking about twin-linking in general not just lascannons.

Orkeosaurus wrote:First of all, no, Heavy Bolters don't have that much recoil. A space marine - who is strong, yes, and is wearing power armor, yes, but is still and infantry sized model - can fire a heavy bolter. Are you saying that a tank wouldn't have the ability to handle twice as much recoil? Seriously? Even though it's already known that a tank can move and fire while a space marine cannot?

A person can fire a shotgun, doesn't mean the recoils isn't a b***h. Now a bolter is more powerful than a shotgun, the recoils still there and with a higher RoF(Rate of Fire) Talk to a Marine about firing a .50 cal and he'll tell you that the recoil is awsome. They train to get used to it but a .50 cal machinegune is in no way as accurate as a .50 cal sniper rifle.
Also its all speculation as to that there aren't any bolters. Closest thing to it is firing an auto shotgun loaded with magnum slugs. Why slugs? Because they produce a heckuva lot more recoil than buck-shot.

Orkeosaurus wrote:Second, if a lascannon has the ability to fire once in the time it takes to reload, or recharge, or whatever, then it wouldn't be slowed down at all by firing them out of phase. You fire the first shot, fire the second shot, fire the first shot, fire the second shot, and since twin-linked weapons are usually no more than a foot and a half apart, there's not much of a need to re-aim, apart from using the right targeter when you fire the right one, and the left targeter when you fire the left one.

I covered this up thread. It has to do with simplification of the rules so as the game doesn't become 2nd ed again. There arre many scientific reasons that could be thought up as to why the rule works this way: Power cell can only discharge at a certain rate or magnetic containment fields interfere with one another but the real reason is for streamlined gameplay.

Orkeosaurus wrote:It is not intuitive for the two lascannons mounted on the turret to be significantly less powerful than the two lascannons mounted on the vehicle's sides. It is not intuitive for a model spraying a squad of orks with two miniguns to be doing barely any more damage than one.

You talk about simplicity, but one of the strongest principles of simplicity in a game is for the mechanics to be intuitive; the two guns on the side of the tank should be as powerful as the two on the turret. Hitting a tank with two laser beams should have better chance of hurting it than one.

Unless they are sharing the same powerline to the power source.

Orkeosaurus wrote:Personally, I don't see a single benefit. I see a counter-intuitive mechanic that makes two guns here far less powerful than two guns there, and makes it a bitch to try and keep track of whether something has two guns, or one twin-linked gun, or a second weapon entirely. (See: Bolters, Combi-Bolters, Storm Bolters)

Ah, so this has less to do with logic and is more of a personal pet peeve. Here is your intuitive, take 2 guns to the range. Fire with your left hand, then with your right, and then both at the same time. Compare yopur scores and remember the feeling of the recoil. If this doesn't convince you then get to know the local collectors and afficianado's. one of them will have one of the old double or quad guns operated on a single mount and operated by a camshaft. Set to fire singly, then fire multiples. once again compare your levels of accuracy. If this doesn't convince you then there is no hope.

Orkeosaurus wrote:Also, there is nothing in the core game that is anything close to a bomber. I can't even think of anything besides Wazdakka that can shoot after moving over 12".

Ah, but we're not just dealing with the core game. Apoc uses the base game codices and rules with things like bombers. Twin-linked rule makes sense. Now would I complain if it was changed and I got to throw an extra Die or two? No, not one bit. But if that happened you would see a rewrite on every new book to where only rapid fire, assault 1 or 2, and heavy 1's could be twin-linked.

focusedfire wrote:Not necessarily true. there is a reason why the military moved to 3 round bursts. Cover fire is inherently much less accurate and much more wasteful.
There are times where you are going for the insta kill on the toughness 4 multiwound model and its not a mosterous creature. So please to not make assumptions.
We're talking about twin-linking in general not just lascannons.

So the rules should be written for the off chance that the weapons are being fired at an idependent character, as opposed to the units that the weapon is designed to go against?

Besides, I don't know that it is that absurd for a twin-linked lascannon to hit a marine with both barrels. Blow both his arms off at least.

A person can fire a shotgun, doesn't mean the recoils isn't a b***h. Now a bolter is more powerful than a shotgun, the recoils still there and with a higher RoF(Rate of Fire) Talk to a Marine about firing a .50 cal and he'll tell you that the recoil is awsome. They train to get used to it but a .50 cal machinegune is in no way as accurate as a .50 cal sniper rifle.
Also its all speculation as to that there aren't any bolters. Closest thing to it is firing an auto shotgun loaded with magnum slugs. Why slugs? Because they produce a heckuva lot more recoil than buck-shot.

It has nothing to do with what kind of recoil a person can handle, it has everything to do with what kind of recoil a weapon mounted in the turret of a tank can handle. Which is over twice the amount a person can.

I covered this up thread. It has to do with simplification of the rules so as the game doesn't become 2nd ed again. There arre many scientific reasons that could be thought up as to why the rule works this way: Power cell can only discharge at a certain rate or magnetic containment fields interfere with one another but the real reason is for streamlined gameplay.

Except it doesn't do anything to make the game simpler.

There is no added complexity to it counting as two weapons.

Unless they are sharing the same powerline to the power source.

Why would there be two barrels if it could only muster as much power as one lascannon?

Plus, regardless, that's not at all intuitive. Two guns = two guns. Making up reasons for one pair of guns to be exceptionally weak without there being any sign of that breaks the connection the model is suposed to have to the game.

Ah, so this has less to do with logic and is more of a personal pet peeve. Here is your intuitive, take 2 guns to the range. Fire with your left hand, then with your right, and then both at the same time. Compare yopur scores and remember the feeling of the recoil. If this doesn't convince you then get to know the local collectors and afficianado's. one of them will have one of the old double or quad guns operated on a single mount and operated by a camshaft. Set to fire singly, then fire multiples. once again compare your levels of accuracy. If this doesn't convince you then there is no hope.

I'll fix this for you:

Here is your intuitive, take 2 guns to the range. Mount the guns in the turret of a tank. Fire with your left hand, then with your right, and then both at the same time. Compare yopur scores and remember the feeling of the recoil.

Also, it has nothing to do with a "personal pet peeve," it has to do with it being a counter-intuitive game mechanic, that adds complexity to the game with no real benefit.

You yourself were whining about the game's complexity, so don't act like that's insignificant.

Ah, but we're not just dealing with the core game. Apoc uses the base game codices and rules with things like bombers. Twin-linked rule makes sense. Now would I complain if it was changed and I got to throw an extra Die or two? No, not one bit. But if that happened you would see a rewrite on every new book to where only rapid fire, assault 1 or 2, and heavy 1's could be twin-linked.

First of all, making the core game rules try to fit whatever nonsense people do in Apoc is doomed to failure.

GW doesn't do it, they let people figure it out themselves. They don't do it for a good reason.

Second, there's nothing about my rule that wouldn't work perfectly fine with the flyer rules. There's a 1/36 chance of you hitting a flyer with both shots, it barely even comes up.

Third, I didn't say GW should come out with 6th edition next month to replace the twin-linked rules, so don't get into hysterics. Yes, if I replaced the twin-linked rules it would be simultaneous with a lot of changes. The codices being in limbo would not be an issue.

First) never said independent character. Your making assumptions and you know what that does.

Second) Except not all twin-linking occurs on tanks. As a matter of fact its pretty rare. The game mech is set that infantry with 2 of the same weapon is twin-linked but on the Tank they are not twin-linked unless otherwise noted.(Its a game mechanic to give you a balance increase of fire power when the math says that it can only be a fraction more because a full point more is too powerful.)

As to the Tank mounts, fire pintle mounted twin .50's and see how smooth and accurate you are.

Third) The added complexity is rewritting everything just so you can use whole numbers is way more complex than a system that allows that 1/3 increase where its needed. Your way wouldn't just add an extra die but triple the number bieng rolled just so everything is based off of whole numbers.

Fourth) Because it isn't the same power but 1/3 more powerful. Not a bad upgrade on an existing chassis by simply adding a barrel as opposed to retrofitting a whole new power system. It makes sense in war by being cheap.

Fifth) Here fix this for you. Go to range and fire pintle mounted twin .50s one handed and after they pick up all of your friendly fire casualties you'll have a long time in military prison to figure out what was wrong with your idea.
You still seem to think everything twin-linked is in a turret. Must be an Armored comp player.
But here lets keep playing. Fire those twin guns with one mag empty and then with them both loaded and see if your any more accurate per round fired. Until you do that and realize that more bullets doesn't equate to greater accuracy it just equals more bullets being less acurate but still more bullets there will be no agreement here.

Will you two stop bickering like a couple of old crones and get back on the subject?

Simple fact of the matter is that we are all agreeing that Twin-Linked weapons are two weapons firing on the generally same target. I am seeing many suggestions that Twin-Linked weapons fire staggered (one, then the other) rounds. The bare FACT of the matter it, there is not a single word of fluff supporting that idea, but there is PLENTY of fluff supporting simultaneous fire (books, story clips in codices, games of all the eras [Daw of War, Rites of War, Chaos Gate, Armageddon], battle reports from White Dwarf, ect...). Is it possible that Twin-Linked weapons still have the option to stagger their fire? Well... I guess so, I haven't heard it written or anything that they CAN'T, then again, I haven't unseen the tooth fairy either. Though I'll say without a doubt there wasn't a magical fairy sneaking into my room, when I was a little kid, to collect my teeth.

@Skinny- Upon examination of the original post it seems we were on subject.

There was nothing in the OP about whether the fire from twin-linked weapons were staggered or simultaneous. Yes we agree its 2 weapons firing...LINKED.

The fire being staggered or simultaneous doesn't change the arguments one way or another as to why the current rules are as they are.

We were discussing the reasons and mechanics of why twin-linking is the way it is and what it would take to change the system as you and others proposed. Or rather that firing linked weapons affects accuracy. example:

Pls remember that the actual on target numbers are just used as example as opposed to being any kind of hard real world number.

Higher Rate of Fire = more bullets in general area(twice as many rounds)
Higher Rate of Fire = overall lower on target percentage(only 6 rounds in a hundred hit as opposed to 9 rounds in a hundred)
Math to represent the increased Rate of fire you take the lowered on target percentage and double by the rounds fired and you get 12 on target.
12 is a 1/3 improvement over 9

reason why on target percentage drops is that increasing rate of fire has always dropped the hit to shot ratio(yes even on a tank)

Is this 100% real world accurate? NO
Is this a mechanic that allows for the use of fractions to balance the game? YES
Does just rolling extra dice for the extra gunbarrel seem simpler? Yes
Is this the reality of what would happen? NO
Would the game designers have to triple the dice rolled by all other weapons to restore balance? YES
Is rolling 3x the nuber of shooting dice simpler than the current way? NO

focusedfire wrote:First) never said independent character. Your making assumptions and you know what that does.

How many single-model, man-sized, units are there that aren't independent characters? Not many.

Second) Except not all twin-linking occurs on tanks. As a matter of fact its pretty rare. The game mech is set that infantry with 2 of the same weapon is twin-linked but on the Tank they are not twin-linked unless otherwise noted.(Its a game mechanic to give you a balance increase of fire power when the math says that it can only be a fraction more because a full point more is too powerful.)

It's rare for twin-linked weapons to be on tanks? Really?

What is an example of a common, twin-linked weapon that is not mounted on: a) a vehicle b) a monstrous creature, or c) an extremely large, bulky suit of armor, a la Terminators or Battlesuits.

Chances are whatever this weapon is will be far less than a Heavy Bolter.

As to the Tank mounts, fire pintle mounted twin .50's and see how smooth and accurate you are.

1. We're not talking about pintle mounted weapons and you know it. Name one pintle-mounted weapon that's twin-linked. I can't think of anything besides the combi-bolter, and a bolter is quite a bit lighter than a .50.

2. I bet I'll be more accurate with two pintle mounted .50s than I would be with one .50 held in my hands.

Third) The added complexity is rewritting everything just so you can use whole numbers is way more complex than a system that allows that 1/3 increase where its needed. Your way wouldn't just add an extra die but triple the number bieng rolled just so everything is based off of whole numbers.

What? How would it triple the number of dice being rolled?

Rolling an extra dice takes less time than rolling a dice twice.

And as I already said, and you want to ignore, evidently, I'm not saying 5th edition should be recalled so that the twin-linked rules can be improved.
I'm saying that if the game was redone, the twin-linking rules should be made more intuitive.

Fourth) Because it isn't the same power but 1/3 more powerful. Not a bad upgrade on an existing chassis by simply adding a barrel as opposed to retrofitting a whole new power system. It makes sense in war by being cheap.

You're crossing the game mechanics with fluff.

No where in the fluff does it say that a twin-linked weapon only has the same amount of power as a regular weapon, nor does it say a twin-linked lascannon is significantly less powerful than two lascannons. It's the game mechanic.

Fifth) Here fix this for you. Go to range and fire pintle mounted twin .50s one handed and after they pick up all of your friendly fire casualties you'll have a long time in military prison to figure out what was wrong with your idea.

I must have lost brain cells reading that.

You still seem to think everything twin-linked is in a turret. Must be an Armored comp player.

I'm pretty sure most AC tanks don't have twin-linked weapons in the turret, but regardless, it doesn't have to be in the turret. They can be sponsons. They can be hull mounted. They can be fastened to a monstrous creature, or a huge exoskeleton. They aren't going to be pintle mounted, even though you keep trying to skirt that issue with your .50 nonsense, unless they're a already a weapon that's a basic small-arm.

No matter where they're placed, a powerful twin-linked weapon will be somewhere with enough stability for it to fire without the recoil making any larger an impact than it would make on a model that carries that weapon normally.

Eg: Devastator with a Heavy Bolter vs. Land Raider with Twin-Linked Heavy Bolters.

Terminator with a Combi-Bolter vs. Chaos Marine with Bolter.

Ork boy with a Big Shoota vs. Warbike with a TL Dakkagun.

But here lets keep playing. Fire those twin guns with one mag empty and then with them both loaded and see if your any more accurate per round fired. Until you do that and realize that more bullets doesn't equate to greater accuracy it just equals more bullets being less acurate but still more bullets there will be no agreement here.

Let's not keep playing, because I'm talking about a situation with little to no recoil, like the majority of the situations someone would be firing a twin-linked weapon in.

I never said more bullets means more accuracy, and given that the rules you favor make twin-linked weapons more accurate, but with less shots, I fail to see the merit of your point. What I'm saying is that twice the weaponry should equal twice the shots, especially when you take into consideration the fact that many if not most twin-linked weapons are weapons that have very little recoil in the first place, and every twin-linked weapon that I know of that has a significant amount of recoil is mounted somewhere that can take far more recoil than where the weapon is mounted when not twin-linked.

We were discussing the reasons and mechanics of why twin-linking is the way it is and what it would take to change the system as you and others proposed. Or rather that firing linked weapons affects accuracy. example:

Pls remember that the actual on target numbers are just used as example as opposed to being any kind of hard real world number.

Higher Rate of Fire = more bullets in general area(twice as many rounds)
Higher Rate of Fire = overall lower on target percentage(only 6 rounds in a hundred hit as opposed to 9 rounds in a hundred)
Math to represent the increased Rate of fire you take the lowered on target percentage and double by the rounds fired and you get 12 on target.
12 is a 1/3 improvement over 9

reason why on target percentage drops is that increasing rate of fire has always dropped the hit to shot ratio(yes even on a tank)

The twin-linked rules are supposed to represent a greater amount of shots with reduced accuracy by artificially reducing the number shots the weapon has, and increasing the weapon's accuracy. Okay.

There's nothing sensible or intuitive about that. It's simply not a necessary rule for anything, and it complicates the game.

I still don't see how exactly the accuracy would be as reduced as you say. Most twin-linked weapons have little to no recoil, or are mounted in such a way as to reduce the recoil a lot. Most targets in the game are at a relatively short distance from the tank, and many targets are either so large that hitting them with both barrels should be easy (vehicles, MC, some other units), or forming a large mob that can soak up fire (just about any squad with more than 10 models). Even the full 2" coherency isn't a lot, that's what makes blast weapons any use.

Furthermore, there are no accuracy modifiers in the game for distance. There are none for the speed at which the firer or the target has moved, there are none for whether or not the firing unit is under fire themselves, there are none for the size of the target, etc, etc. It's inconsistent for something as minor as the dip in the accuracy for firing a twin-linked weapon to reduce a weapon's accuracy by 1/3 while there are no modifiers for so many far more important things.

It's a needless special rule.

Is my mechanic 100% real world accurate? NO
Is this a mechanic that makes the game more intuitive and connected to the models? YES
Is rolling extra dice for the extra gunbarrel simpler? YES
Is it easier to not have to remember whether something has two weapons or one twin-linked weapon? YES
Is this the reality of what would happen? NO
Is the current twin-linked rule the reality of what would happen? NO
Would there be any major problems if the rule was changed at a period in time when the rules were undergoing changes everywhere? NO
Would there be any reason to roll 3x the number of dice that are being rolled now? NO
Does Games Workshop have a need for fractions of a weapon? NO

Orke-

I served in the military and operated some of the systems that you so casually claim knowledge of. You sound to me as someone whom has never had much experience with guns whether civilian or military.I'm not trying to be a d**k, just telling you how your coming across.

From my personal experience and training, the basic rule of thumb is that the faster or higher the volume of fire, the lower overall percentage of shots are on target. Also these systems kick, A LOT. The Vulcan on the A-10 can't fire sustained or it will cause the plane to stall. Ask around about female crew persons experiences when certain high rate of fire weapons start resonating through combat vehicles. Not trying to be gross just pointing out that you can feel it.

Sorry if this is snarky but your starting to make me feel like I'm wasting my time. If you can't grasp overall game balance and the need to use fractions then the fact that overall percentage can be down while having more hits on target will probably be unfathomable. Not trying to be a jerk, just frustrated that I'm unable to communicate the point.

You seem to think this is an all tank game where in fact its roots are in squad actions. The playing board is really to small for accurate representation of vehicles.
The Game designers do their best to represent basic real world tactics and concepts through a balancing rule system that compensates for various factors including an unrealistically small battlefield.

This system is a mathematical system of percentages working off of D6 dice.
Now divide 100 by 6 and see if you don't come up with decimals, or more simply fractions of whole numbers.

This system isn't about just one or two vehicles or units that get a twin-linked weapon but a vast array of units that act as variables in the mathematical equation that is the gaming system. When you change one variable you affect the overall balance of the equation. If the equation becomes too unbalanced the mathematical construct will fail and you will have an unplayable gaming system.

Now you want take something that needs to be 1/3 better to balance and improve by a whole 1, thus improving the unit by 2/3 more than needed. in order to restore balance to the structure you will have to find a way of making everything else 2/3 better because you don't want to deal with fractions. The simplest way of doing this is adding more dice to everything else which is a heckuva lot more cumbersome than reroll your misses.

Oh yeah one of the other things the system reflects is that no matter the war, there are bean counters there to cut costs. That was why I mentioned cost of tank redisign. If you ever serve you find out just how much the budget determines your equipment and safety. I'll give you a historical example.

The allies didn't win WWII because their tanks were better but because they could make more of them. Case in point. It took 4 shermans tanks to take out one tiger tank.

The tigers armor was to tough for the small American battle cannons except on its rear. The only liability with the tiger was that the turret was so heavy that its turn rate was very slow. The americans adopted a tactic that sacrifice three of the shermans so that the fourth could outflank and get the rear shot.

Why not build a better tank? Because those three tanks and their crews were cheaper to train and produce than the one tiger.

As to the commonality of twin-linking and what gets it. Read all of the codices and the BRB and you'll see what I'm getting at.

As to the power of the sci-fantasy weapon, it seems you both over-estimate and under estimate its abilities at the same time. Maybe we;ll discuss it later.

focusedfire wrote:Orke-

I served in the military and operated some of the systems that you so casually claim knowledge of. You sound to me as someone whom has never had much experience with guns whether civilian or military.I'm not trying to be a d**k, just telling you how your coming across.

From my personal experience and training, the basic rule of thumb is that the faster or higher the volume of fire, the lower overall percentage of shots are on target. Also these systems kick, A LOT. The Vulcan on the A-10 can't fire sustained or it will cause the plane to stall. Ask around about female crew persons experiences when certain high rate of fire weapons start resonating through combat vehicles. Not trying to be gross just pointing out that you can feel it.

What systems kick?

Do your Heavy Bolters kick a lot? Your Lascannons? Since those are the only systems I've ever "casually claimed knowledge of"?

I'm not saying big guns have no recoil. I'm not even saying a gun has little recoil when mounted in a tank.

I'm saying that a weapon that can be accurately fired while held by a single person is not going to have so much recoil that it will be difficult to aim two of them when they are mounted in a tank.

All of your talking about real combat skirts around that. You keep bringing up weapons that have a lot of recoil and saying "see? This is another thing with a lot of recoil! You can't fire one in each hand!"

I get it. What I'm saying is that twin-linked weapons are not going to have that much recoil, because they are commonly used by infantry in their non twin-linked form, and rarely used by anything that isn't far larger in their twin-linked form.

Also, I acknowledge there would be some lack of accuracy, for some weapons. That doesn't mean that every weapon needs to take a major hit in accuracy, when there aren't modifiers for things far more important, since, as I've said, twin-linked weapons just aren't going to have that much recoil, simply because they're never mounted on something that can't easily shake that kind of recoil off.

Also, most weapons in the game have little to no recoil.

Imperium: About half and half. For every Heavy Bolter and Autocannon there's a Multi-Melta and a Lascannon.
Chaos: Same as Imperium.
Orks: Most do have a lot of recoil. Otherwise it wouldn't be proppa.
Eldar: Very little recoil for the weapons that even have any.
Dark Eldar: Same as Eldar.
Tau: Some recoil, but less so than the Imperium, due to all the plasma.
Tyranids: I would guess very little recoil. Maybe some from the Venom Cannon.
Necrons: I don't think have any twin-linked weapons. No recoil if they did.

Sorry if this is snarky but your starting to make me feel like I'm wasting my time. If you can't grasp overall game balance and the need to use fractions then the fact that overall percentage can be down while having more hits on target will probably be unfathomable. Not trying to be a jerk, just frustrated that I'm unable to communicate the point.

I understand exactly what you said.

I just don't think it's significant enough of a difference, in enough situations, to justify as special rules being written out for it, especially when that rule makes thing more unrealistic the other half of the time.

You seem to think this is an all tank game where in fact its roots are in squad actions. The playing board is really to small for accurate representation of vehicles.
The Game designers do their best to represent basic real world tactics and concepts through a balancing rule system that compensates for various factors including an unrealistically small battlefield.

I talk about tanks because most twin-linked weapons are mounted on vehicles. Those that are not are nearly always mounted on monstrous creatures or hulking exoskeletons, so are much the same thing. Yeah, there are more tactical squads than tanks, but they aren't carrying twin-linked weapons around, so what's the significance?

This system is a mathematical system of percentages working off of D6 dice.
Now divide 100 by 6 and see if you don't come up with decimals, or more simply fractions of whole numbers.

This system isn't about just one or two vehicles or units that get a twin-linked weapon but a vast array of units that act as variables in the mathematical equation that is the gaming system. When you change one variable you affect the overall balance of the equation. If the equation becomes too unbalanced the mathematical construct will fail and you will have an unplayable gaming system.

Hate to say it, but nothing in 40k is that carefully balanced. There are no equations to be invalidated. They barely even playtest half the time.

Did making Troops the only scoring units "throw of the equation?" How about Kill Points? How about making vehicles more difficult to kill, but always hit on their rear armor?

Games Workshop isn't using an equation, they're making it up as they go along. Besides, I've said numerous times, this would be a change enacted with quite a few others. It would probably be a rewrite of the codices currently in print. It's not realistic, but hell, GW's never going to ask me for advice regardless.

Now you want take something that needs to be 1/3 better to balance and improve by a whole 1, thus improving the unit by 2/3 more than needed. in order to restore balance to the structure you will have to find a way of making everything else 2/3 better because you don't want to deal with fractions. The simplest way of doing this is adding more dice to everything else which is a heckuva lot more cumbersome than reroll your misses.

Except the game has no need to be that fine-tuned. There is no formula, there is no situation where a GW game designer goes "oh man... if only I had a lascannon that was 33% more powerful than a regular one!"

After all, what happens if a space marine Lascannon needs to be 2/3 better? Twin-Linking can't help. What if an ork rokkit only needs to be 1/3 better? Oh no! Twin-Linking can't do anything about that either, but nonetheless the armies get by.

Pretty much everything can be adjusted with point costs. If something has a lot of twin-linked weapons, increase the point cost to compensate. It's easy, and hell, it's more than GW does when they randomly nerf and buff everything every new edition.

Oh yeah one of the other things the system reflects is that no matter the war, there are bean counters there to cut costs. That was why I mentioned cost of tank redisign. If you ever serve you find out just how much the budget determines your equipment and safety. I'll give you a historical example....

Yeah, I know all this.

Guard aren't given bolters. Leman Russes are Rear AV10.

What does it have to do with twin-linked weapons? Is that just a reason for why something is far weaker than it should be?

It's not at all intuitive for that to be the case, there's no evidence that the Twin-Linking Weapons Correctly budget was slashed, and it doesn't even make sense in the context of some of the most prized vehicles in the Imperium - Land Raider, for instance - having twin-linked weapons.


::EDIT:: Okay, you seem to be bewildered by what I'm talking about half the time, and half the time I have no idea what you're talking about.

We might be kind of talking past each other here.

"I don't think that word means what you think it does"

Intuitive pretty much means easy to learn or pick up without having to put in much logical thought.

The amount of thought that your putting into claiming that twin-linking is more than you claim the game designers put into designing the game.

Your own actions prove your argument wrong by the definition of intuitive.


Now personally I believe the rules are playtested, just not to the level that Tourny players would like. I, also believe that they start with a mathhammer formula then try to tweak from there. The system reeks of them making it look good on paper then doing a limited playtest to make sure there are no major or fatal flaws in the design before sending to market.


It's funny that you list armies and try to point out recoil as opposed to who has twin-linking on their Tanks.

Necrons-none
Tyranids-No tanks but plenty of twin-linking
Eldar-The shuriken catapults, any other time 2weapons are mounted on the same vehicle they fire seperately.
Orks-warbuggies
Dark Eldar-none(That I can remember)
Tau-none, Their are twinlinked drones but no twinlinked vehicle mounted weapons
Imperium of man- This is where all of the vehicle twin-linking occurs but the majority of it is in vehicle upgrades such as the pintle mounted weapons you dismiss. Matter of fact I think that there are only 4 or 5 tank variants out of what 40-50 that have a twin-linked turret mounted weapons system.

You want to change the system for what is probably less than 10% of your armies options and has no real significance to the other armies. This reeks of power-gamer.

To compound this point you keep harping on twin-linked bolters which are not turret mouted but are always represented with pintle mount unless its the Landraider. So you want to change the rule for just one vehicle?

Now go back and compare the amount of infantry twin-linking and it becomes clear where the majority of twin-linking occurs.

Necrons-not so much
Tyranids-Everywhere
Eldar-Jetbikes, Heros, and Farseers that give the Twin-link rule to the whole army(Proof right here of how powerful twin-linking is)
Orks-Bosses & Nobs
Dark Eldar-None
Tau- Drones, Broadsides, and Crisis suits. The Tau would become completely unbalanced by changing the rule.
Imperium of man- Getting more common with each codex.

It's funny that you complain about this rule yet have no complaint about master crafting.

P.S. Just because Tau players have adapted to unfavorable conditions by running lots of plasma doesn't mean that the army has tons of it. Plas is one of five common suit options and one of seven commander suit options. It also appears nowhere else in the army.
What the Tau have a lot of is pulse weapons. With some Rail and fusion weapons coming in a distant 2nd as far as whats common.

focusedfire wrote:"I don't think that word means what you think it does"

Intuitive pretty much means easy to learn or pick up without having to put in much logical thought.

It does mean that it is simple and easy to pick up, but it more specifically means that it is easy to pick up because that's what is expected.

You see a weapon like an Assault Cannon, and you think it probably has a high rate of fire, and it probably a pretty heavy weapon. You don't have to know anything about an assault cannon specifically, the fact that it's a huge minigun makes it the logical assumption.

If an Assault Cannon fired a single shot per round, and could be carried by light infantry, that would be counter-intuitive, because it would be a game mechanic that breaks the assumptions someone would make about the weapon.

The current Twin-Linking rules are counter-intuitive because they make the second weapon significantly less powerful than the first one. If someone sees a tank with two lascannons and finds out that it's closer in power to one lascannon than two, that's somewhat jarring. It's not a huge deal, but it counts against the current twin-linking rules, and I don't see that much counting for them.

That a weapon with a higher rate of fire and (sometimes) lower accuracy is being represented with an artificially reduced rate of fire and artificially higher accuracy only exacerbates the disconnection. I understand how the end result would be the same, but the method is poor, and the end result is rather superfluous itself.

The amount of thought that your putting into claiming that twin-linking is more than you claim the game designers put into designing the game.

Your own actions prove your argument wrong by the definition of intuitive.

No they don't, you can have complicated arguments for making a change with the hopes that the change will simplify things.

Twice the guns = twice the firepower is simple. Going into discussions about how much recoil a twin-linked weapon has, what the power feeds for a twin-linked weapon entail, and how some armies benefit more from the twin-linking of their weapons than others is complicated. As is differentiating between twin-linked weapons and pairs of weapons, which can have significant differences in firepower while being mounted in the exact same manner.

Now personally I believe the rules are playtested, just not to the level that Tourny players would like.

Yeah, I know they do, it was more of a hyperbole to say they didn't.

I, also believe that they start with a mathhammer formula then try to tweak from there. The system reeks of them making it look good on paper then doing a limited playtest to make sure there are no major or fatal flaws in the design before sending to market.

I disagree about there being a formula. They understand the math involved, most of the time, but I doubt there's a central formula they use to calculate point costs. I think they themselves said they price things based on what seems right, through intuition and playtesting, and the "make your own Apoc datasheet" article online makes it seem that - for Jervis at least - trying to make a formula to price things is doomed to failure. That was his criticism of the Vehicle Design Rules, and the reason he gave for not doing another set for Apocalypse.

It's funny that you list armies and try to point out recoil as opposed to who has twin-linking on their Tanks.

Honestly, I'm not that up to date on all the twin-linked weapons in the game. Also, I'm not only talking about tanks, I'm talking about anything with twin-linked weapons. It just so happens the vast majority of the models that have twin-linked weapons are vehicles, monstrous creatures, or otherwise extremely large.

Necrons-none

Right.

Tyranids-No tanks but plenty of twin-linking

Yep.

Eldar-The shuriken catapults, any other time 2weapons are mounted on the same vehicle they fire seperately.

The Wraithlord has them twin-linked though, right? (Fire Prisms can twin-link their shot, but that's a whole different thing.)

Orks-warbuggies

Also Deffkoptas, Bikes, and Nobs, for the non-vehicle (not vehicle by unit type, anyway) units.

Dark Eldar-none(That I can remember)

Don't know their codex very well either.

Tau-none, Their are twinlinked drones but no twinlinked vehicle mounted weapons

Plus Broadsides, Crisis Suits, quite a few other things I'm sure.

Imperium of man- This is where all of the vehicle twin-linking occurs but the majority of it is in vehicle upgrades such as the pintle mounted weapons you dismiss.

Huh? What pintle mounted weapons are there that are twin-linked?

Matter of fact I think that there are only 4 or 5 tank variants out of what 40-50 that have a twin-linked turret mounted weapons system.

I'm not talking about the turrets exclusively, sponsons, hull-mounted weapons, and guns not carried on vehicles are just as valid. I was just using turrets as an example of where they're commonly mounted.

You want to change the system for what is probably less than 10% of your armies options and has no real significance to the other armies.

Actually, I pretty much just play orks, and I never fire the Dakkaguns on my cyboars anyway.

I'm not saying the twin-linked rule is a plague upon the game, or that it needs to be immediately thrown out of the game (*cough* wound allocation *cough*), or even that I plan to recost every twin-linked weapon in the game so I can use my rule with my friends.

I'm just saying that if the game was to be redone I wouldn't keep the twin-linked rules. It's not such a huge issue that they should go through everything to change it, but if everything was already being redone, dropping it would make sense. Maybe they can replace add something more useful to the game in place of the billion special rules. Not likely, but what they're likely to do and what I would like them to do aren't necessarily going to meet up anywhere.

This reeks of power-gamer.

Eh?

To compound this point you keep harping on twin-linked bolters which are not turret mouted but are always represented with pintle mount unless its the Landraider. So you want to change the rule for just one vehicle?

Are we talking Bolters or Heavy Bolters? I've never seen a pintle-mounted Heavy Bolter.

Also, I'm giving the Heavy Bolter as an example of a weapon which may have a (fairly) high recoil. I could talk about Lascannons and Plasma Guns but as far as I know those weapons don't have much of a recoil at all, so they would be an example that favored my rule even more.

Now go back and compare the amount of infantry twin-linking and it becomes clear where the majority of twin-linking occurs.

I'm guessing we are not using infantry in the same manner here.

Necrons-not so much

Nope. Kind of boring.

Tyranids-Everywhere

Often on monstrous creatures, and their weapons have so little recoil regardless it doesn't really matter where the weapon is.

Eldar-Jetbikes, Heros, and Farseers that give the Twin-link rule to the whole army(Proof right here of how powerful twin-linking is)

Um.. what? Farseers allow rerolling hits, that's not twin-linking. And yes, allowing an entire unit to reroll all their rolls to hit is a powerful ability. However, if a Farseer was somehow able to make a squad of Dire Avengers turn into two squads, I would expect the two squads to have twice the firepower of one squad. Also, a jetbike is a vehicle, outside of the 40k unit designations.

Orks-Bosses & Nobs

Who are large enough to handle twin-linked weapons. Hell, you can give a boy a big shoota.

Dark Eldar-None

Okay.

Tau- Drones, Broadsides, and Crisis suits. The Tau would become completely unbalanced by changing the rule.

Not if they were repriced. (Actually, with the way Guard might be turning out, they might be that overpowered after all. (Internal balance would tank though.))

Imperium of man- Getting more common with each codex.

???

It's funny that you complain about this rule yet have no complaint about master crafting.

Master-crafting is a) not very common, b) logical in increasing a model's accuracy, c) obviously not going to make a weapon twice as powerful.

P.S. Just because Tau players have adapted to unfavorable conditions by running lots of plasma doesn't mean that the army has tons of it. Plas is one of five common suit options and one of seven commander suit options. It also appears nowhere else in the army.
What the Tau have a lot of is pulse weapons. With some Rail and fusion weapons coming in a distant 2nd as far as whats common.

I meant plasma to include pulse weaponry, as it's plasma technology. However, upon further research, pulse weaponry still has a good deal of recoil, so never mind that point.

focusedfire wrote:Orke-
I served in the military and operated some of the systems that you so casually claim knowledge of. You sound to me as someone whom has never had much experience with guns whether civilian or military.I'm not trying to be a d**k, just telling you how your coming across.

And of course I have to question what actual operational experience and weapons knowledge someone has when they try and claim that an A-10's Avenger can stall it.

Read up on the not so accurate wikipedia page and they attempt to smooth over this problem by calling it Urban legend. But they do admit the following.

While the Avenger doesn't put out enough recoil to stall at full throttle it does has a max recoil force that comes out to equalling just under half of the planes thrust.

You see, you don't run a plane at full throttle all of the time. Even in combat. In the seventies and early eighties there was a learning curve of what to do and not do in an A-10. Firing with throttles cut was one of those lessons. Ever watch a plane slow from 400 knots to 280 in one gun burst?
Most of you youngsters forget that the A-10 has been flying for 37 years now if you count its first flight and 34 if you count the first production flights. They shook out the bugs and developed the flight protocols before the average Dakkite was born.


P.S. There was a gun redesing and plane redesign for engine performance problems because of gas discharge. They re-routed the exhaust so that it never comes close to the engine no matter what the conditions(even negative g) yet after doing this they still shortly thereafter redesigned the engines with a stall proof system the kicks on an igniter as soon as the gun start to fire.


Spelling edits and sentence double worded.

@Orke- we are just going to have to agree to disagree.

When you say that the farseers ability to grant re-rolls to hit isn't the same as or equal to twin-linking then I know its time to stop debating the issue and to just sit back and nod quietly.

The value of 'double' weapons can be clearly read up on, AA weapons have multiple linked weapons. Cannons on Navy boats are also linked. Some large machineguns on vehicles are linked. Some times both weapons fire at the same time, sometimes they alternate fire (left, right, left, right)
So we don't have to argue about it, whoever wants to know can just look it up.

How this is handled in game, imo should just be +1 to bs or s. Do we need a special rule for something so common.

To be honest it is a bit backward. As technology improves we see less twin linked weapons, and more effective methods to increase rate of fire or spread of fire.

Thats it though. 40K is supposed to be the Dark Ages. A backward time where humanity shuns knowledge and uses force in its place'

focusedfire wrote:@Orke- we are just going to have to agree to disagree.

That's fine.

Let's face it, we've already hijacked this thread and ran it into a canyon.

When you say that the farseers ability to grant re-rolls to hit isn't the same as or equal to twin-linking then I know its time to stop debating the issue and to just sit back and nod quietly.

Same effect on the game, entirely different in what it is supposed to represent. And, while they may be nearly identical, it isn't twin-linking, any more than my kannons are twin-linked whenever I use an ammo runt.

What it comes down to is that if the farseer didn't have that ability then the army would get twin-linked weapons to balance it out.

The point was you couldn't or as I now believe won't see the benefit to the mechanism. The benefit has been pointed out and your now saying doesn't matter and not the same thing just the same effect.

To that I can only

Back to the original topic. How would one adjust the twin-link rule without it becoming overpowering and possibly destroying the internal balance of a few innocent armies..

Why would the Farseer need to give the Twin-Linked rule to a squad? He doesn't need to now. He allows a squad to reroll to hit, which makes sense, since he's Guiding their shots.

If something desperately needs to be able to reroll it's hits it can have that as an ability, but 9/10 of the time it's not necessary. For the same reason there doesn't need to be a special rule that allows space marines to have a weapon 166% more powerful. Twin-linking can't do anything there but, what do you know, nothing is hurt by the loss.

Besides, a psychic power affecting any unit in the army is another thing entirely. It can't be controlled in the same the Twin-Linked designation can.

What does twin link rule do?
What does Guide do?
Same rule different names.

So I say tomatoe

Then you say,"No, its gotta be tomato."

All the more reason to get rid of a redundant rule.

Ok, get rid of ammo runts and guide. Twin-linked was here first.



edit to show orke that its ok to admit and fix your mistakes

focusedfire wrote::nod

Failure.

@Orke- Pls to reread now.

focusedfire wrote:edit to show orke that its ok to admit and fix your mistakes

What?

I didn't write the Twin-Linked rules, I'm trying to get rid of them!

Well, don't just talk. Take action. go on a protest. If you really hate the rule that much it shouldn't be hard to give up anything that has that or a similar rule.

Refuse to build your armies with anything gives you a re-roll to hit. Thats no twin-linked weapons or ammo runts.

Once you set the example then try to convince everyone else to not use twin-linked weapons.

Now, I've noticed a tendency for this thread to get rather silly. Now I do my best to keep things moving along, but I'm not having things getting silly. Those two last posts you did got very silly indeed, and that last one about protesting was even sillier. Now, nobody likes a good laugh more than I do... except perhaps my wife and some of her friends... oh yes and Captain Johnston. Come to think of it most people likes a good laugh more than I do. But that's beside the point.

Thank You for that Orkeosaurus.RLMAO

Skinnattittar wrote:
(I'll remind everyone that there isn't anything in reality called "Twin Linked"),

Twin linked then you say, would be could be defined as (in Tau terms), two barrels of Rail Guns pointing parallely to each other, mounted in very close proximity, and unable to point at different targets than the other. This then, my friend DOES exist in real life, in a handhead as well as vehicle mounted weapons actually. (searching "dual coaxial mounted machine gun system")

Trying to relate an abstracted world (40k) to the world that we all live in, in some cases requires a suspension of disbelief. I admire that you are trying to make the abstraction of rules reflect reality, but in this case, the rule makes sense in that (a) Maybe the operator fires one, then the other, (b) Maybe the operator's error on one of the twin-linked shots was not so great that the distance from one to the other made a hit possible.....etc. etc. etc.

Coaxial is distinctly different from Twin-Linked, Che-Vito. Coaxial weapons are alternative weapons for the same mount (almost exclusively a 7.62mm weapon attached to the main cannon of a vehicle) and has more to do with the Geneva Convention than any sort of practicality. Twin-Linked, in 40k, is two weapons fired side by side for some sort of advantage of destruction, not as an alternative weapon to the main weapon.

@ Orke and Focus : You should have heeded my warning! STAY ON TOPIC!!!

Okay, I have something to say about the INGAME changes if something like this were to actually happen:

The main problem I see is that some weapons (like 2 twin-linked lascannons on a Land Raider) would turn completely overpowered, especially when not all armies have TL weapons, and the armies that do have them are already balanced cost-wise....so if this were to happen, any armies NOT updated with more expensive TL weapons would get a pretty big advantage...

@ 8Ball : Explain with facts, please.

Skinnattittar wrote:Coaxial is distinctly different from Twin-Linked, Che-Vito. Coaxial weapons are alternative weapons for the same mount (almost exclusively a 7.62mm weapon attached to the main cannon of a vehicle) and has more to do with the Geneva Convention than any sort of practicality. Twin-Linked, in 40k, is two weapons fired side by side for some sort of advantage of destruction, not as an alternative weapon to the main weapon.

@ Orke and Focus : You should have heeded my warning! STAY ON TOPIC!!!

We stayed on-topic, sort of....

As to your assertion that there is no such thing as a twin linked weapon system in real life. Thats what I was trying to point out with some of the aircraft guns and turret weapons. They are not called twin-linked but there were twin mounted weapons systems that fired side by side and used two seperate ammo belts to supply them. There are even some current weapon systems that use this type of an arrangement. Instead of calling them twin-linked we instead just call them twin (insert weapon caliber here). Like twin .50s or twin 30 mike mikes(twin 30mm).

These types of weapon systems are becoming more rare because newer single gun systems are more accurate and waste less ammunition(resources).

Skinnattittar: Isn't this obvious:

Example: A Land Raider is attacking a Monolith.

1)With the current rules: It shoots with it's LEFT side Lascannon, rolls a 2, then rerolls a 4...so it hit...

2)With the "2 weapons per twin-linked" idea:
It shoots with (now both) of it's lascannons (on the left side)...it rolls both to-hit dice as 4's, then (Somehow) BOTH as 6's, then manages a 2 and 5 on the damage chart...Monolith is wrecked....(Obviously an extremely lucky example)

3)With the "Rerolls to wound instead of hit":
It shoots with it's Left lascannon, rolls a 2 to hit...now it's just as useless as a single lascannon, the twin-linked doing NOTHING at all for the vehicle that shot...

Obviously I am totally against the 2nd option...especially for stuff like Assault Cannons, 8 rending shots seems like overkill..

For some stuff like Lascannons, rerolling to HIT is a LOT more useful that rerolling to wound (especially weapons that take 2+ to wound) so this would be like a nerf to them.

Rerolling armor saves also doesn't really seem to fit with the rest of 40k, and sort of makes the "new twin-linked (as in rerolls to wound AND armor saves)" overpowered in that as long as you hit, most units won't end up surviving even slightly higher strength weapons (due to having to reroll their lucky 5+ invuln save for example)...

There's a very large difference in performance between rerolling misses and firing double amount of shots. Every linked weapon in the game would have to take a significant pricehike to compensate. I doubt anyone can dispute that.

If you want to, please consider that the Land Raiders 4 lascannon have a ~18% chance to ALL hit in the same round if they were to be fired separately.

Dual barrels just look cooler than "targeter widgets" bolted onto the guns. GW likes to represent "accurate" weapon systems this way, if you disagree you can convert your own models to your hearts content. I look forward to seeing them in the painting sections.

@ 8 Ball : So pretty much you just proved that current Twin-Linked on an average roll isn't as good as proposed Twin-Linked getting extremely lucky rolls? Or am I missing something here. Also, you've made no attempt to describe how the original post of re-rolling anything once EXCEPT the to hit affects things. That one, because you're more likely to miss but more likely to wound, penetrate, or your opponent fail his armor save (though only ONE of those per round of shooting) it wouldn't be a huge difference, statistically speaking. Work it out in several different scenarios, mathematically not just with your gut instinct, and you'll find there isn't a huge difference. I already have made an Excel that demonstrates the original TL method and my TL method (not the double hits per successful hit method, which I won't subscribe to). I ran it against space Marines vs. the two most common Imperial TL weapons; Lascannons and Heavy Bolters. Because of the complexity I had to use massive numbers of shots, 54 in my base case, and I still haven't gotten proper whole numbers, but that doesn't matter.

The Results? Predictably, you get fewer models removed with Lascannons from BS3, the same with BS4, about 50% increase from Heavy Bolters on BS3, almost double on BS4. I can run just about any scenario of BS v. Toughness and Armor Save, so make suggestions if you want.

Suggested points increase? ~50% It is very complicated as to what happens, BS plays a major factor, as Guard with TL Lascannons actually score fewer wounds in ratio with the proposed system, but more with Heavy Bolters in ratio.

Skinnattittar wrote:Coaxial is distinctly different from Twin-Linked, Che-Vito. Coaxial weapons are alternative weapons for the same mount

I was afraid someone would make this assumption without researching what I had posted first. The gun system that I posted, although NAMED "coaxial" is two machine gun's, bolted side by side, pointing the same direction, and unable to fire in seperate directions. Thus, a twin-linked gun.

Yes, you can call it the Coaxial Machine Gun System, "twin-mounted", "twin-linked", whatever makes you sing. The term is irrelevant really, as the function is the same...it seems that many of you have thrown out synonymous terms, and over-complicated a very simple pretense.

Suggested points increase? ~50%

and there in lies the main problem I was trying to point out....THE ARMIES who's codex's WEREN'T updated with those new rules would have a (point wise) advantage...


Also you said how the current system is worse....ever think that was the point, to give you better firing capability, without actually giving you another gun (and all this at not too high of a points cost)

@ Che-Vito : Why should we do your research for you. Post a link next time.

Okay, you found AN example of a modern "Twin-Linked" weapon (though I have yet to see it, so for all I know it is 100 years old or a one off somebody made for gaks and giggles), but what is it's purpose? Is it for focused fire on a single point? Or to make the cloud effect by just putting more ammunition into the air? Because I think we all agree those weapons already exist, but are distinctively different from what we're discussing.

Skinnattittar wrote:@ Che-Vito : Why should we do your research for you. Post a link next time.

If I give the phrase "Coaxial Machine Gun System," and you cannot go to Wikipedia or something of the sort...a link will not help you either.

The practical purpose of putting two weapons twin-linked as such in the real world is mainly an issue of barrel temp. and ROF. Granted, for some examples in the 40k world (twin-linked Rail Rifles), ROF and barrel temp. are not an issue, as the ROF is 1 per round.

@ Che-Vito : Actually, numbskull (why be passive aggressive with statements like "a link will not help you either."), you don't get anything by searching that phrase, you get a bunch of single crew served co-axial systems (though a few pictures of Baneblades do show up, but I would think they are talking about the co-ax Autocannon) pictures and articles. That's why Al Gore created web links, so you can be SPECIFIC if you're trying to show something that is RARE.

Still, these systems that DO exist, are either older systems, one offs or small number production for what-ever plethora of reasons they were made, or prototypes, which don't really count either. Not only that, they don't operate the same way as they do in 40k rules.

Skinnattittar wrote:@ Che-Vito : Actually, numbskull (why be passive aggressive with statements like "a link will not help you either."), you don't get anything by searching that phrase, you get a bunch of single crew served co-axial systems (though a few pictures of Baneblades do show up, but I would think they are talking about the co-ax Autocannon) pictures and articles. That's why Al Gore created web links, so you can be SPECIFIC if you're trying to show something that is RARE.

Still, these systems that DO exist, are either older systems, one offs or small number production for what-ever plethora of reasons they were made, or prototypes, which don't really count either. Not only that, they don't operate the same way as they do in 40k rules.

Well, since no in-depth writing is done on the specifications of how 40k twin-linked weapons work, you cannot make the claim you do at the end. The "older models", prototypes, etc. are just as valid as long as they are functional. What they do is allow a higher ROF (two weapons as opposed to one) without the worry of overheating.

This being the case, the rules in 40k do not reflect this.

I'm a bit confused... First you say that I can't possibly know how Twin-Linked weapons work in 40k, then you say exactly what I had just said, saying that they do not work the way similar looking weapons do in reality, which is what I said.... I'm not patronizing you, I'm just trying to make sure I understand this.

As for "they don't really count." No, they don't. The context wasn't whether or not these weapons exist, it context is whether or not those weapons have a valid role in context to what we are discussing. As you openly admitted that they do not have context to what we are discussing, I would propose we stop bringing them up.

Skinnattittar wrote:Still, these systems that DO exist, are either older systems, one offs or small number production for what-ever plethora of reasons they were made, or prototypes, which don't really count either. Not only that, they don't operate the same way as they do in 40k rules.

Of course they don't operate the same numbskull. (You said you don't want passive aggressive) those systems you pull a trigger or press a button and actuall real world damage occurs. Where in 40K you roll dice as part of an abstact game played with little toy models.

If you had spent less time mouthing off about orke and myself not being on topic and read a little you would have seen that we were covering the issues of how real world weapons are reflected in the abstraction of 40K.

Okay....so obviously no one wants to actually discuss the rules in the FAKE 40k universe, so whatever....

@ Focusfire : I don't know what you're talking about, there's a definite difference between being objective and passive aggressive (you'll notice there were no pronouns referring to any humans). And, I'm not going to acknoledge your posts that weren't on topic that were trying to compare real world weapons to 40k terms, as there isn't really a basis for any such thing, so they don't count.

So, I'll go with "Fail," for your post there.

@ 8 Ball : I guess you don't, because you have yet too.

You can call it a fail but that doesn't make it so.

BTW, Yep no pronouns in either statement

You were the one that opened up relevance and comparisons to real world weapons in your first post. Then when poeple engaged in that dialoge, you said that they were the basis for why the rule doesn't make sense.

Then you say that there are no such comparitive weapons when someone makes a point that damages your position on the rule.

But when someone brings up that their actually are such weapons, the ones that you say don't exist, or how the mechanics of such weapons can be used to support the twin-link rule you say you can't compare the two.

Make up your mind. Pick your point and debate it. Quit running when someone brings up a decent counter point.

If you check the first page I was willing to consider a version of the roll a six idea. Now, after watching your unwillingness to actually truly discuss the ideas and inability to defend your stance. I'm somewhat put off on the idea.

If your looking for a somewhat balanced change as opposed to attempting to power game then stand your ground and debate your point without using derogatory comments. As long as your not rude or insulting you'll find myself and others willing to listen and respond in kind.

So please, state your point as it now stands and whether or not the debate is open to real world weapons or confined to 40K. Also, please to let us know if this is to be a RAW or will it be an all-encompassing 40K debate with fluff as a means of understanding the thoughts behind the rules.

Balls in your court


Edit for spelling

Essentially this thread is a big argument over nothing.

Double barreled weapons exist in the real world, with various functions. Increase rate of fire, fire spread, and often simply as a way of cheaping out of just making a bigger gun.

They are backward - but the aesthetic of 40k is very backward. (Knights, WW1 shaped tanks etc)

Rule wise a double barreled weapon should be better than a single, but not quiet as good as a whole new gun. For whatever reason gw chose to hit rerolls, which is awesome for orks, but pointless for marines. But every alternative option has a drawback so why not stick with things as they are rather than fiddling with a tiny insignificant rule for no gameplay change

One Hundred Posts Here

Gwar! wrote:Wow you utterly missed how twin linked weapons actually work.

They are linked side by side, so that if one is off a bit to the side, the one to the left of it will hit and visa versa.

There is no need to overly complicate the rules with something that doesn't even fit how the weapon is supposed to work.

See Attached Diagram. As you can see they arnt aimed at a single point, but side by side to cover a wider area, and therefore more likely to hit whatever you are aiming at (hence the reroll to hit)

Gwar: I have to agree with you on this one because the new rule that was suggested would just slow the game up. This rule is fine as it is. Why try and Complicate it. GW changes rules for smoother game play and for simplicity. With twin linked it's simply reroll your misses ( as to see if the adjacent barrel hit it's target) NO this RAW I think is OK.

Personally, I like the current TL'ed system. While there may be better ways to represent twin-linked, I think that the rule it is the name of is the important thing, not the name itself.

Changing TL'ed s a HUGE thing. It drastically alters how it behaves, and every codex has TL'ed. I'd only ever support a change to TL'ed if every army was going to have at least a points update to go with it.

I always figured that Twin-linked worked like a Double Barreled Shotgun, the second barrel giving you the chance to get another shot off should it be needed in case you miss with the first or the target doesn't go down. For simplification GW just went with the first part.

The whole discussion is really a moot point. Is the current TL system the most realistic? Probably not. Is it easy to learn, remember, and make the game flow? Yes. I hate it when games get interrupted by stupid little things that are changed to make things more complicated.

"I missed, twin-linked so I'm re-rolling-"

"No wait they changed that."

"What is it now?"

"Hell if I know. Hold on a sec."

It is looked up in 6th ed rule book and there are three paragraphs on how it works, exceptions, what can nullify it, enhance it etc. Instead of just "re-roll failed hit." Seems a lot better that way to me.

Oh just want to add, to something from earlier. The Cloud Effect is twin-linking it uses the same principal, more lead/energy more chance of hitting things and thats what the reroll is for.

twin linking doesn't make the ammunition any more powerful, or able to penetrate armor

it just means there is more of it, making it easier to hit

33.3% to 55.5%, a 22.2% difference
66.6% to 88.8%, a 22.2% difference
Twin-linking helps marines just as much as it does Orks. The increase in chance to hit is the same.

Its subjectively less advantageous to the marine as 66.6 is 3/4 of 88.8, vs the ork's chance being 60% of what it is once twinlinked but the odds of hitting are increased by the same amount.

Changing TL to allow rerolls of wound or armour penetration in a "whatever one chooses" way would be a massive advantage to things like marine bike gangs, nob bike gangs, vendettas, etc, and far less help to others. rerolling failed wound or AP is a pretty big thing for some weapons, that you pay for, more than twin-linking. The changes would be substantial, and not at all friendly to some armies as they are.

I created a large excel spread sheet to test a variety of different scenarios. Essentially as Strength of the weapon increases the ratio of Proposed to Current (Proposed/Current) decreases, or less likely to kill. As the saves and BS get better the ratio increases, kills are more likely.

So if you are not getting a save, then Proposed is worse than current. Better BS makes the Proposed better, as so does increased Strength, which usually decreases the likely hood of saves (most higher strength weapons don't give many armor saves) decreasing the ratio.

I have not made an excel v. armor. Make any BS and T v. S you want and I'll tell you the increase or decrease so you can see for yourself. Add in any saves that would be possible.

The Bringer wrote:Twin-Linked weapons seem nice enough as is.

Maybe a nice rule to add on is when you roll a 6 you get two wounds instead of one.

I actually like that. That wouldn't slow the game down but I'm sure most players would complain & bellyache and whine about how much of an advantage that would give tyranids... As if we haven't lost some of our best assets in 5th already. It sure would make predator drivers with autocannons happy though. 2 rolls to penetrate armour if you actually hit? That'd be nice.

When I think of twin linked I think of spinegaunts. Each hand has a gun on it. In my world I see one fist missing by a foot or so and then the gaunt firing the second one and hitting. It seems to me that all twin-linked weapons should at least have 2 shots though... How can you only fire once and have 2 chances to hit (i.e. spinegaunts again)?

Grunt_For_Christ wrote:How can you only fire once and have 2 chances to hit (i.e. spinegaunts again)?

My only answer is this: 40k is a game, and it won't ever be a perfect simulation of real life. This is probably the best rule they could make and still keep the game balanced at the same time.

@ Grunt : My proposed rules address your gripe better than the current rules, though I think you're misunderstanding how "Twin Linked" fires, which is both at the same time aimed at the same target, rather than firing one, then the other if you miss, rather than the obvious idea of firing both and if you have time for more shots shoot more.

EDIT : Adding the following examples:

Space Marines Firing Twin-Linked Heavy Bolter at Guardsmen out of cover.

BS4 S5 v. T3 AP4 v. SV5+

Current System = 2.22 Guard Dead
Proposed System = 1.94 Guard Dead
Ratio = 88% Proposed/Current

With Cover 4+ Saves
C = 1.11 wounds
P = 1.32 wounds
R = 119%

Guard Firing Twin Linked Autocannon at Space Marines.
BS3 S7vT4 AO4vSV3
C = 0.42
P = 0.63
R = 152%

As you can see, the differences are not dramatic, but are a marginal difference that would make you actually think about what is better to twin-link and what targets to choose with twin-linked. This is another layer with a simple modification that pretty much just adds to the game for just a few more seconds of time (considering few battles outside of Apocalypse will have many twin linked weapons in odd enough configurations to dramatically extend a battle, and Apoc. takes all day anyhow so the difference would be relatively negligible anyhow).

The Bringer wrote:

Grunt_For_Christ wrote:How can you only fire once and have 2 chances to hit (i.e. spinegaunts again)?

My only answer is this: 40k is a game, and it won't ever be a perfect simulation of real life. This is probably the best rule they could make and still keep the game balanced at the same time.

Well obviously... I guess I'd rather err on the side of simplicity than of life-like-ness. I still think there's a better way to do twin linked that makes more logical sense without adding a ton of rules.

Skinnattittar wrote:@ Grunt : My proposed rules address your gripe better than the current rules, though I think you're misunderstanding how "Twin Linked" fires, which is both at the same time aimed at the same target, rather than firing one, then the other if you miss, rather than the obvious idea of firing both and if you have time for more shots shoot more.

Well you just said what I said I think: "Which is both at the same time aimed at the same target". You just said that there are 2 shots being fire instead of just one. Which is what I said, just with a few more words. In my example the spinegaunt fires twice at different times. What you just said is that the spinegaunt would fire both at the same time. I don't see the difference, save for the timing. See what I mean?

Timing is the key, my friend. If you fire both your weapons aimed at the same point you are either hit or you are miss with both shots. Stagger that timing and you can correct, but that would only matter if your weapons are effectively single shot/very low rate of fire. But since 85% of the weapons Twin-Linked are not slow firing (lascannons ARE slow firing but they are not ever depicted as being utilized differently as all the other twin-linked weapons but we should NOT get into that argument again!), why not just put more rounds down and correct as you fire dual weapons!

I would like to mention TL Blast ... why do you only get to reroll to hit? these things might miss but they're still going to explode. I think that any TL blast weapon should also get, at the very least, a reroll to wound.

Tri wrote:I would like to mention TL Blast ... why do you only get to reroll to hit? these things might miss but they're still going to explode. I think that any TL blast weapon should also get, at the very least, a reroll to wound.

If it was a re-roll to wound, that would imply ammunition is somehow getting more powerful. Getting shot at by four bolters instead of two bolters doesn't make an individual bolter bullet any more dangerous. It just means there is a lot more ammunition in the air, and more likely to hit you. If the bolt hits you it doesn't make it any more powerful (a heavier load, or an armor piercing round) than it was before.

Twin-linking means "more stuff flying at you" it does not mean "the stuff flying at you gets stronger". If we were to use a real world example (which I don't like doing but maybe it can help illustrate the idea). No matter how many pistols are firing at a tank, they're never going to damage it because the pistol bullet it always the same. The more pistols shooting, the more shots will hit, though it's still hitting with the same ammunition.

EasyE wrote:

Tri wrote:I would like to mention TL Blast ... why do you only get to reroll to hit? these things might miss but they're still going to explode. I think that any TL blast weapon should also get, at the very least, a reroll to wound.

If it was a re-roll to wound, that would imply ammunition is somehow getting more powerful. Getting shot at by four bolters instead of two bolters doesn't make an individual bolter bullet any more dangerous. It just means there is a lot more ammunition in the air, and more likely to hit you. If the bolt hits you it doesn't make it any more powerful (a heavier load, or an armor piercing round) than it was before.

Twin-linking means "more stuff flying at you" it does not mean "the stuff flying at you gets stronger". If we were to use a real world example (which I don't like doing but maybe it can help illustrate the idea). No matter how many pistols are firing at a tank, they're never going to damage it because the pistol bullet it always the same. The more pistols shooting, the more shots will hit, though it's still hitting with the same ammunition.

? ok so what happened to the other explosion ? Say i roll for scatter. Its bad i only hit 1 guy ... so i reroll now i hit 3 people ... So what the hell happend to the explosion that hit the first guy?

Skin, I'm not exactly sure where you're getting the idea that twin-linked guns fire both barrels at exactly the same time. They fire "together" but it's not like there's one primer for the 2 rounds in the gun. Increased chance to hit can be easily justified if you think of the barrels taking turns firing as opposed to shooting two parallel shots at the same time. Saying they hit together or miss together would be like saying that a model should roll 1 die to hit and then either hit with all of his shots or miss with all of them.

But, more to the point, if they made TL weapons do silly things with other rerolls, then they wouldn't do what they're supposed to do. Ultimately, the rules are set up to make the game run, not to fit perfectly into every possible interpretation of the fluff. TL is there to make weapons more accurate, maybe they could have found a better thing to call it. Maybe sighted weapons or some such but I think orkz using sighted weapons is more of a violation of fluff than TL.

What TL essentially does is double your hits (I know it's not quite this, don't bother me with math, that's not the point) Well, if you double your hits against a low-toughness unit instead of rerolling wounds, you're going to see more dead bodies. Whereas a high toughness model would take more wounds from the rerolling of wounds/successful saves. That doesn't seem right to me. TL weaponry should mow down the most guardsmen but just be so many more bullets bouncing off the hide of a Carnifex.

Deffgob wrote:Skin, I'm not exactly sure where you're getting the idea that twin-linked guns fire both barrels at exactly the same time. They fire "together" but it's not like there's one primer for the 2 rounds in the gun. Increased chance to hit can be easily justified if you think of the barrels taking turns firing as opposed to shooting two parallel shots at the same time. Saying they hit together or miss together would be like saying that a model should roll 1 die to hit and then either hit with all of his shots or miss with all of them.

But, more to the point, if they made TL weapons do silly things with other rerolls, then they wouldn't do what they're supposed to do. Ultimately, the rules are set up to make the game run, not to fit perfectly into every possible interpretation of the fluff. TL is there to make weapons more accurate, maybe they could have found a better thing to call it. Maybe sighted weapons or some such but I think orkz using sighted weapons is more of a violation of fluff than TL.

What TL essentially does is double your hits (I know it's not quite this, don't bother me with math, that's not the point) Well, if you double your hits against a low-toughness unit instead of rerolling wounds, you're going to see more dead bodies. Whereas a high toughness model would take more wounds from the rerolling of wounds/successful saves. That doesn't seem right to me. TL weaponry should mow down the most guardsmen but just be so many more bullets bouncing off the hide of a Carnifex.

Deffgob, I don't know where to start here, so I think the best place is to just disregard your post entirely, but then I don't think you'll learn anything.

It is pretty much 100% accepted and verified that Twin Linked weapons fire simultaneously, and what you're thinking of is Rate of Fire, which is represented by the number of shots a weapon has. And you are correct in one regard, however, the current system is more likely designed for simplicity and speed, but that's not the point of this thread, which is to discuss an alternative system that might be felt to be more "realistic" to how "Twin Linked" weapons are described as actually operate. There are a few people poking in here spouting out about seperate firing Twin Linked weapons, but I can guarantee with a 99% certainty that there isn't a single description or portrayal of Twin Linked weapons firing in a non-double shot way. The only reason to argue otherwise is because it helps fit your solution and there GW hasn't actually said that Twin Linked weapons only fire one way. This ideaology is akin to putting the cart before the horse. From a simple physics problem, it makes sense, but the simple fact of the matter is that it doesn't, and if we could actually take this horse and cart out and try it the two ways, the later thought of Twin Linked weapons (the one folks like Deffgob keep proposing) just wouldn't make sense. If you want more individual shots, then get a weapon with double Rate of Fire and take away half the shots that hit and reroll those that missed. Why fire only once when you can twice. Don't be stupid, stop being idiots, and accept the truth for what it is, otherwise start your own thread arguing about reality, I'm sure plenty of people on the internet would join you to argue about stupid things.

As for your last paragraph; What? You basically just said "The game should be totally out of balance favoring these guys and boning these guys for no particular reason, and all the facts I am stating don't even make sense!" I'm sorry, but your whole post deserves and "EPIC FAIL" stamp.

Deffgob wrote:Ultimately, the rules are set up to make the game run, not to fit perfectly into every possible interpretation of the fluff. TL is there to make weapons more accurate, maybe they could have found a better thing to call it. Maybe sighted weapons or some such but I think orkz using sighted weapons is more of a violation of fluff than TL.

I agree with this completely. The name was given to the rule, not visa versa. Meaning, they didn't take the concept of twin-linking a weapon and try and apply it as accurately as possible, they thought of a rule and gave it an appropriate name.

So, trying to say what twin-linking actually is and how it should be fixed is completely pointless.

Alright, I wanted to contribute without calling you a stupid but you're clearly not going to make that easy. You're telling me that the only reason to argue that they don't fire simultaneously is to help support the rules. How about common god damn sense? If you were designing a rapid-fire weapon with 2 barrels to increase it's output, would you design it to fire both barrels simultaneously to increase kickback as much as possible? No, you would have them alternate to increase accuracy. The only time it really makes sense for them to fire at the exact same time is with big guns like las canons, where the barrels are far apart enough that it could easily hit with one and miss with the other in many cases. But besides all that, why don't you tell me all of the places where it mentions that they DO fire at exactly the same time? Wait, there are none? Then someone would have to be extremely high or half slowed to stick by that concept this fervently, wouldn't he?

As for the last paragraph of my post, I guess I'll rephrase it in a way that might be easier for you to understand: You should use a lot of little bullets to kill a lot of little things. You should use big bullets to kill big things.

Actually, Deffgob, you have, seemingly, achieved doing absolutely nothing to support yourself. In fact! There are MANY examples of multi-gunned weapons firing simultaneously. Most notably, is the DOUBLE BARRELED SHOTGUN which can fire two shot shells at exactly the same time, regardless of its kickback, with no affect to accuracy as both rounds (if you are using slugs for instance, which would hurt like a SOB but you can still do it, and I have) leave the barrel at the same time because they were FIRED AT THE SAME TIME! Besides that, recoil being a factor is relative to the comparative forces at work. A multi-ton tank really won't give a crap about the recoil of a couple of small arms firing simo because it is a tank, which are very heavy, and wont be affected enough for accuracy to become an issue. Anoth example of a vehicle that fired multiple weapons simultaneously is a whole bunch of German WWII light armored vehicles mounted with dual machine guns. The purpose here was a cloud effect, mostly for fending off aircraft, but against ground forces it still worked very well by sheer volume of fire. The weapons were not bothered to have complex alternating firing systems, they simply hooked up a dual trigger and they fired... oh, wow, simultaneously and were quite effective historically... my oh my oh my, see what a bit of researching can do.

As for where in the fluff are Twin Linked weapons firing simo? Well, Dawn of War is a good start which visually depicts them doing so for those out there who are confused by all the words in all the books the Black Library is printing. Just about any time a Chaos Terminator or Rhino is wielding their TWIN LINKED Bolters they are described, to some effect, as punching out two bolts at a time, rather than alternating barrels. Predators, Land Raiders, Baal Predators, Baneblades, err.. can't think of their names but the Imperial Navy's heavy bombers? They have Twin Linked weapons as well, um, in some of the older short stories, depictions of the weapons mechanics (not sure if those were canon to be perfectly honest), oh geez, this list could go on for pages.... Basically just about everywhere Twin Linked weapons might be described. I know, I didn't cover all the alien weapons, but to be honest they're not covered as well as the Imperial side of things, and in all fairness, Twin Linked is used by Imperial players more often than the other races, so by volume it is of more concern (I said BY VOLUME!). Is it possible that everyone else works compeltely differently and what little support they have (can only think of Dawn of War, to be honest) should be disregarded? Well that just seems like a stupid idea to throw out your only evidence because there isn't a source to totally confirm it due to the possibility that there might be differing options with a chance of being drastically different enough to requite separate interpretations. Man, there were a lot of depending variables in that last sentence... Basically it seems the entire opposing argument exists simply to be an argument with no substance, a theory of "what ifs" and "in far unlikely possibles" of thought. Which, really, when having the Scientific Method applied, makes no sense and is rather fruity (lack of evidence proves existence argument opposing an argument carrying acceptance and evidence).

But, to digress, I am no longer going to argue about the subject of Twin Linked weapons in depiction vs. rules. That isn't really the point of this thread. That would go somewhere under Fluff for Nutters, a title I find amusing.

Damn, I can't believe I forgot about the double-barreled shotgun, truly an obvious example of a rapid-fire handheld weapon. My bad.
Okay, so you don't want this to be about fluff mechanics vs rule mechanics. You just want to take a rule that lets you reroll hits and change it to reroll wounds, but take all of the wounds that were already successes w/o the reroll and force the opponent to reroll successful saves against those wounds, but not against the wounds that were only successful after the reroll. And you want to do this for no reason at all. I wonder, do you have fun with Excel spread sheets by any chance?

Actually, I do. And under rerolling saves, only rerolling armor and invul. saves, so not cover saves. The basic idea is instead of two shots firing and one missing the other hitting, it is two shots hitting the same spot, which has been the complaint of many a Twin Linked weapon user when their first roll was a success, but failed either to wound or penetrate armor immediately afterward. The point here is to create a rule system that accurately, and reasonably simply, reflects an intent. In this case, how do you treat a one shot, two hit mechanic without just doing a two for one thing?

See, I think that's where we're getting into trouble here. changing TL mechanics to better suit the fluff would not better reflect the intent. The intent is to give low BS armies weapons that allow them to actually hit things and to give high BS armies weapons that are almost a guaranteed hit. Games workshop is a game company. There primary goal is to make the game mechanics and then they label them with fluff to make the whole experience more enthralling. If they don't always line up perfectly, it's the fluff that's the issue. Not the mechanics. (except when the mechanics alone are a problem *cough* wound allocation *cough*)

Personally I think the re roll should be used when rolling for the "wound/penetration die and not the rolling to hit.

The weapons fire at the same time and at the same spot so if one misses, the distance between the two shots is going to be negligible.

However if the shot hits, then you have two potential hits striking near enough the exact same spot which would allow a greater deal of damage to be inflicted (hence a re roll of the "wound/penetration" die)

I feel that the roll should work like the rules for the Space Marine venerable dreadnought, if the player firing the weapon is unhappy with the wound result they can reroll once and have to accept the new result even if it is worse.

Just my thoughts...

So by your reckoning, Twin-Linked would actually be hideously inaccurate at longer range, say, after the apex of the two arcs is reached and the charges actually start moving apart.

Worse yet, if they're bolts or grenades etc, they actually collide mid-air and completely miss.

Right.

The problem with it being called twin-linking is that there is double the shots flying through the air but the effect is only making likely to hit some thing. What happened to hlaf the rounds?

If the rule was called some thing like ...
Accurate - This weapon is incredibly accurate due to advanced targeting sensors. Due to this all failed hit may be rerolled.
... would make more sense

@ Deff : No.

@ Hells : Reasonable, and thank you for helping out with the actual topic rather than bickering about the nuances of "what's the point" when the point is obvious and different by both changing the mechanics in a totally different way yet trying to stay reasonably simple.

@ Tek : No.

@ Tri : Yes, and agreed. In fact, there is a rule for many such systems, whether it simply be high BS, Master Crafted, or a unit/model/character Special Rule that works to that same effect. Twin Linked isn't the only way to simply be more accurate, and there is nothing to cover such a weapon that has two rounds following right with the other.

Skin, if you're going to acknowledge arguments, at least actually acknowledge them. The basis of your argument is that twin-linking 'doesn't make sense' in a fluff perspective.

Tek pointed out that if you want to be technical, that such a system would have even greater difficulties.

Personally, while I support your ability to pursue such a modification, I disagree with your reasoning, and in fact support how twin-linked currently works on the following principles:

1. My father builds navy ships. He has told me about the systems of the ships he makes almost countless times. Twin-linking specifically reminds me of a particular system, known as Phalanx, which is a defense system against incoming missiles or some shells. It works by predicting where the weapon approaches from, and then fires a gatling gun at that area. The wall of bullets then collides with the weapon, forcing it to activate before hitting the ship. You fire a lot of bullets so that it doesn't matter how many miss.

2. If I were firing at you with two pistols, I would in fact suspect myself to be more likely to hit you every "round" of firing, as by using both guns, I can fire to cover multiple movement vectors. Simply put, if you're in front of me, and I hold out both my guns and fire, I have established a threat on both left and right, making it more likely to hit you, regardless of which way you dodge.

Now, I don't anticipate getting much here, so I will simply say again, I don't agree with what you're working toward, but I do support your decision to do it.

As an aside, for the rule you're proposing, I see as being more appropriate to something like the Metal Storm. The Metal Storm is a machine gun developed in Australia, that stacks it's bullets in the tube. If it were actually a case of a bullet hitting the same spot after a preceding bullet, then I'd agree, this rule would be more appropriate, but that's not how I see twin linked working.

@ AWF2M : Your 1 and 2 are actually the exact same concept using two different methods. Phalanx puts out more ammunition than a typical machine gun, as most all gatling guns. It is not more accurate, it just has a higher rate of fire, increasing its chance of hitting by having more ammunition moving towards the target. In your number 2 you are using two weapons with relatively, compared to a gatling gun, low rates of fire. By using two, you have increased that rate of fire. In game terms that would be an increased number of rounds moving down range and just letting the firer's BS handle things. Firing pistols duel style will not put rounds to left and right of the target unless they are aimed as such. Hold out two pistols, close your eyes, and pull the triggers, you'll probably get rounds from one weapon going to the other weapon's side almost as likely as not.

As for dismissing Deff, I feel he is trolling and there isn't much point to contributing more time than necessary to his "argument." As for Tek, I just don't know where he came up with what he said and he brought forth no effort to plausibly support it other than the side he is trying to support. He is correct, if munitions traveled at the exact same velocity as another similar munition and they were converging at a point, they would very likely collide. But munitions aren't perfect and will always have slightly different ballistics in relation to each other over a distance. You can put all your money on it, I promise you will win that bet. Not only that, what if the point of convergence was at a distance (assuming they will collide) that was so great it doesn't matter in relation to the target (point of convergence, for example being at a 1k meters, and the target being at 100m). The rounds would still be subjectively close enough to one another to impact the same relative point, but not obstruct each other's trajectory.

You see all that text up there? It is a relatively basic deduction if you just try and think of a way they WON'T collide, rather than assuming that there isn't a way they won't collide. Heck, I'm not even covering cross trajectory ballistics or screw trajectory! Not to mention vertical drift and munition setting! And those are just a bit more complex but still basic ideas! (except for their names, which are a bit more intimidating)

Any way i do like the idea of a floating re-roll but i would say it could also re-roll cover savers (you still stand 2x the chance of being hit behind cover). Playing it like this wouldn't be too hard to do ether ...

Ok lets use a bike squad (any one will do they almost all have TL weapons) Roll to hit any that make go to one side (white) those that don't change colour (red) and are rerolled those that hit add to the the others ... Now roll to wound place to one side all those that wound and re-roll any white dice those that hit now become red ... Allocate wounds roll saves, any successful saves made on white dice must be rerolled (models have a rule to re-roll any failed saves in which case only roll once and the dice counts as being rerolled) ...

... this might be a little unfair but ...

... any dice (white) that are never rerolled count as 2 wounds.

@ Tri - That is really complicated, I'm not really sure what if going on. Perhaps breaking all that down into list format would be easier to understand? Also, the reason cover saves are not rerolled is because if the round impacted cover than the other round, which is moving towards the same point, did as well. Not some might try to argue that if you are using Twin Linked Lascannon than it could pen most cover (which I also disagree with), but then you are forgetting what if it is Twin Linked Lasguns? They don't exist but since we are looking at a system and not a specific weapon we need to accept all possibilities. If you don't like that idea, well then Twin Linked Bolters.

At the moment all a TL weapon does is reroll to hit ... but that doesn't seem to cover what a TL weapon would do. As i said the rule should have been called Accurate for just rerolled hits.

A Floating re-roll is much closer to what would happen with an actual Twin-linked weapon ... You get one re-roll but any where in the shooting process. Re-rolls on the saves would also be nice but after a couple of quick trials this make it too much of a pain to carry out.

(wish dakka had colour dice) Ok say the numbers are dice rolls for a Eldar jetbikes (3) shooting space marines
roll to hit
123456 || 3 hit which are placed to one side
246 ||two more hits (colour is changed so that we know they don't get another re-roll)
roll to wound
12345 || 2 wound 3 fail ... the red fail cannot be rerolled so is discarded
36 || another wound
allocate wounds roll saves

... And yes i do think there should be a re-roll on penetrations for lascannons and the like.

Agreed, rerolls on failed rolls to penetrate (but not on glances).

This whole mixing colored dice never appealed to me. I have always just rolled for all things to be considered individually (it really doesn't take much longer and there is never any confusion! A tie win situation).

6 Bolter shots from Guard on Space Marines.
3 Hit
2 Wound. Reroll failed wound, it wounds. Set the die aside to be counted for later or, if it doesn't matter towards wound allocation, have the Space Marine player roll their saves.
Allocate Wounds
2 Saves, reroll and one fails.
Recovered wound rolled for saves, saved, no reroll as it already got its one reroll.
One wound total on Space Marine unit.

No rerolls to hit.

Yep that way works as well ... personaly i like using different colour dice and have a rainbow of them ^_^ (edit i normal place an extra dice next to the different weapons being fired so that i can tell them apart)

But you are rerolling to hit.

? oh i see you want to just re-roll wounds and saves? again that isn't what i think Twin-link does ...

Re-rolling hits = a more Accurate weapon
Re-rolling wounds = a more lethal weapon
Re-rolling saves = a better penetrating weapon

Twin-linking is doubling the shots fired it should be ether double the shots or something to make the shot doubly effective ... ether a re-roll on both hits and wounds, or a floating re-roll ...

... but that just my opinion on it ... technical it work out about the same ether way (re-roll hits & wounds or re-roll wounds & saves) both give two re-rolls.

I look at Twin-Linked as one round following essentially the same trajectory and sharing the same target (think one round behind the other if that is easier for you).

Actually, if you math it, those two different rerolls give drastically different results, especially depending on who is firing and/or who is being fired upon. A weapon that does not allow hit rerolls depends more on the firer's ballistic skill being good, such as Space Marines or Eldar, as they are better shooters than the average (assuming BS3 is average). They would be more concerned with breaking though armor and wounding than the weapon compensating for their accuracy, or lack there of.

Rerolling wounds, but not saves, doesn't make much sense, however, because those are both heavily dependent on the their ability to cause damage. So a weapon that has high anti-armor properties is also going to need a high strength property, they go pretty much hand in hand. It would be like implying that a Lascannon isn't very good at penetrating armor, but is very powerful to make up for it! Or that a melta-gun isn't very powerful, but dang can it cut up armor! They go hand in hand, and almost always do.

Skinnattittar wrote:I look at Twin-Linked as one round following essentially the same trajectory and sharing the same target (think one round behind the other if that is easier for you).

and that i think is why we don't agree on this i see it as 2 rounds firing next to each other traveling parallel to one another. The floating re-roll on the hit and wound are because as i see it ...
A) you hit dead on so its likely both will cause a wound (rerolled failed wounds)
B) you miss but one round or other hits (the re-roll to hit)
C) your an ork and miss both shots
... now i can see the floating re-roll going all the way to the saves but i only ignored that idea because A) it adds to the complication B) with wound allocation rules they all end up on bob any way.

Skinnattittar wrote:Actually, if you math it, those two different re-rolls give drastically different results

yes and no ... it all evens out ... you must hit, wound, and it must no be saved ... i guess with AP beating weapons mine would be more likely to kill but then that's the point of AP. A weapon could be Strength 10 but if its only AP ' - ' even dark Eldar can armour save against it.

this is certainly one sided in favor of sanity

61 vs 9 to keep it as is

if that is not an indicator of a bad idea, i am not sure what is

@ Tri : Actually I interpret it the same as you do. When I say "essentially" I am speaking of relative distance. If two bullets are traveling parallel to each other and are only inches apart, then they are going to essentially hit the same target. If one misses, the other is going to essentially miss as well. Is this saying that there is not a chance that one might miss and the other hit? No, there is, but that is a really slim chance, so slim in fact it can easily be worked into the wound system later on, if that is indeed what happened, the other round would only be hitting by a few inches, maybe even less, and cause only a superficial wound. That would be factored into the wound part. In your system, Twin Linked will drastically change, and require a total points overhaul for all weapons with Twin Linked, and the vehicles bearing them, or the chance of bearing them or not.

LAST EDIT : Addition to "@ Tri" : No, it doesn't "even out." Your system is beneficial twice to mine, making no trade offs compared to current Twin Linked.

FIRST EDIT :
@ EasyE : Actually, if you look at the poll, you will notice THREE options, only one of which is a flat out "no" and says nothing about changing it being a bad idea, just that those people prefer the current way. The actual ratio is 20 : 61, about 1 : 3 ratio, not TERRIBLE odds. But as I was saying before, it may just mean that those people voting "against" prefer a simpler system, are afraid of change, just trolling, or any number of other reasons. I put that poll there simply out of curiosity, since I know a lot of people read but don't post. Remember, about 95% of Warhammer 40,000 people think is total BS and should be done away with or modified massively, and we've been playing it for over twenty years!

Ok, sense anyone who tries to tell you why things should just stay the same is a troll or an idiot, I guess I'll try to tell you why you're idea of floating rerolls is stupid. say a unit of 5 marines in a forrest for a 4+ cover is shot at by 12 dakkagunz (assault 3 5-5 TL).
12 shots hit.
8 wound (2 more after reroll)
So, the SM player assigns 2 wounds to each, but assigns both of the wounds that don't require rerolled successful armor saves to the same model, allowing everyone to take their 4+ cover and then the one model with both of the "regular" wounds would just take 2 armor saves.

Aside from being a stupidly complicated replacement for a rule that functions perfectly as written, your suggestion would give players another way to abuse wound allocation.

Raise your hand if you want players to have a new way to abuse wound allocation.

If you insist on rewriting TL, it should just be reroll to wound/pen. Not this ridiculous reroll wound, or force reroll of successful saves but not against wounds that didn't need a reroll to be a successful wound.

I voted "no" for a couple of reasons. First, this is a massive change that would wreak havoc with point costs for years. Secondly, I'm of the opinion that TL is more of the "just spray bullets in the general vicinity"(course, the most common TL'ed weapons I use are Spinefists and Devourers). Thirdly, I think that the name was only written to describe the rule, not the other way around.

@ Skinnattittar ...
SM with bolter firing at a SM
standard chance to wound (0.1..) or ....(144/1296)
with TL as it is now ..........(0.148..) or .(192/1296)
My version .....................(0.2037..) or (264/1296)
Your version ...................(0.2407..) or (312/1296)

Eldar guardian with shurikens firing at Eldar guardian
standard chance to wound (0.3..) or .(432/1296)
with TL as it is now ..........(0.5) or ....(648/1296)
My version ......................(0.61..) or (792/1296)
Your version ...................(0.4..) or ..(576/1296)

i did a others but it should be clear that your version does slightly better against armour saves but worse the then mine and the original rule when the AP beats the save.

======

"total points overhaul for all weapons with Twin Linked" Is that you biggest problem?
Tau TL weapons cost double ... Tyranids TL also cost double ... all Bikes tend to be over priced ... I'm sure there are some TL weapons at reasonable points but most of them aren't.

i think just scrap the twin linked idea since they fire paralel so if your fireing at something thats smaller than the distance form the barrals both shoots will miss since they will fly by the sides of it twin linked dosent work for war games, in real life it helps save turret space since you only need 1 turret for 3 guns.

Skinna is right about the twin linked it makes no sense the way GW made the rules and personally it looks incredibly <edited by moderator>. I think if you really needed to have fluff on why weapons are twin linked it should have been written where if one gun misses the computer can adjust by observing the first round miss and send another round down range quickly with the proper adjustments needed to hit. but sadly GW has it written sooooooooooo wrong for how weapons work oh well what do you expect from a company that keeps up prices and giving nothing back to its followers.

chris13f wrote:Skinna is right about the twin linked it makes no sense the way GW made the rules and personally it looks incredibly <edited by moderator>.

Please refrain from using terms that reference sexual preference, as demeaning terms. Not acceptable or appropriate, now or ever.

Cheers!
Che-vito

With the way twin-linked weapons are mounted, the current way makes more sense; this new way implies that the both barrels hit the exact same spot in which case I might as well just make my twin-linked Lascannon a Heavy 2 weapon and get two shots at my target. As it is, the barrels are spaced to hit more area in case your shooting isn't accurate enough. If I shoot at a Gaunt Brood with my Baal Predator, my twin-linked Assault Cannons aren't focus-firing and hitting each Gaunt with twice the bullets. They're spraying lead over a radius that's twice as big, therefore doubling the blood-crazed gunner's change of hitting something while not necessarily granting additional density of fire. The current rule isn't 100% realistic but it does the job.

Why not just roll to hit as normal and if you hit, you get 2 to wound rolls.

Twin linked as it is now is dumb. You are firing 2 shots they should hit or miss independently and wound independently. Should change Linked weapons in that they count as one weapon system for purposes of firing weapons on the move on a vehicle, have to fire at the same target and get the shots of two weapons.

Reality has no vote in good game design.

LMoE

LastManOnEarth wrote:Reality has no vote in good game design.

LMoE

this is why so many people loved GTA but give up with GTAIV

/necro?

Dracos wrote:/necro?

meh its a Proposed Rules ... If some one want to keep something going this place is fine.