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Kaldor wrote:The largest reason that certain weapons are shunned is because of the ridiculous 'single list' mentality people have.

Too many people only write a single list, and never change it, and certainly never change it based on who they are going to be fighting.

This results in many artificial perceptions.

If you are going to build a single army to take all comers, then of course certain units and upgrades will be shunned, because their predicted efficacy must be compared against all prevalent army builds.

If more players simply changed their list a little between games, depending on who they were fighting, then all those crappy units would be better, those shunned weapons would be used more often, and those OP units would be reigned in a bit.

Mate, there's a few things that your comment omits. Not saying your wrong, but there are a couple points your ignoring.

First, there's the whole "change based on what you're facing" thing. This doesn't work all that well in a fair fight. In that, both players have equal knowledge of what they are facing. This means you don't see your opponents list before writing yours. You can guess based on what your enemies playing, and what they have played in the past, but that doesn't always work. Just because they've played green tide for the last couple games doesn't mean they aren't going to take something different. Thus I want to take something that works against green tide, but can also handle any trucks they take. Thus, Missile Launcher>Heavy Bolter. Ultimately, specializing in this situation is just a gamble.

Then there's the issue of not knowing what you're facing until you are fighting it. Tournaments do this. You need to plan for anything, because you might frankly face anything. Similarly, pickup games. You probably can't bring your entire army to your club, so you choose a selection of models you can bring. Generally, this means one army list. So you take one that can hold it's own against anyone you expect to fight.

Finally, when you are building your army, unless you magnetize out the wazoo, you will only have so many options. So, you go for diversity. That's what your stuck with until you get your next sety of models.

Now, I agree with you that changing up lists is good, but I figure that if you don't want to gamble, you should plan for all contingencies. Generally, this means going for flexible options, or something that's so good at what it does that you can focus on supporting it with something else.

Chesh wrote:

Luide wrote:

Chesh wrote:Plasma cannons are blast weapons and subject to scatter. Krak missiles, on the other hand, are not.

Sure, a krak missile is going to give Draigo the armor save and FNP that a plasma cannon won't, but given the effective reduction in BS (any blast template weapon is fired at an effective BS of 2) I'd rather shoot 4 missiles and have 3 of them hit than shoot 4 plasma cannon blasts and only have one of them land.

Blast weapons are actually more accurate than this. With BS4, direct hit chance on the target is 44% and 1" scatter 7.4% chance. This gives you effective BS of 3 for small blast weapons. Large blast is effectively BS 4 in same case.
Now, blast weapons are very hard to mathhammer though, as there are too many variables (coherency distance, what direction the blast scatters, how far the blast scatters, how many hits originally, how many hits after scatter), but they're not nearly as bad as you make them look like.

Assuming 2" coherency, you'll be hard pressed to hit more than one model, unless the 3" template lands right between two models. I'm counting the hit chance at 33%, since it's fair nigh impossible to mathhammer scatter.

Scatter distance is trivial to mathhammer. 2D6 follows bell curve. 4 or less is around 16.6% and 5 or less is 27.8%. Now, you do need to take into account that these numbers are only used when you don't roll the hit on scatter die, meaning that this gives only ~51% chance.
But I did make a mistake in my post, and that was not taking into account the "Gets Hot" rule. With Gets Hot in effect, chance of hitting single target drops to 43%, halfway between BS 3 and 2.

But if the shot scatters 3" less , it will still hit at least one target ~40% of time. All and all, chance of hitting at least one model in the target unit is very close to 50% if you have weapon that uses "Gets Hot" and around 60% if it doesn't.

Unit assumption: Unit has 3 members (or more) that are 2" apart. First and last model in the unit are at least 3" apart.
Numbers for scatter hits calculated via graph paper, doing it analytically with calculus is just too much effort.

Strange, I prefer ML's in my platoon blobs and an Exterminator for my autocannons. Autocannons may be good at killing ransports, but they're terrible at shooting infantry in cover. At least the frag missile has a better possibility of hitting more models without wasting S7 AP4 shots.

Gets Hot! was about in 4th ed, and was far more deadly than it is now*. It just had no effect on blast Plasma.

You got hot! on as many dice as you rolled to hit with - so within 12" on a standard plasma gun (RF) you would gets hot on a 1 or 2. Orks could pay for a BS2, Assault 3 gets hot gun, that saw them taking a wound more often than they hit....

nosferatu1001 wrote:Gets Hot! was about in 4th ed, and was far more deadly than it is now*. It just had no effect on blast Plasma.

You got hot! on as many dice as you rolled to hit with - so within 12" on a standard plasma gun (RF) you would gets hot on a 1 or 2. Orks could pay for a BS2, Assault 3 gets hot gun, that saw them taking a wound more often than they hit....

Plasma cannons got hot in 4th too. In 4th you had to roll with BS to hit with blast weapons, it was soo much better that way. It was only plasma on vehicles that didn't get hot.

I prefer everything scattering - it was overly complicated and non-sensical in 4th as it was so inconsistent.

nosferatu1001 wrote:I prefer everything scattering - it was overly complicated and non-sensical in 4th as it was so inconsistent.

How was it overly complicated in 4th? You rolled to hit with the BS centered on one model and tried to cover as many as possible. It was a lot easier in 4th then the crazy scatter minus BS that you have now.

Single large blast weapons are rubbish with the current scatter rules it's true. Add in cover and you need to cover 4 models with a blast marker for every kill.

Testify wrote:Single large blast weapons are rubbish with the current scatter rules it's true. Add in cover and you need to cover 4 models with a blast marker for every kill.

BS3 is rubbish? Because that's what they effectively are. They're a bit less accurate than other guns for Space Marines, because the special snowflakes have a higher average BS than everyone else. Take Tyranids - a Heavy Venom Cannon was much decried as being inaccurate when it changed to blast, when statistically it's effectively BS3. Which the Tyrant is anyway.

Your problem is that you're mistaking discrete data points for continuous data points. That's throwing off your mathhammer.

I ran the problem through JMP and got 35%, which is closer to 33% than it is to 50%. Hence my statement that it's effectively BS 2. I can run it through matlab if you'd prefer, but that's a pretty big headache to prove a fairly trivial point.

And the reason I say it's nigh impossible to mathhammer scatter is because you have to factor in scatter direction, not just "does it hit" vs "does it scatter".

Edit:

You've got a 1/6th chance of 0 scatter from 2d6-4 = 17%
1/9th chance of 1" (11%)
5/36th chance of 2" (14%)
1/6th chance of 3" (17%)
and 15/36th chance of 4+" of scatter. (42%)

So even if we set the cutoff to hitting things at 3" (which is still far from a guarantee unless your blob target is big enough, that is, more than 7" in diameter and symmetrical - which, for the sake of argument, let's assume) you've got a 67% chance of scattering, then a 42% chance of scattering onto nothing.

So that's roughly a 46% chance to hit something, given those assumptions. Still not quite 50%, but better than JMP.

Replicating your napkin math, I see where you're coming from. That's still a couple of pretty big assumptions and requires a perfect scenario, which rarely happens. More often than not, people are going to fudge the 2" coherency to fit models around/in/between terrain, which would skew the numbers.

Mr. S Baldrick wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:I prefer everything scattering - it was overly complicated and non-sensical in 4th as it was so inconsistent.

How was it overly complicated in 4th? You rolled to hit with the BS centered on one model and tried to cover as many as possible. It was a lot easier in 4th then the crazy scatter minus BS that you have now.

Not everything rolled to hit, and not all the time. It also meant that a SM crewed vehicle was exactly as accurate as an ork crewed one - how logical or consistent is that? How is "everything scatters, just less the more skiled you are" = crazy? Eminently logical and fits the abstraction in use.

Well...

Mainly because for ranged options for dealing with vehicles, it's either melta weapons, or an Exorcist.

Don't get me wrong, I usually don't mind the Exorcist. I just don't want to need them in every game I play with my Sisters of Battle.

Other than melta weapons and Exorcists, I can take Penitent Engines and/or Repentia for melee anti-tank (Penitent Engines have dreadnought CCWs with lots of attacks, and Repentia have bonuses to armor penetration rolls in melee). But both of those units... Well, I can't exactly control where they go. But they are fun to use, even if they die quick because my opponent doesn't want to let them live.

The Repentia are quite a fun unit to take in particular, because their performance on the table is consistent with their fluff: suicidal charges that usually result in death. Where it differs from the fluff, is that they usually don't accomplish much on the table before they die, whereas in the fluff, they tend to attain mutual destruction of themselves and their targeted foes.

Oh right, this thread is about meltas and missile launchers.

For my Space Marines, they don't tend to take a lot of melta weapons. Missile Launchers? Sure, because they're a nicely rounded weapon that can deal with light vehicles and put out some decent damage on infantry. Meltas? Not so much, mainly because I don't have a lot of meltagun models to begin with. My mom, when she uses my Space Marines, tends to prefer plasma cannons to Missile Launchers if the points are available. The reason is simple... When I play my Sisters of Battle, sometimes I forget to spread them out. Then, in her shooting phase, I remember that she has plasma cannons. And then, after two direct-hit shots, fifteen Battle Sisters are removed as casualties.

Missile launchers are cheaper points-wise, though. Better against tanks, and they don't overheat. And as a plus, you get one included in every Tactical Squad box.

Because 2d6 > 1d6

The reason in my opinion is the current meta at tourneys which has over this current edition become unrecognisable from the more casual game. When people are talking about spamming melta/razorback they are probably talking about the tournament game.

A tourney game is played to a strict time limit where horde armies are all but unplayable due to the time constraints paired with the ability of both sides to pander to a timer. This leads to the abundance of MSU in transports, fast to move and also easy to transport to said event. So now the overwhelming majority of your opponents will be small units in transports and massed AI fire is unneeded as to completely table your opponents scoring units you only need to kill 20-30 marines etc. Your main difficulty becomes popping the transports those troops are hiding in so it becomes a matter of taking the most efficient weapons for doing that, which at the moment is melta fire. Dealing with the handful of survivors is easy after that as there are so few.

If you show up to this kind of thing with 200 footslogging Orks you'll just as likely get slow played by many lists that can simply zoom out to objectives and win a 3rd turn time out with barely a shot fired. There are the occasional lists that still have enough AI to worry you but by and large they won't even come close, but because of the rules and meta they don't have to fight you to win.

Now, you do this in a casual game and suddenly it's different, no judge will be coming over to tell you to finish and now your opponent must be able to truely take all comers, come turn 5 that green tide has walked to your deployment zone firing all the way, AI fire's importance swells and suddenly it's a totally different game.

The meta changes depending on where you happen to be standing. Go to a tourney and it's lots of small BA, SW, DE, GK units in boxes/paper planes. Go down the road to your local store and maybe the locals are footslogger fans where several hundred lasguns are fired per turn.

Neither way is more right than the other but someone gunning to win a tourney is more likely to ask for advice and tourney list tweakers are more likely to weigh in with an opinion of the abilities of a army posted, hence it seems to be more prevalent.

Horde armies are fine in tournaments as long as you're not terribad. People who complain about them taking too long to move are typically just slow players who would take just as long with MSU - in reality you have a lot of MODELS but very few UNITS and since you move at the unit level then as long as you're able to make decisions quickly the actual physical movement of stuff doesn't take very long at all. Most of the extra time comes in deployment and even then as long as you plan ahead you can usually get it down fast, particularly if you come prepared and have it all on a tray rather than in and out of a case.

That assumes your opponent wants to fight you. All it takes is for your opponent to want for you to measure each model to make sure it ends up in the right place and suddenly if you want to run as well your talking about several hundred measures for a single turn before they even begin what could easily be a dawdling turn themselves. It's a tourney, your opponent is just as likely to be there driven by a will to win, if he doesn't think he can kill that many troops he can just as easily kill you with the timer and hey after all it's your turn thats taking all the time up. Time has become a weapon/rule that some players will seek to manipulate. to their advantage.

If nothing else they have you rushing your turn which makes it much easier to make mistakes trying to get things measured and moved in time so that you at least have enough turns to get to the objectives.

The instant you remove the timed element of the game you turn the meta completely, and as the meta turns so do unit and weapon choices.