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so the other night I was sitting there b#tching about the various discrepencies with 40k, as I am often known to do, and we got on the topic of heavy bolters and how they are one of the most iconic weapons employed by Space Marines, yet they are quite middle of the road, especially as far as devastator squads are concerned. My proposal was simple, that the heavy bolter be moved from a heavy 3 to a heavy 5 weapon. It's a squad heavy machine gun, it's going to have a drastically higher rate of fire than a standard infantry rifle, be it bolter or lasgun. and yes this would no doubt prompt a change in the assault cannon profile as well, to whitch i propose nothing more than making it a heavy 8 weapon.

no some of this may seem over powered, especially the assault cannon, but god's sake, if a mulit-barreled machine gun can't fire 8 round in the time it takes to fire two from an assault rifle there's something wrong. the whole reason a machine gun is designed with multiple barrels is because its rate of fire is so high that it would warp a single barrel weapon with the heat discharge.

Thoughts?

I imagine the rules treat weapon profiles more as a general estimation of how much damage a weapon causes when fired, rather than how many actual shots go off.

Like, a model rapid firing a bolter has time to inflict two (s4 ap5) dice worth of damage. That doesn't necessarily mean he only fires two shots. Heavy bolters can inflict 3 dice worth, not much more, but they also have better s and ap, and are pretty cheap.

I agree with you though, it would be cooler if heavy bolters absolutely plowed a**. I propose s6 ap3, to show that you don't just walk away from that stuff with a T of 3 or less. Maybe blast as well, that would be awesome.

i agree with the strength of the weapon as is, power armor can stop a few impacts from a heavy bolter, but when you take a sustained number of shots (5) you're in trouble.

Maybe the assault cannon could be made weaker instead.

A heavy 5 bolter would rip the gak out of armies like Tau and Tyranids, who aren't exactly top of the power curve anyway.

It doesn't even matter if the points are increased.

Kilkrazy wrote:Maybe the assault cannon could be made weaker instead.

A heavy 5 bolter would rip the gak out of armies like Tau and Tyranids, who aren't exactly top of the power curve anyway.

It doesn't even matter if the points are increased.

true enough, maybe you could increase the assault cannon to a heavy 7 weapon with strength 4 AP 4 or something. Higher rate of fire, smaller caliber projectile for recoil management, but better AP because it's higher velocity than a bolter

Oh yes, please buff my Leman Russ' three heavy bolters. Heavy 5 would change it from nine shots to fifteen, that would be so fething delighgtful for all of my enemies.

Melissia wrote:Oh yes, please buff my Leman Russ' three heavy bolters. Heavy 5 would change it from nine shots to fifteen, that would be so fething delighgtful for all of my enemies.

haha that was my line of logic Melissia

I was being entirely sarcastic.

so you're saying you don't want want heavy 5 HBs? I can't for the life of me imagine why you wouldn't

meh sod that go back to heavy support dice and D4 damage!

Brother Heinrich wrote:so you're saying you don't want want heavy 5 HBs? I can't for the life of me imagine why you wouldn't

Because its unbalanced.

this game hasn't been balanced for a loooong time

Brother Heinrich wrote:so you're saying you don't want want heavy 5 HBs? I can't for the life of me imagine why you wouldn't

Because it's a silly change with no point behind it? If you want to change a rule so heavily, you actually need some reasoning to do so, and 'I don't understand what the shooting mechanics represent, so let's ramp up the # of dice a heavy bolter rolls' doesn't really cut it. I play the game for the fun of matching my army against my opponent's. Buffing my weaponry so that he gets to stand around and be a shooting gallery target isn't fun.

Why give the Meq and Imperial based armies such a huge boost? I mean its not like they need them already...

If you implimented this I am fairly sure all non MEQ/IG army players would just go 'Sod it, Im off!' seeing as how cheap and prevalent HB's are.

Sure upgrade your HB's, but then I'd want all Necron guns rending and wounding on 3+, since according to THEIR fluff even their most basic guns can damage the most advanced defences.

I'd want Destroyer Gauss-Cannon and better to instantly destroy vehicles, because that's what they do in the fluff (like the Black Templar Landraider that is puched through like a hot augur through fat, or the tank company that gets destroyed in the opening story..)

Will it happen? NO

Why? Because every Non-Necron player would storm GW and burn it to the ground for letting such horrific overpowerment happen to one army in the game.

The only reason it's not happened yet, as afar as I can tell, is that this level of overpowerment only get put into Marine codexes, and most people play marines (so will not complain).

An example would be half a dozen 2x bloodclaw dreads vs a nid CC army. There is slim to no chance of the Nids even getting to swing, especially if the rest of the amry takes out the high Str, high toughness units with missiles first

Overpowered? A tad

The answer everyone seems to hand down- so don't play nids/ play your nids shooty only (that's not really nids anymore, that's mutated tankless guard )


40K isn't all that balanced, agreed, but with it already slanted heavily in favor of the Imperium the last thing they need (and the first thing they'll probably get) is more and better weapons...

Brother Heinrich wrote:so you're saying you don't want want heavy 5 HBs? I can't for the life of me imagine why you wouldn't

I'm just guessing here, but perhaps Melissia seems some value in a metagame that consists of SMs, IG, and some other armies too.

We keep seeing these threads that go:

An IoM player wrote:My army is already one of the best in the game and has more weapons choices, special characters, space magic and cheap vehicles than any two Xenos armies put together, but I'm not satisfied.

I want Plasma/Heavy Bolters/Combat Squads/Whatever to be made better.

well now I sound like a D-bag, never mind, I repent, grant me the Emperors peace or whatever.

Brother Heinrich wrote:My proposal was simple, that the heavy bolter be moved from a heavy 3 to a heavy 5 weapon. It's a squad heavy machine gun, it's going to have a drastically higher rate of fire than a standard infantry rifle, be it bolter or lasgun. and yes this would no doubt prompt a change in the assault cannon profile as well, to whitch i propose nothing more than making it a heavy 8 weapon.

Jesus.

no some of this may seem over powered, especially the assault cannon, but god's sake, if a mulit-barreled machine gun can't fire 8 round in the time it takes to fire two from an assault rifle there's something wrong. the whole reason a machine gun is designed with multiple barrels is because its rate of fire is so high that it would warp a single barrel weapon with the heat discharge.

Thoughts?

Each die rolled doesn't correlate with a single bullet. It's representative of a calculated chance to wound someone. It's an abstraction, not an actual attribute of the gun (in fluff terms).

Brother Heinrich wrote:so you're saying you don't want want heavy 5 HBs? I can't for the life of me imagine why you wouldn't

As an IG/SM/DH player, I can say: No. No I don't. Mainly because I don't need them.

Now if you were to do this and, say, also up all of the Xeno equivalents as well, I might consider trying it to see what happens. (ex. Lootas, Burst Cannons, Shuriken Cannons) Though Tyranids would be at a severe disadvantage, I must say.

You want a better heavy bolter? Say str5 ap2, 3 shots at 36 inch range? Play Dark Eldar and use disintigrators.

Kilkrazy wrote:

An IoM player wrote:My army is already one of the best in the game and has more weapons choices, special characters, space magic and cheap vehicles than any two Xenos armies put together, but I'm not satisfied.

I want Plasma/Heavy Bolters/Combat Squads/Whatever to be made better.

I wish I could say that about Sisters :(

how many nails should I get for the crucifixtion? jesus, I get it, game balance, ratios, I see the light.

It's okay, we aren't bashing you, just carrying on a conversation

THe HB is a problem due to:

- 5th Ed cover saves
- Lowered cost of ML.

Figure the average is 2 hits, 1.33 wounds and .67 wounds after cover saves or .44 kills after AC3+ shots. Now it costs the same as a ML which can either go .67 hits, .56 kills or .28 kills after cover saves or if you figure a a blast marker that can touch 3 figures - 1.5 wounds and .5 kills after cover saves. Plus of course the +12" of range and the AT capability of ML.

My simple fix is +5 to the cost of the ML or -5 to the cost of the HB. That would put it in the realm of playability.

In the Guard codex, MLs are something like ten points higher than HBs, and they're balanced in that codex...

edit: Nope, five points. I was thinking of lascannons apparently.

Or we could bring back Sustained Fire dice and make everyone happy.

My heavy bolters have the house rule that they launch ROF 3 genestealers 36" into cc. Nobody likes it but me.

Vladsimpaler wrote:Or we could bring back Sustained Fire dice and make everyone happy.

What are sustained fire dice?

Brother Heinrich wrote:well now I sound like a D-bag, never mind, I repent, grant me the Emperors peace or whatever.

You're forgiven.

I may be wrong here because it has been a really really long time, but Sustained fire dice (or rapid fire dice if I recall) were 6 sided dice with two 1's, two 2's, a 3, and the last side of the die was a 'misfire' or 'jam' I forget which its like 15 years ago I played using them. I might not even have the numbers right but it was something like that. At the time, a heavy bolter rolled a ROF of a pair of rapid fire dice, giving it between 0 (2 misfires) and 6 shots, usually getting 2 or 3. An assault cannon rolled 3 of these dice, and the fun thing is, if they all came up 'misfire' the cannon would explode and autokill him. The origional 'gets hot'.

yeenoghu wrote:I may be wrong here because it has been a really really long time, but Sustained fire dice (or rapid fire dice if I recall) were 6 sided dice with two 1's, two 2's, a 3, and the last side of the die was a 'misfire' or 'jam' I forget which its like 15 years ago I played using them. I might not even have the numbers right but it was something like that. At the time, a heavy bolter rolled a ROF of a pair of rapid fire dice, giving it between 0 (2 misfires) and 6 shots, usually getting 2 or 3. An assault cannon rolled 3 of these dice, and the fun thing is, if they all came up 'misfire' the cannon would explode and autokill him. The origional 'gets hot'.

nice, I kinda like that, scary about the jamming though