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So I just assembled another Hammerhead, with a railgun of course, and this time, for laffs, I went ahead and assembled the ion cannon turret in case I ever want to swap it out and try it on the battlefield - which I have never done before.

It's a radically different profile from the railgun, but it's also a much cheaper option (15 points instead of 50 for a railgun) so I ask you, Dakka - is it worth taking? In any situation? Has anyone here fielded a hammerhead with an ion cannon before? Was it effective?

It's like a powered up Missile Pod...stat wise.
So... it'll perform well enough vs. tougher power armor or lighter vehicles.

The Railgun is flexible to the extremes, while the Ion Cannon is flexible by middling statwise. At the end of the day it's what you need with the rest of your list.

If the crisis suits are rocking out with lots of missile pods, I guess the Railgun would be a better bet.
If the crisis suits are going for plasma/fusion then the Ion Cannon could have some use.

It also depends on point levels. I've taken the ion cannon before simply because I had railgun saturation between broadsides and 1 other hammerhead....there's only so many hard targets for them to hit in a game....

When I'm not running my Farsight list, I usually run an Ion cannon on my 2nd hammerhead.

More chances to put wounds on T6 monstrous creatures than a single railgun shot.

All good points, thank you.

Currently I run two Hammerheads as my Heavy Support choices. I do, however, have two Broadsides on order. Once I put them together and field them, I'll probably switch to the Ion Cannon on my second Hammerhead for balance, or at least keep it as an option.

Sounds like good plan. An Ion Cannon to three Railguns is a pretty good ratio.

The Ion Cannon is an under utilized option imo.

I've never really found them effective. Deathrains just do the job (taking out transports) so much better, but it depends on your list and playstyle I suppose. Any chance you could put a list up so we'd have an idea.

I ran them for about 9 months befire having to take a break in my gaming due to commitmitments IRL. I was playing around with a 0 railgun list that focused on killing MCs, MEQ's, and light to medium Armour. Here is the link to the list:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/290159.page

Now remember that this was a concept army and while it performed quite well against IG, SMs and nids it would probably be better reworked with a Broadside team and two Ion heads.

Hope you find this useful, let me know if you see anything you like or have questions on how the list worked.

Later

I run an Ion with 2 burst cannon HH, and rail gun with SMS HH

and 3 broadsides and find it to be the best balance for the Hs in a Tau army.

From experience I think you should not have one set choice for your hammerhead's weaponry. Nine times out of ten you should choose the Rail gun. But if your playing a infantry heavy marine army like my Templars, the ion cannon is AP 3. I tend to find this to be better than the AP 4 submission shot of the rail gun.

Hope this helps.