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 =Angel= wrote:

That is certainly smooth and scales up well for infantry. I would still add a minimum value , even though it would throw a wrinkle in there.

One thing I like about the current system is the visual image of a flamer hosing left to right on a crowd, or holding a stream of fire on a single model.

This would be particularly bad for blasts- a battlecannon fired at a lone guardsman and a battlecannon fired at a landraider would have 1 shot- 1 50% chance to hit.

The weapon would fire both profiles, and yeah, there is the same chance of hitting a single model no matter how large - it doesn't make sense for anyone, really. It should be easier to hit a tank from half the board away than a snotling. I also propose that vehicles, monsters and titanic units give a +1 to hit modifier, and that weapons are at -1 to hit at over half their range (except snipers), but these rules changes are a bit irrelevant to this discussion!

The aim is for the single shot to be a lot more pokey - currently you get D6 shots which do D6 damage each, which, when fired at a single model, gives a lot of rolling for a lot of random results. The new suggestion reduces the rolling, and reduced the randomness - you know it's going to do more damage if you shoot a big squad, and that it can do a lot of damage if you shoot a single model. Essentially, if you miss what you're shooting it, they might still get hit by the blast. in the case of a tank, this might not be all that helpful.

The biggest issue with the current system is, with it being random quantities of shots doing random damage, it's difficult to math-hammer it to compare it to any new system. You're as likely to do 1 shot as 6, and each shot is as likely to do 1 damage as 6, so it's truly random. In theory, it could do 36 damage to something. or it could do 1.

single shot (1/2 chance of hitting) at S8 (1/2 chance of wounding) with 4D3 damage (average 8 damage) gives you 1/4 of a chance of doing massive damage to a powerful tank. a less powerful target (T7) or a stronger shot (S9 or 10) would make it better. if a battlecannon turned into a really powerful one-shot gun, with a weak but extensive blast, I think that's a better reflection of a tank shell slamming into something!

 some bloke wrote:
Smoothest solution I've found is the "hits up to N" models approach.

My suggestion is Here, but here it is below:

Spoiler:

 some bloke wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Better solution: blast weapons automatically hit, up to one hit per model in the target unit. Remove the shoot twice rule from the tanks that have it, re-balance point costs as necessary. Blast weapons are now good for anti-horde duty and guaranteeing that you can't miss entirely, but can't stack up tons of hits on single-model targets. You're either in the blast or you aren't, no counting twice.

Hopefully you're meaning models under a template? Allowing a vindicator to wipe out one unit per turn, no matter how big it is, is just silly.

There could be scope for an overruling "blast" rule, which would apply to all the old template weapons. This has been discussed with fairly universal support when trying to improve flamers:

Blast: A blast weapon fires a number of shots equal to either it's profile or the number of models in the target unit; use whichever is lowest.

So, a Heavy Blast 8 would get 1 shot vs a single model, 5 against a tactical squad, 8 against a 10 man squad, and 8 against a 100-ork blob.

a Flamer (Assault Blast 6) would do the same, but as per it's rules, would auto-hit with a maximum of 6 hits.

Heavy Blast 2D6 would be an interesting weapon to run.



Combining this with the dual-profile, you might end up with:

Battlecannon:
~Shell Heavy 1 S8 AP-3 Dam 2D3
~Blast Heavy Blast 8 S4 AP-1 Dam 1

This would add so much design space for these fairly flat and frankly boring to use weapons. You can have armour piercing cannons for tank hunting:
~Shell Heavy 1 S10 AP-5 Dam 6
~Blast Heavy Blast 3 S4 AP- Dam 1
you can have quad-cannons for clearing infantry:
~Shell Heavy 4 S5 AP-1 Dam 2
~Blast Heavy Blast 16 S4 AP- Dam 1

and these weapons will actually be better when fired at their designated targets.

so flamers would be Assault Blast X, with X modified to suit the flamers. Heavy flamers will get more hits, hand flamers less. I think 5 or 6 hits per flamer is about right.

I really like this.

Blast weapons today have to be changed, theirs rule is silly.
But I think it should not be a weapon good vs hordes and vs tanks at the same time.
You have to do choices, the good vs all weapons kill the game, transform it to a spam run.