Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I'm not a guard player, but I am an Ork player who has used Lootas in just about every game I've played so I've been able to see first hand what autocannons are for, and it's simple:

Autocannons are good at killing things that are moderately tough and have terrible armor saves. However, since anything AV10-11 falls into this category they are useful guns to have around because no matter what the meta shifts to Marines will always love their rhinos.

Lascannons (as far as I know) are good at killing AV12-13, monstrous creatures and TEQ. They are good enough at killing AV10, 11 and 14 and even high value MEQ (plague marines etc.), that you won't feel foolish for spending the points on the upgrade to lascannon. I don't have much experience with them, but they certainly seem more versatile than autocannons.

Now autocannons are twice as good at killing horde infantry as a lascannon, but two times nothing is still nothing. So saying an autocannon is a versatile generalist is misleading at best, they are only good at killing light armor and those rare units that are really tough but don't have 3+ or better armor. This is coming from someone who has seen autocannon fire (lootas) erase infantry units from the board only to realize that small arms fire (shoota boys) would have done the same job for cheaper.

It just so happens that killing light armor is an important job so I would suggest that one should have some autocannons, but you should probably have more lascannons.

One last thing I'll say, but people are saying the vehicle only has a 50% chance to blow up before you've glanced it to death like thats a bad thing. Thats a 1/2 chance of not needing that third pen/glance to kill something. And you've still got a 1/3 chance of killing something in the first pen, so that's not too shabby either. Yeah it relies a little on luck, but so does almost everything else in this game. I know I've seen enough landraiders and leman russes blow up on the first lascannon shot of the game to realize that even if the odds are low, doesn't mean it won't happen.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
One last thing I'll say, but people are saying the vehicle only has a 50% chance to blow up before you've glanced it to death like thats a bad thing. Thats a 1/2 chance of not needing that third pen/glance to kill something. And you've still got a 1/3 chance of killing something in the first pen, so that's not too shabby either. Yeah it relies a little on luck, but so does almost everything else in this game. I know I've seen enough landraiders and leman russes blow up on the first lascannon shot of the game to realize that even if the odds are low, doesn't mean it won't happen.

The problem is that you're paying extra points for that ability. It's nice when it happens obviously (especially with something like a Vendetta where you have AP 2 by default), but it's a mistake to overestimate the chances of destroying something with the vehicle damage table.

Oh, and that 50% chance was making the incredibly generous assumption that you inflict nothing but AP 2 penetrating hits. Against, say, a Land Raider where the chances of a glance and pen are equal the chances of successfully getting an "explodes" result before you remove the last HP are pretty disappointing.

 Blaggard wrote:
Done, I think. Shows total points spent on killing a HP3 with BS3.

Spoiler:

Not that convinced my maths is perfect (mainly because some people would disagree with the results) so I've added the speadsheet as an attachment. It's in open office format. Sheet1 is calculations, the weapon select is a drop down box.

Unless something has gone wrong opening in Office .... You might want to check some of your calculations again. Its a good cencept though.

This thread is starting to sound like : what's better in rock, paper, scissors? Rock or paper? Rather than debating which one is better, as they are two seperate tools in the tool box, stick to your practical application of each and why you omit one or the other and what you replace the omitted weapon type with.

Otherwise this conversation will just continue to go around and around in circles. Even put your sample army lists in spoiler windows so we can discuss why one list is or is not good without AC or LC. (Jus got power back from hurricane sandy, I'll put my list up tomorrow sometime)