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Yoyoyo wrote:
If your argument depends on existing in a vacuum, free of context or challenges, it's not a strong argument. Think about the impact of turn 1 advantage if those "nice" instakills were actually something you (or your opponent) could depend on.

Once again, D-strength Railguns already exist in the Tau codex. Go see if you can find them.

It's pretty obvious they don't belong on a spammable 125pt platform though.

I disagree. GW's pricing schemes mean nothing to me. I'm talking about actual efficacy.

Ammunition:

Hyper-velocity Slug: S10 AP1 Any vehicle struck by this ammunition must have all occupants roll a toughness test to wound.

HARM: This projectile is comprised of any conductive metal that, upon impact, turns molten and penetrates the vehicle causing substantial damage to both its super structure and internal mechanisms. This weapon causes an additional haywire roll on a successful hit.

Yoyoyo wrote:
It's pretty obvious they don't belong on a spammable 125pt platform though.

Then make the Hammerhead more expensive to justify a powerful gun. IG are supposed to be the army with cheap tanks that make up for poor quality with spamming a dozen of them. Tau are supposed to prefer quality over quantity, and that means the Hammerhead needs to be a scary tank killer even if its point cost has to be increased for balance reasons.

Yeah, a 150 or higher Railhead with a worthy weapon isn't exactly a bad thing.

Ionhead would have to be cheaper though (or upgrade to the Ion Accelerator).

 Peregrine wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:
It's pretty obvious they don't belong on a spammable 125pt platform though.

Then make the Hammerhead more expensive to justify a powerful gun. IG are supposed to be the army with cheap tanks that make up for poor quality with spamming a dozen of them. Tau are supposed to prefer quality over quantity, and that means the Hammerhead needs to be a scary tank killer even if its point cost has to be increased for balance reasons.

A stock Vanquisher is actually 10pts more expensive. What most of the people in this thread want is the Tau equivalent of the Lynx.

Vanquisher is large blast and ordnance. No one wants large blast for it. Ordnance would be a cheap, easy bandaid but doesn't address the base problem.

That's the LRBT, not the Vanq. S8 AP2 Armourbane.

Yoyoyo wrote:
A stock Vanquisher is actually 10pts more expensive.

So? The LR Vanquisher sucks. It's an awful tank that no competitive IG player ever uses. So yes, the Hammerhead should be better. The goal is to make it a good competitive option, not a terrible unit that might be better than some even worse unit.

Ammunition:

Hyper-velocity Slug: S10 AP1 Any vehicle struck by this ammunition must have all occupants roll a toughness test to wound.

HARM: S10 AP1 This projectile is comprised of any conductive metal that, upon impact, turns molten and penetrates the vehicle causing substantial damage to both its super structure and internal mechanisms. This weapon causes an additional haywire roll on a successful hit.

I agree the D3 extra HP is ridiculous - but I don't think it's too far off from where it should be given the price. Just give it some more options and minor buffs.
The thing should obviously have "Ignores Cover" as a default anyway since no amount of cover short of a cliffside is going to stop a railgun slug or even remotely change its course in the short term.

Why exactly is D3 HP ridiculous again? So it's okay for Tau to incinerate entire squads of 2+ armor with one shot, but they can't kill a tank?

Martel732 wrote:
Why exactly is D3 HP ridiculous again? So it's okay for Tau to incinerate entire squads of 2+ armor with one shot, but they can't kill a tank?

because no other AT weapons have this special quality. Including the ones that are supposed to be more effective at destroying a tank than the railgun (melta/fusion weapons).

 TheSilo wrote:
I might be mistaken, but aren't railguns S10 Ap1? As in, they're literally the strongest weapon possible in the game. Or am I mistaken?

You are not mistaken my friend.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Railheads are cheap. Hard to justify taking one when you can take a riptide for just a little bit more...and be invincible. I see now why you cry. It doesn't automatically destroy things like riptides.

Actually, riptides and hammerheads do not compete, at all. Different slots.

 AtoMaki wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Why exactly is D3 HP ridiculous again? So it's okay for Tau to incinerate entire squads of 2+ armor with one shot, but they can't kill a tank?

because no other AT weapons have this special quality. Including the ones that are supposed to be more effective at destroying a tank than the railgun (melta/fusion weapons).

So? Think outside the box. I think the railgun should be far more powerful than melta/fusion weapon. So I guess we can conceptually disagree there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 TheSilo wrote:
I might be mistaken, but aren't railguns S10 Ap1? As in, they're literally the strongest weapon possible in the game. Or am I mistaken?

You are not mistaken my friend.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Railheads are cheap. Hard to justify taking one when you can take a riptide for just a little bit more...and be invincible. I see now why you cry. It doesn't automatically destroy things like riptides.

Yes S10 AP 1 is the current top, but all that really shows is how poor individual shots are in Spamhammer 40K. As much as I hate Riptides, I admit that the railhead should be much, much better.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Actually, riptides and hammerheads do not compete, at all. Different slots.

Everything competes with everything for points. They don't compete for the same slots true. After you've got 3 riptides and your required HQ and troops - you really don't have any points left for hammerheads.

 BoomWolf wrote:
No, i'm shooting at the chimera itself.

The extra 60 points of troops and 30-40 points of gear are extra troops and gear.

I might disable it, but it means I need to shoot again next turn, and nothing stops the troopers from disembarking and doing their thing.

By your logic the WS is not OP because you need to pay for the units inside it too.


And the chemira was a randomly chosen unit for the fact its pathetic defensivly compared to real armor.

Predators? I'll need about an entire game's worth of hammerhead shots not considering cover.
Land raider or russ? you are not likely to kill it even if you hit every single turn. again-not even considering possible cover.


Its a dedicated anti-tank gun that cannot kill any tank in the game in any fasion that resembles efficiency. a dedicated unit should be able to do at least twice if not trice its cost in damage to its target of choice over the course of the game, because its not going to do anything of value to any other target. (assuming its not killed naturally, twice or trice its cost over the course of 6 rounds of action.)

The end line is, the railgun hammerhead fails to preform even against its target of choice under optimal conditions, and to top it off in any other conditions its hardly even helping.
Therefor its a bad unit. there is no way around it.
It lacks the firepower to matter. its actually completely safe to ignore it all game long even if you are an armored list-who are its supposed targets of choice.

I agree - I made a suggestion earlier.

Tau have too many experimental weapons and support systems that for the next codex, I'd like to see become standard issue. From what I can tell Tau are perhaps the only army that have active scientists and R&D departments that churn out new gear.

All tau tanks should have the ability to be upgraded with tank commander that wears XV02 Pilot Battlesuit. Modify the rules from Longstrike to keep him unique.
- This lets games workshop still sell the Longstrike model, but they throw in a few more arms and heads on a sprue so you can model them differently. - everyone would by 3-4 of these rather than 1.

This upgrade costs - 50 pts
Gives the model:
BS 5
Overwatch - keep rule that allows multiple overwatch per phase
Supporting Fire
Blacksun filter

Also - up the tank cost to 175 base but change the gun to:
Primary weapon with Armorbane which allows - roll 3d6 and pick the two highest and add them for armor pen
Ignore cover

Give a special rule - If the armour pen roll =20 the vehicle is insta killed and you roll on the catastrophic dmg table for super heavies, if the pen roll = 15 its auto explode results non-super heavies (Land Raiders, etc..) No FNP, armor or cover saves - only invuln
For non av units - roll the armor pen roll as well. if the number is double the number of wounds the model is insta killed. No FNP, armor or cover saves - only invuln

Kitted out with Spines, Pod, submunitions it's a 250pt tank.

You now have a land raider priced tank killer that lives up to the rail gun fluff but leaves GW room to add tau super heavies with D weapons shenanigans. The gun is still 1 shot but that 1 shot has a good chance to hit and could be twinlinked with enough marker lights.

Guys, before just randomly offering rules suggestions and hoping to see what sticks, let's step back and consider things with a little wider vision.

Regarding looking to tournament lists, competitive players spam the most broken OP units in the highest quantities possible to increase their chances of winning. It's a terrible place to establish what gameplay is supposed to look like. This is not a good standard of measure.

Second, 40k is a tabletop tactics game, not a CCG or RTS. You shouldn't be winning by your list, hard counters, or OP units that destroy three times their cost. You should by winning by your grasp of tactics and smart decisions with the units you have. Is anyone in disagreement with this?

The Chimera example is not a bad thing. You should be rightfully be punished for plinking away at front armour like a dummy instead of hitting the AV10 side. That's why anti-tank weapons are typically used in pairs and sited where they can get at the side armour. Evaporating front armour regardless of circumstance is the realm of superheavies.

Removing as basic a concept as "flank shot" from your codex isn't really improving gameplay!

So if the competitive scene isn't the place to start, or mathhammer, what now?. Let's try a new angle, what you want the game to actually look like by the time you're finished with it. Why isn't anyone mentioning the Lynx? It's a lightweight platform with a D-strength 'railgun'. Should Tau have one? Is the gradual creep towards superheavies going to make 40k a better game? What's the unintended consequences of saying "if I point my Hammerhead at a target, it should go boom?"

I don't have all the answers, but there's very little consideration of these questions in this thread from what I see. Or even the most basic obvious things like cross-codex balance! The issues with single shot and the vehicle damage table apply equally to the Prism, Vanquisher, Doomsday Ark, etc.

Finally, if you say "D-weapon" you would have to price an improved railgun fairly, which explains why there's all this jumping through hoops with special rules to get a D-weapon equivalent for 1/3rd of the price. Just try houseruling Lynx stats on your Hammerheads for now, we will probably all learn something.

Think of it as "balance testing".

With Longstrike its not that bad. 170pts for hitting on 2s, and then tankhunter means your probably gonna pen anything that isn't AV14 and even then there's still a decent chance.

Then with that pen it'll get an explodes! result a third of the time.

The only time Longstrike isn't great is against Titans which he gained his fame for killing. He should probably have preferred enemy Imperial Knights instead of/as well as imperial guard.

A standard Hammerhead is BS4 so it's still good but when it's probably failing to hit and to pen rolls a third of the time every fail is costly. That's where ordnance would be helpful.

I think they are fine for what they do. I mean why do you need your s10 ap1 weapon even better?

"This is not a good standard of measure. "

If those lists are legal, why isn't it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brennonjw wrote:
I think they are fine for what they do. I mean why do you need your s10 ap1 weapon even better?

Because math shows that S10 AP 1 is actually terrible at killing tanks.

 Brennonjw wrote:
I think they are fine for what they do. I mean why do you need your s10 ap1 weapon even better?

Because they way the game is currently set up, a single S10 AP1 a turn is actually kind of pointless.
In order to make the single shot weapons useful you would have to rework the the current vehicle damage system to something better, where it can reliably do more damage per turn to a heavily armored vehicle than multiple shots from a much weaker source.
As it is now, stripping hull points with mid strength decent rate of fire weapons are way more effective than fishing for that explodes result, even when using an AP1 weapon.
I think the hammerhead itself is fine in theory, it's the damage system that I feel needs the rework.

Martel732 wrote:
"This is not a good standard of measure. "

If those lists are legal, why isn't it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brennonjw wrote:
I think they are fine for what they do. I mean why do you need your s10 ap1 weapon even better?

Because math shows that S10 AP 1 is actually terrible at killing tanks.

It's really not that bad when you are close to auto hitting with marker lights. Pens from AP1 like 3-6 rolled on the dice too. Good stuff happens. Guns fall off, immobilization, explosions. It's just a 125 point tank and it will likely survive the entire game with it's range.

The elephant in the room is Imperial Knights. Invul saves stand a good chance of negating any effect from a single shot weapon, hurts more if it's worth backing up with Markerlights. AP1 doesn't cripple superheavies even if it pens (superheavies are not stunned, immo'd, etc). So in this case, you're not getting those benefits on the damage table.

Knights have both these features and are very popular amongst the competitive set. You can say "no superheavies" with your friends, and happily play classic 40k combined arms with some semblance of balance. Hardline tourney players (poor souls) don't get that luxury. They endure cheese powergaming 24/7 and otherwise lube up to be on the recieving end of the worst offenders in 40k's competitive meta. The passion, the pain, the Serpent spam, the need of a shower after 14 straight hours standing around in a cheap hotel ballroom.... Las Vegas, here we come!

Do these guys need a D weapon? Yeah, probably. But they also are probably triple riptide stacker types, so they deserve all the frustration they get. I'm sure GW/FW will eventually make a Tau superheavy at an exorbitant price. If so, hopefully you will be able to live in the cardboard box it comes in.

Anyways, back in the world of mere mortals and not competitive powergamers, tank destroyers like the Prism/Vanq/Hammerhead shouldn't necesarily auto-pen AV14. There's sometimes issues in getting flank shots (which is a good thing, since that's half the point of deep striking) but flanking shouldn't be impossible. 40k used to be played on a bigger table, and among your friends you can do that. You can also houserule Ordnance to help out if one player is struggling. But if you're willing to houserule, you're probably also not going to field AdLance or Steel Host against 250pts of Hammerheads, since you're not going to encourage a list mismatch for advantage.

As for hardline competitive players, well, no wonder you look for help on forums (since GW doesn't have a professional and involved balance team with an eye on competition, like say, Blizzard). "Legal" is not synonomous with fun, balanced, a good use of your time, etc. I used to play Warcraft 3 and that game had growing pains with balance that rendered it unplayable. Anyone remember sorc spam? Competitive players will ALWAYS spam the most OP shizz they can get away with and completely ruin the game in the pursuit of victory. That's why you change the laws as needed, since human nature assuredly won't.

Make Tau rail weapons ignore vehicle invuln saves. The rule could be "No Shielding Strong Enough"

It does amuse me so when Knights go boom.

The hull points system has skewed weapons as much as it has balanced them. the rail gun is among those it hurt. Hull points are a computer game mechanic that is nonsensical when applied to tabletop 40k. A better solution would have been to retain the old damage charts with the following changes. If a weapon destroyed or result came up and all weapons have already been KO'd then the result defaults to immobilised, and vica versa. And if if both weapons and molbility have been destroyed then then the result defaults to vehicle destroyed. Or something along those lines, there were no need for hull points ...in my very outspoken opinion.

 thegreatchimp wrote:
The hull points system has skewed weapons as much as it has balanced them. the rail gun is among those it hurt. Hull points are a computer game mechanic that is nonsensical when applied to tabletop 40k. A better solution would have been to retain the old damage charts with the following changes. If a weapon destroyed or result came up and all weapons have already been KO'd then the result defaults to immobilised, and vica versa. And if if both weapons and molbility have been destroyed then then the result defaults to vehicle destroyed. Or something along those lines, there were no need for hull points ...in my very outspoken opinion.

I understand this position, as spammy HP scrubbers are better AT than dedicated AT guns.

Yoyoyo wrote:
The elephant in the room is Imperial Knights. Invul saves stand a good chance of negating any effect from a single shot weapon, hurts more if it's worth backing up with Markerlights. AP1 doesn't cripple superheavies even if it pens (superheavies are not stunned, immo'd, etc). So in this case, you're not getting those benefits on the damage table.

Knights have both these features and are very popular amongst the competitive set. You can say "no superheavies" with your friends, and happily play classic 40k combined arms with some semblance of balance. Hardline tourney players (poor souls) don't get that luxury. They endure cheese powergaming 24/7 and otherwise lube up to be on the recieving end of the worst offenders in 40k's competitive meta. The passion, the pain, the Serpent spam, the need of a shower after 14 straight hours standing around in a cheap hotel ballroom.... Las Vegas, here we come!

Do these guys need a D weapon? Yeah, probably. But they also are probably triple riptide stacker types, so they deserve all the frustration they get. I'm sure GW/FW will eventually make a Tau superheavy at an exorbitant price. If so, hopefully you will be able to live in the cardboard box it comes in.

Anyways, back in the world of mere mortals and not competitive powergamers, tank destroyers like the Prism/Vanq/Hammerhead shouldn't necesarily auto-pen AV14. There's sometimes issues in getting flank shots (which is a good thing, since that's half the point of deep striking) but flanking shouldn't be impossible. 40k used to be played on a bigger table, and among your friends you can do that. You can also houserule Ordnance to help out if one player is struggling. But if you're willing to houserule, you're probably also not going to field AdLance or Steel Host against 250pts of Hammerheads, since you're not going to encourage a list mismatch for advantage.

As for hardline competitive players, well, no wonder you look for help on forums (since GW doesn't have a professional and involved balance team with an eye on competition, like say, Blizzard). "Legal" is not synonomous with fun, balanced, a good use of your time, etc. I used to play Warcraft 3 and that game had growing pains with balance that rendered it unplayable. Anyone remember sorc spam? Competitive players will ALWAYS spam the most OP shizz they can get away with and completely ruin the game in the pursuit of victory. That's why you change the laws as needed, since human nature assuredly won't.

To be quite honest I think hammerheads are fine against IK. For the cost of a knight you can take 3 hammer heads. On certain boards you could probably have at least 3 turns of shooting from each one before it's on you. Even assuming hes got sheilds for each shot. with some marker light hits - your chances of outright destroying it aren't that bad. I'd say if the game went on for a while that a knight would have little to no chance against the hammer heads...obviosuly this is an in a vacuum kind of way of looking at it but I know for a fact that AP1 pens ruin knights and hammer heads should be able to get several of them. Obvious when you start taking many knights things become more difficult for a TAC tau list.

I don't know mate, I think there's some serious issues with scaling. I've never seen 8-9 Hammerheads w/Submunitions in a list, even on Dakka. I'm guessing there are good reasons for that. Outside that vacuum, Markerlight sources cost money, need to get in range, need to survive, etc. And you can't sacrifice versatility against most of the lists in the game just to stay even with AdLance.

If you really want to stick with the whole 7th edition solutions, where you might see 1000+ points of heavy AV and the traditional FOC doesn't scale, you should give the Tau an armour formation with appropriate bonuses or special rules. Extra Markerlights, "No Shield Strong Enough", whatever. In fact one already existed in Apoc.

ftp://ftp.sonic.net/pub/users/planes/games/wh40k/apoc/ApocTauArmoredCadre.pdf

I'm not personally a fan of making 40k "Apoc light" but at least you're not affecting the regular FOC unit this way. And by using a formation you can make Hammerheads taken in large quantities less of a burden on the rest of the army, since they become more cost-effective.

Scaling has a huge impact on balance. Even MT can do well at low points levels, but not at 1850pts once the big boys come out to play.

High-volume HP scrubbing is too effective if it's replacing dedicated AT weaponry, yes. Very much worth discussing (and it relates back to the HRR versus missleside's issues).

How about something like this?

Overkill: A weapon with this special rule adds 1 to rolls on the vehicle damage chart for each point above the enemy vehicle's armor rolled.

For example, if firing a Railgun (S10) at a Rhino front (AV11) and you rolled a 3 to pen, you'd get an additional +2 to the damage chart roll (not counting the AP2 bonus), to simulate the shot hitting with such force that a slight miss isn't going to matter. Similarly, if you hit an AV10 vehicle with such a weapon, you'd simply automatically demolish it, seeing as most AV10 vehicles are flimsy at best.

EDIT: On second thought, this could become an USR added to stuff like lascannons, Railguns, Vanquisher Cannons and other single-shot non-melta anti-tank weapons to make them stack up to mid-S spamming better.

Hmm, how about on 6s to penetrate the hit inflicts an extra D3 Hull Points to represent the complete passage of the shell through the vehicle?

This could also be a bonus number of wounds on a roll of 6 to wound for representing the massive trauma the shell causes to Monstrous and Gargantuan creatures